GS Paper I

News Excerpt:

Recently the death anniversaries of our freedom fighters were observed on 17th December (Rajendranath Lahiri) and 19th December (Ashfaqullah Khan, Ram Prasad Bismil, Thakur Roshan Singh).

• Due to his participation in the Kakori train incident, the British government hanged them on these dates 96 years ago.

Key Points

• In 1927, four revolutionaries of the Indian independence movement namely Rajendranath Lahiri, Ashfaqullah Khan, Ram Prasad Bismil, Thakur Roshan Singh were hanged.
• This came two years after the Kakori Train Robbery in 1925, in which members of the Hindustan Republican Association (HRA) had looted a train transporting money to the British treasury. 
• After the event, the British authorities launched an intense manhunt, leading to the eventual arrest of several members of the HRA. 

About Hindustan Republican Association (HRA) 

• The HRA was founded by a group of young men who were disillusioned by Gandhi’s tactics and what they felt was the preaching of “non-violence” as non functional.
• In 1920, Mahatma Gandhi declared the launch of the Non-Cooperation Movement, a campaign which asked Indians to revoke their support from any activity that “sustained the British government and economy in India.” 
• Gandhi had envisioned this movement to be non-violent, using his methods of satyagraha to eventually attain self-governance.
• However, in 1922, After police Chauri Chaura incident led to the “sudden” end of the Non-cooperation movement, with Gandhi calling it off despite significant internal disagreement within the Indian National Congress (INC).
• Ram Prasad Bismil and Ashfaqulla Khan, both of whom had a flair for poetry, were among the group’s founders. 
• Others included Sachindra Nath Bakshi and trade unionist Jogesh Chandra Chatterjee. 
• Figures such as Chandra Shekhar Azad and Bhagat Singh would also join the HRA. 
• Their manifesto released on January 1, 1925, was titled Krantikari (Revolutionary).
• The immediate object of the revolutionary party in the domain of politics is to establish a federal Republic of the United States of India by an organized and armed revolution.
• Their envisioned republic would be based on universal suffrage and socialist principles, importantly, the “abolition of all systems which make the exploitation of man by man possible.”

HRA After Kakori train Action

• In 1928, a year after the execution of the Kakori Conspiracy accused, the HRA merged with various other revolutionary groups that had emerged in Punjab, Bihar and Bengal and became the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA). 
• Gradually it made its Marxist leanings more explicit, working with the Communist International and speaking of a revolution involving a struggle by the masses to establish “the dictatorship of the proletariat.”
• By the 1930s, the HSRA had lost steam with many of its prominent leaders either dead or in prison. 
• However, over the latter half of the 1920s, the group was key in carrying out various acts of resistance against British rule, participating in protests against the Simon Commission, the subsequent assassination of assistant police commissioner J.P Saunders, and the bombing of Viceroy Irwin’s train, among others. 
• In the 1930s it broke down into various regional factions.

Significance of Kakori incident 

• One way to view the Kakori incident is to see the symbolic message that it sent to the British Raj. 
• Because the sum stolen was paltry, but such an act was unprecedented in the British Raj where specifically money meant for the British treasury was looted. 
• The revolutionaries did not touch anything else. They intend to elicit a positive public reaction.
• But due to a misfiring Mauser gun, one passenger (a lawyer named Ahmad Ali) was killed during the robbery, harming the revolutionaries’ intentions.

Conclusion

The Kakori incident is remembered as one of many revolutionary activities that were undoubtedly brave but ended in tragedy because the Britisher's response to Kakori was to set an example for future revolutionaries and restore British authority in the minds of the people.