The Indian independence movement was a series of historic events with the ultimate aim of ending British rule in India also known as British Raj. It lasted until 1947.
The Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act of 1919, popularly known as the Rowlatt Act, was a law, applied during the British India period. It was a legislative council act passed by the Imperial Legislative Council in Delhi on 18 March 1919, indefinitely extending the emergency measures of preventive indefinite detention, imprisonment without trial and judicial review enacted in the Defence of India Act 1915 during the First World War. It was enacted in the light of a perceived threat from revolutionary nationalists of re-engaging in similar conspiracies as had occurred during the war which the Government felt the lapse of the Defence of India Act would enable.
Anushilan Samiti was an Indian fitness club, which was actually used as an underground society for anti-British revolutionaries. In the first quarter of the 20th century it supported revolutionary violence as the means for ending British rule in India. The organisation arose from a conglomeration of local youth groups and gyms (akhara) in Bengal in 1902. It had two prominent, somewhat independent, arms in East and West Bengal, Dhaka Anushilan Samiti, and the Jugantar group.
The Revolutionary movement for Indian Independence was part of the Indian independence movement comprising the actions of violent underground revolutionary factions. Groups believing in armed revolution against the ruling British fall into this category, as opposed to the generally peaceful civil disobedience movement spearheaded by Mahatma Gandhi.
Jadu Gopal Mukherjee was a Bengali Indian revolutionary who, as the successor of Jatindranath Mukherjee or Bagha Jatin, led the Jugantar members to recognise and accept Gandhi's movement as the culmination of their own aspiration.
India House was a student residence that existed between 1905 and 1910 at Cromwell Avenue in Highgate, North London. With the patronage of lawyer Shyamji Krishna Varma, it was opened to promote nationalist views among Indian students in Britain. This institute used to grant scholarships to Indian youths for higher studies in England. The building rapidly became a hub for political activism, one of the most prominent for overseas revolutionary Indian nationalism. "India House" came to informally refer to the nationalist organisations that used the building at various times.
The Press Act of 1908 was legislation promulgated in British India imposing strict censorship on all kinds of publications. The measure was brought into effect to curtail the influence of Indian vernacular and English language in promoting support for what was considered radical Indian nationalism. this act gave the British rights to imprison and execute anyone who writes radical articles in the newspapers. It followed in the wake of two decades of increasing influence of journals such as Kesari in Western India, publications such as Jugantar and Bandemataram in Bengal, and similar journals emerging in the United Provinces. These were deemed to influence a surge in nationalist violence and revolutionary terrorism against interests and officials of the Raj in India, particularly in Maharashtra and in Bengal. A widespread influence was noted amongst the general population which drew a large proportion population of youth towards the ideology of radical nationalists such as Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Aurobindo Ghosh, and towards secret revolutionary organisations such as Anushilan Samiti in Bengal and Mitra Mela in Maharashtra. This peaked in 1908, with the attempted assassination of a local judge in Bengal, and a number of assassinations of local Raj officials in Maharshtra. The aftermath of Muzaffarpur bombings saw Tilak convicted on charges of sedition, while in Bengal a large number of nationalists of the Anushilan Samiti were convicted. However, Aurobindo Ghosh had escaped conviction. With defiant messages from journals such as Jugantar, the propvisions of the 1878 Vernacular Press Act were revived. Herbert Hope Risley, in 1907, declared, "We are overwhelmed with a mass of heterogeneous material, some of it misguided, some of it frankly seditious," in response to a deluge of imagery associated with the Cow Protection Movement. These concerns led him to draft the major substance of the 1910 Press Act.
