Abhinav Bharat

Abhinav Bharat ("Young India"), also called the Abhinav Bharat Society, was a revolutionary secret society established by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar along with his brother Ganesh (Babarao) Savarkar in 1904 at Nashik, Maharashtra. Its name was consciously modelled on Giuseppe Mazzini's "Young Italy" (Giovine Italia), reflecting the deep influence of European nationalist and revolutionary thought on the early twentieth-century Indian revolutionary movement. The society grew out of an earlier organisation, the Mitra Mela, founded by Savarkar around 1900, which was reconstituted and expanded under the new name. Its avowed aim was the achievement of complete Indian independence through armed revolution, drawing inspiration from the 1857 Revolt, which Savarkar later valorised in his book The Indian War of Independence, 1857 (1909).

The society operated as a network of revolutionary cells across Maharashtra and extended its reach abroad, particularly to London, where Savarkar based himself at India House, the hostel run by Shyamji Krishna Varma in Highgate. From London, the society arranged the smuggling of arms and pistols into India and disseminated revolutionary literature and bomb-making manuals. Its members undertook political assassinations as a central tactic. The most notable instances were the assassination of A.M.T. Jackson, the British District Magistrate of Nashik, by Anant Laxman Kanhere in December 1909, and the assassination in London of Sir William Hutt Curzon Wyllie by Madan Lal Dhingra in July 1909. The Browning pistols used in the Jackson murder were traced back to Savarkar, leading to his arrest and his celebrated attempt to escape British custody by leaping from the ship S.S. Morea at Marseilles in 1910.

Following the Nashik Conspiracy Case and the conviction of its members, Abhinav Bharat was effectively suppressed by colonial authorities by 1910, with Savarkar himself transported to the Cellular Jail in the Andaman Islands ("Kala Pani") under two life sentences. Savarkar formally dissolved the society in 1952 after the attainment of independence, declaring that its objective had been fulfilled. The organisation thus belongs to the first phase of revolutionary terrorism in India, alongside the Anushilan Samiti and Jugantar in Bengal, and represents the western Indian strand of this militant nationalism that ran parallel to the moderate and extremist constitutional politics of the Indian National Congress.

For the UPSC Modern History paper (and the optional History paper), Abhinav Bharat is examined as a key node in the revolutionary movement: candidates must distinguish it from contemporaneous Bengal societies, link it to Savarkar, India House and the Nashik Conspiracy, and identify the Mazzinian inspiration. Prelims questions frequently pair the organisation with its founder, location (Nashik), and the assassination episodes; Mains questions situate it within debates on the methods and limitations of early revolutionary nationalism and its contrast with mass-based satyagraha. Note that a separate modern-day organisation bearing the same name exists, which should not be conflated with Savarkar's historical society.