The Indian Home Rule Society (IHRS) was an Indian organisation founded in London in 1905 that sought to promote the cause of self-rule in British India. The organisation was founded by Shyamji Krishna Varma, with support from a number of prominent Indian nationalists in Britain at the time, including Bhikaji Cama, Dadabhai Naoroji and S.R. Rana, [1] [2] and was intended to be a rival organisation to the British Committee of the Indian National Congress that was the main avenue of the loyalist opinion at the time. [3]
Founded on 18 February 1905, the IHRS was a metropolitan organisation modelled after Victorian public institutions of the time. [4] It had a written constitution and the stated aims to "secure Home Rule for India, and to carry on a genuine Indian propaganda in this country by all practicable means". [5] The IHRS was open for membership "to Indians only", and found significant support amongst Indian students and other Indian populations in Britain. It recruited from amongst young Indian activists, collected money, and may have been collecting arms and maintaining close contact with revolutionary movements in India. [6] [7] The society was foundations of the India House and, along with Krishna Varma's journal The Indian Sociologist , was the foundation of the militant Indian nationalist movement in Britain. After Krishna Varma's shift to Paris in 1907, the society gave way the secret nationalist society of Abhinav Bharat Mandal, founded by V.D. Savarkar. The society was founded amongst efforts and movements that arose to reverse the flow of authority and power from Britain to India. [3] [8] along with substantial help from Bhikaji Cama.
The Indian independence movement was a series of events during the British Raj, starting with the aim of ending British rule in India on the Indian subcontinent and it ended with India being partitioned and getting Independence in August 1947.
Bhikaiji Rustom Cama or simply as, Madam Cama, was one of the prominent figures in the Indian independence movement.
Shyamji Krishna Varma was an Indian revolutionary fighter, an Indian patriot, lawyer and journalist who founded the Indian Home Rule Society, India House and The Indian Sociologist in London. A graduate of Balliol College, Krishna Varma was a noted scholar in Sanskrit and other Indian languages. He pursued a brief legal career in India and served as the Divan of a number of Indian princely states in India. He had, however, differences with Crown authority, was dismissed following a supposed conspiracy of British colonial officials at Junagadh and chose to return to England. An admirer of Dayanand Saraswati's approach of cultural nationalism, and of Herbert Spencer, Krishna Varma believed in Spencer's dictum: "Resistance to aggression is not simply justified, but imperative".
The Revolutionary movement for Indian Independence was the 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 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. The revolutionary groups were mainly concentrated in Bengal, Maharashtra, Bihar, the United Provinces and Punjab. More groups were scattered across India.
Communist Consolidation was an Indian independence and communist organization, formed among the prisoners of the Cellular Jail in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands on 26 April 1935. It was the largest resistance group against British rule in the Cellular Jail, and the historical 36-day hunger strike in 1937 was led by this organization. Many legendary freedom fighters were members of this organization, which had the goals of uprooting British rule and to established Democratic communist India.
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 Free India Society was a youth organization of Indian students in England, committed to obtaining the independence of India from British rule. Initially an intellectual group, it became a revolutionary outfit under its founding leader, Bhikaji Cama. This organization also released a paper called Free India Society to propagate revolutionary ideas. Netaji subash chandra boseand Veer SavarkarDiscussed. After Independence in india some youngsters reformmed this free indian society in Rs Puram, Coimbarore, Doing Much More Social Activities for peoples.
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-Indian 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.
Baba Sohan Singh Bhakna was an Indian revolutionary, the founding president of the Ghadar Party, and a leading member of the party involved in the Ghadar Conspiracy of 1915. Tried at the Lahore Conspiracy trial, Sohan Singh served sixteen years of a life sentence for his part in the conspiracy before he was released in 1930. He later worked closely with the Indian labour movement, devoting considerable time to the Kisan Sabha and the Communist Party of India.