The Hindu–German Conspiracy(Note on the name) was a series of attempts between 1914 and 1917 by Indian nationalist groups to create a Pan-Indian rebellion against the British Empire during World War I. This rebellion was formulated between the Indian revolutionary underground and exiled or self-exiled nationalists in the United States. It also involved the Ghadar Party, and in Germany the Indian independence committee in the decade preceding the Great War. The conspiracy began at the start of the war, with extensive support from the German Foreign Office, the German consulate in San Francisco, and some support from Ottoman Turkey and the Irish republican movement. The most prominent plan attempted to foment unrest and trigger a Pan-Indian mutiny in the British Indian Army from Punjab to Singapore. It was to be executed in February 1915, and overthrow British rule in the Indian subcontinent. The February mutiny was ultimately thwarted when British intelligence infiltrated the Ghadarite movement and arrested key figures. Mutinies in smaller units and garrisons within India were also crushed.
The Ghadar Mutiny (Hindustani: ग़दर राज्य-क्रान्ति, Ġadar Rājya-krānti, Ġadar Baġāvat), also known as the Ghadar Conspiracy, was a plan to initiate a pan-India mutiny in the British Indian Army in February 1915 to end the British Raj in India. The plot originated at the onset of World War I, between the Ghadar Party in the United States, the Berlin Committee in Germany, the Indian revolutionary underground in British India and the German Foreign Office through the consulate in San Francisco. The incident derives its name from the North American Ghadar Party, whose members of the Punjabi community in Canada and the United States were among the most prominent participants in the plan. It was the most prominent amongst a number of plans of the much larger Hindu–German Mutiny, formulated between 1914 and 1917 to initiate a Pan-Indian rebellion against the British Raj during World War I. The mutiny was planned to start in the key state of Punjab, followed by mutinies in Bengal and rest of India. Indian units as far as Singapore were planned to participate in the rebellion. The plans were thwarted through a coordinated intelligence and police response. British intelligence infiltrated the Ghadarite movement in Canada and in India, and last-minute intelligence from a spy helped crush the planned uprising in Punjab before it started. Key figures were arrested, and mutinies in smaller units and garrisons within India were also crushed.
Vishnu Ganesh Pingle was an Indian revolutionary and a member of the Ghadar Party who was one of those executed in 1915 following the Lahore conspiracy trial for his role in the Ghadar conspiracy.
The Rowlatt Committee was a Sedition Committee appointed in 1917 by the British Indian Government with Sidney Rowlatt, an Anglo-Egyptian judge, as its president.
The Hindu–German Conspiracy failed to engage popular support within India. However, it had a significant impact on Britain's policies both in the empire, as well as on her international relations. The outlines and plans for the nascent ideas of the conspiracy were noted and began to be tracked by the British intelligence as early as 1911. Alarmed at the agile organisation, which repeatedly reformed at different parts of the country despite being subdued in others, the chief of Indian Intelligence Sir Charles Cleveland was forced to warn that the idea and attempt at pan-Indian revolutions were spreading through India "like some hidden fire". A massive, concerted and coordinated effort was required to subdue the movement. Attempts were made in 1914 to prevent the naturalisation of Tarak Nath Das as an American citizen, while successful pressure was applied to have Har Dayal interned. The conspiracy had been detected early by British intelligence, and had been the subject of strong British pressure from 1914.
The first Christmas Day plot was a conspiracy made by the Indian revolutionary movement in 1909: during the year-ending holidays, the Governor of Bengal organised at his residence a ball in the presence of the Viceroy, the Commander-in-Chief and all the high-ranking officers and officials of the Capital (Calcutta). The 10th Jat Regiment was in charge of the security. Indoctrinated by Jatindranath Mukherjee, its soldiers decided to blow up the ballroom and take advantage of destroying the colonial Government. In keeping with his predecessor Otto von Klemm, a friend of Lokmanya Tilak, on 6 February 1910, M. Arsenyev, the Russian Consul-General, wrote to St Petersburg that it had been intended to "arouse in the country a general perturbation of minds and, thereby, afford the revolutionaries an opportunity to take the power in their hands." According to R. C. Majumdar, "The police had suspected nothing and it is hard to say what the outcome would have been had the soldiers not been betrayed by one of their comrades who informed the authorities about the impending coup".
