---
title: "Revolutionary Movement: Bengal, Punjab & Abroad"
description: "Revolutionary nationalism grew through Bengal secret societies, Punjab's Ghadar movement and overseas networks. Trace these armed struggles from 1897 for UPSC"
url: "https://modeldiplomat.com/learn/lessons/upsc-modern-history-the-revolutionary-movement-bengal-punjab-abroad"
---

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The revolutionary movement (Bengal, Punjab, abroad)

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# The revolutionary movement (Bengal, Punjab, abroad)

Revolutionary terrorism in India's freedom struggle: the Bengal secret societies, Punjab and the Ghadar movement, and the abroad networks from 1897 to the 1930s.

## The first phase: secret societies in Bengal (1897-1917)

Revolutionary nationalism arose as the militant wing of the Extremist current, convinced that constitutional petitioning under the Moderates had failed and that British rule could be ended only by organised political violence. Its earliest expression came in Maharashtra: the **Chapekar brothers (Damodar and Balkrishna)** assassinated W. C. Rand, the Poona Plague Commissioner, and Lt. Ayerst on 22 June 1897. But Bengal became the heartland after the **Partition of Bengal (1905)** radicalised a generation.

The **Anushilan Samiti**, founded in 1902 at Calcutta (with Promotha Mitter, and inspired by **Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's** *Anandamath* cult of *Bande Mataram*), and its Dacca branch under **Pulin Behari Das (1906)**, became the chief organisations. The newspaper **Yugantar** (1906), run by **Barindra Kumar Ghosh** and **Bhupendranath Datta** (brother of Vivekananda), and **Sandhya** under Brahmabandhab Upadhyay, propagated armed revolt.

## Landmark actions and trials

On 30 April 1908 **Khudiram Bose** and **Prafulla Chaki** threw a bomb at Muzaffarpur intending to kill the hated magistrate Kingsford, but killed two English ladies (Mrs and Miss Kennedy). Chaki shot himself; Khudiram was hanged on 11 August 1908, aged 18. The ensuing **Alipore Bomb Case (1908)** put Aurobindo Ghosh and Barindra Ghosh on trial; **C. R. Das** defended Aurobindo, who was acquitted. **Kanailal Dutt and Satyendranath Bose** were hanged for killing the approver Narendra Gosain inside jail.

The **Howrah Gang Case**, the assassination of public prosecutor Ashutosh Biswas, and the **Delhi Conspiracy Case (1912)**—in which **Rash Behari Bose** and **Sachindra Nath Sanyal** organised the bomb thrown at Viceroy **Lord Hardinge** during his ceremonial entry into Delhi on 23 December 1912—marked the movement's peak. Rash Behari escaped to Japan; Sanyal later authored *Bandi Jivan*.

## Wartime conspiracy

During the First World War the revolutionaries planned a coordinated rising. The **Hindu-German Conspiracy** sought German arms; the **Indo-German Plot** and the abortive **February 1915 rising** (betrayed by the spy Kirpal Singh) collapsed. The British struck back with the **Defence of India Act, 1915**, enabling detention without trial, and through wartime tribunals broke the Bengal and Punjab networks. By 1917 the first phase had been suppressed, though it bequeathed an ethic of sacrifice—*tyaga*—and a martyrology that the Gandhian era could not entirely absorb.

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