The Berlin Committee, later known as the Indian Independence Committee after 1915, was an organisation formed in Germany in 1914 during World War I by Indian students and political activists residing in the country. The purpose of the committee was to promote the cause of Indian Independence. Initially called the Berlin–Indian Committee, the organisation was renamed the Indian Independence Committee and came to be an integral part of the Hindu–German Conspiracy. Members of the committee included Virendranath Chattopadhyaya, Chempakaraman Pillai, Dr Jnanendra Das Gupta, and Abinash Bhattacharya.
The Gaelic American was an Irish nationalist newspaper published in the United States from 1903 to 1951 that was, along with the Irish Nation, owned by John Devoy. It was re-launched as an online news publication in 2021.
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 Lokamanya 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".
Mandayam Parthasarathi Tirumal Acharya was an Indian nationalist, communist and anarchist who was among the founding members of the Communist Party of India. In a long political and activist life, Acharya was at various times associated with India House in London and the Hindu-German Conspiracy during World War I when, as a key functionary of the Berlin Committee, he along with Har Dayal sought to establish the Indian Volunteer Corps with Indian prisoners of war from the battlefields of Mesopotamia and Europe. Acharya subsequently moved in 1919 after the end of the war to the Soviet Union, where he was one of the founding members of the Communist Party of India at Tashkent. However, disappointed with the Communist International, Acharya returned to Europe in the 1920s where he was involved with the League against Imperialism and subsequently was involved with the international anarchist movement.
"Vande Mataram" is the official national song of India and the origin of the patriotic cry of the Indian independence movement.
The Bande Mataram was an Indian nationalist publication from Paris begun in September 1909 by the Paris Indian Society. Founded by Madam Bhikaji Cama, the paper along with the later publication of Talvar was aimed at inciting nationalist unrest in India and sought to sway the loyalty of the Sepoy of the British Indian Army. It was founded in response to the British ban on Bankim Chatterjee's nationalist poem of Vande mataram, and continued the message of the journal Bande Mataram edited by Sri Aurobindo and published from Calcutta, and The Indian Sociologist that had earlier been published from London by Shyamji Krishna Varma.
The Paris Indian Society was an Indian nationalist organisation founded in 1905 at Paris under the patronage of Madam Bhikaji Rustom Cama, Munchershah Burjorji Godrej and S. R. Rana. The organisation was opened as a branch of the Indian Home Rule Society founded that same year in London under the patronage of Shyamji Krishna Varma. The Paris Indian Society also saw active participation from Indian nationalists who at various times were associated with the India House during its short existence. This included Virendranath Chattopadhyaya, Har Dayal, M.P.T. Acharya and Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. Other prominent Indians associated with the society included P.O. Mehta, H.M. Shah, P.C. Varma and a number of other prominent Indians in Paris at the time. The Paris Indian Society, under the strong leadership of Madam Cama, developed close links with the Socialist Party and Russian socialists in exile in Paris, and Cama herself attended the Socialist Congress of the Second International at Stuttgart in 1907, where seconded by Henry Hyndman, she demanded recognition of selfrule for India. It was at this congress that Cama famously unfurled one of the first Flag of India.
Sardarsinhji Ravaji Rana (1870–1957), often abbreviated S. R. Rana, was an Indian political activist, founding member of the Paris Indian Society and the vice-president of the Indian Home Rule Society.
The history of the Anushilan Samiti stretches from its beginning early in the first decade of 1900 to 1930. The Samiti began in the first decade of the 20th century in Calcutta as conglomeration of local youth groups and gyms. 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 incidences in Calcutta, Chittagong and in the United Provinces. The samiti dissolved before the Second World War into the Revolutionary Socialist Party.
'The British Committee of the Indian National congress' was established in Britain by the Indian National Congress in 1889. Its purpose was to raise awareness of Indian issues to the public in Britain, to whom the Government of India was responsible. It followed the work of W.C. Bonnerjee and Dadabhoi Naoroji, who raised India related issues in the British parliament through the support of radical MPs like Charles Bradlaugh. William Wedderburn served as the first chairmanship and William Digby as secretary.