British counter-intelligence against the Indian revolutionary movement during World War I began from its initial roots in the late-19th century and ultimately came to span in extent from Asia through Europe to the West Coast of the United States and Canada. It was effective in thwarting a number of attempts for insurrection in British India during World War I and ultimately in controlling the Indian revolutionary movement both at home and abroad.
Sir Sidney Arthur Taylor Rowlatt, KCSI, PC was a British barrister and judge, remembered in part for his presidency of the sedition committee that bore his name, created in 1918 by the imperial government to subjugate and control the independence movement in British India, especially Bengal and the Punjab. The committee gave rise to the Rowlatt Act, an extension of the Defence of India Act 1915.
The Ingress into India Ordinance, 1914, a law passed in British India in September 1914, at the outset of World War I, allowed the Government of India to screen, detain, and restrict the movement of people returning to India.
The history of the Anushilan Samiti stretches from its beginning in 1902 to 1930. The Samiti began in the first decade of the 20th century in Calcutta as conglomeration of local youth groups and gyms(Akhra). However, its focus was both physical education and proposed moral development of its members. From its inception it sought to promote what it perceived as Indian values and to focus on Indian sports e.g. Lathi and Sword play. It also encouraged its members to study Indian history as well as those of European liberalism including the French Revolution, Russian Nihilism and Italian unification. Soon after its inception it became a radical organisation that sought to end British Raj in India through revolutionary violence. After World War I, it declined steadily as its members identified closely with leftist ideologies and with the Indian National Congress. It briefly rose to prominence in the late second and third decade, being involved in some notable incidents in Calcutta, Chittagong and in the United Provinces. The samiti dissolved into the Revolutionary Socialist Party in 1930.
The Rodda company arms heist took place on 26 August 1914 in Calcutta, British India. Members of the Jugantar faction of the Bengali revolutionary organisation Anushilan Samiti intercepted a shipment of Mauser Pistols and ammunition belonging to Messrs Rodda & co., a Calcutta gun dealer, while these were en route from the Customs house to the company's godown, and were able to make away with a portion the arms. The heist was a sensational incident, being described by The Statesman as the "Greatest daylight robbery". In the following years, the pistols and ammunitions were linked to almost all the incidences of nationalist struggles in Bengal. By 1922, the police had recovered most of the stolen arms.
The Bengal Criminal Law Amendment Ordinance of 1924, enacted into law as Bengal Criminal Law Amendment Act in 1925, was a criminal law ordinance enacted in October 1924 in Bengal, in British India. The law was implemented to stem the rise in revolutionary nationalism by the Jugantar group against The Raj in Bengal after 1922. Following the collapse of the Nonviolent movement, the remnants of the Anushilan Samiti reformed under the leadership of Surya Sen, Hem Chandra Kanungo and Bhupendranath Dutta and re-engaged in nationalist independence movements against the Raj. A string of violence through 1923 saw murders of police witnesses and informers, culminating in the attempt to assassinate Charles Tegart by Gopinath Saha, leading to the mistaken killing of another European. In response, following a number of requests from the Governor of Bengal, the ordinance was enacted extending the extraordinary powers of the Regulation III of 1818. It removed rights of Habeas corpus, reintroduced measures of indefinite and arbitrary detentions, and trials by tribunal without jury and without right of appeal. The ordinance was enacted into law in 1925 and remained in force for 5 years. Almost One hundred and fifty people were detained under the law, including among the notable detainees Subhas Chandra Bose, later Congress leader. The act was re-enacted in 1930, and later formed a basis for the Burma Criminal Law Amendment in 1931.
Anarchism in Bangladesh has its roots in the ideas of the Bengali Renaissance and began to take influence as part of the revolutionary movement for Indian independence in Bengal. After a series of defeats of the revolutionary movement and the rise of state socialist ideas within the Bengali left-wing, anarchism went into a period of remission. This lasted until the 1990s, when anarchism again began to reemerge after the fracturing of the Communist Party of Bangladesh, which led to the rise of anarcho-syndicalism among the Bangladeshi workers' movement.
