Anecdotes of Some Unknown People Sacrificing Themselves for Freedom Struggle

Many people sacrificed their lives to free mother India from the oppression of foreign powers. Some of them are not known to us even today. They still remain under the old tiled roof of a dark slum. There are various types of people who are known as freedom fighters, but some of their deeds are unknown to us even today. Today, through this writing of mine, I am going to present to you all the pictures of some of those people's works.

First of all, the one I am talking about was flame of fire of the revolutionary era. Many of us do not know him well. He was Barindra Kumar Ghosh, the younger brother of Rishi Arvind Ghosh. Studying did not suit him. As he wanted to do business, he came to seek capital from his elder brother. From there, his life changed and he became involved with the revolutionary movement.

Another surprising thing is that this Barindrakumar sent,"Khudiram and Prafulla Chaki to kill Magistrate Kingsford of Muzaffarpur. Although everyone knows about the murder of Kingsford, Khudiram and Prafulla Chaki are still now alive from us.But how many people know about "Birendra"?

The English authorities reacted to this incident and became intoxicated with revolutionary extermination. They arrested many revolutionary leaders and activists by searching houses in different places and districts of Calcutta. Aurobindo, Barindra, Upendranath Bandyopadhyay, Rishikesh Kanjilal, Ullaskar, Satyen Bose, Kanailal Dutta, Hemchandra Das, Charuchandra Roy, Avinash Bhattacharya etc. 60 revolutionaries were arrested.The government filed a conspiracy case against them.

 This case came to be known as "Maniktala Bomb Case". 

One more person is not to be mentioned here. He is one of the pillars of the revolutionary organization Shri Amarendranath Chattopadhyay. He sold his wife's ornaments and provided money to set up a bomb factory in Maniktala garden.

Not only this, when Barindra Kumar later sent Khudiram and Prafulla Chaki to Muzaffarpur, Amarendranath provided all his expenses. Collecting money from Mr. Michari son of Raja Piari Mohan of Uttarpara, he did these things in such a secret that the detective police could not find out anything.

The Maniktala bomb case's trial was held in Alipore Court, in the court there was English Judge Beechcroft. After his arrest, Barindra confessed to the police and persuaded other colleagues to confess as well. His purpose was to inform the countrymen about the revolutionary efforts and to keep his elder brother  Aurobindo hidden by taking all the responsibility on himself.

  Barindra defended his confession saying,"who did not mean or expect to liberate our country by killing a few English men.we wanted to show people how to dare and die.my mission is over".

The Maniktala Bomb Case verdict was delivered on 6th May 1909 AD. Barindra and Ullaskar were sentenced to death. Upendranath Bandyopadhyay, Hemchandra Das, Vibhuti Sarkar, Virendra Sen, Sudhir Sarkar, Indranath Nandi, Avinash Bhattacharya, Shailendranath Bose, Rishikesh Kanjilal and Indubhushan Roy were sentenced to life imprisonment. Paresh Mooli, Sukhara Roy, Shishir Ghosh were sentenced to 10 years imprisonment and Ashok Nandi, Balakrishna and Shishir Sene were sentenced to 7 years. Barindra Kumar was imprisoned from 1909 AD to 1920 AD.

Jatindranath Bandyopadhyay, a brave youth of Channa village in Burdwan district, first dreamed of ousting the British by organizing an armed revolution in India. Later he was named "Niralamba Swami." Jatindranath came to Baroda and got military training for a few years by working in the army department and made himself suitable for leading the revolutionary movement.

Various people have fought in various ways for the liberation of their Motherland. Another one of them is Manabendranath Roy. His real name was Narendranath Bhattacharya. Many great revolutionary fighters involved in India's freedom movement sometimes adopted various pseudonyms for the convenience of work but this man adopted more pseudonyms than any other revolutionary had to adopt.

His real name was Narendranath Bhattacharya. In revolutionary work, he had to adopt different names at different times,like Mr. Martin, Hari Singh, Mr. White,Manabendranath Roy, D. Garcia, Dr. Mahmud, Mr. Banerjee etc.At the age of 14, he involved in the politics of the country due to his contact with the revolutionary party.

During the First World War in 1914 AD, the Indian revolutionaries planned to make the country independent by establishing contact with Germany, the enemy of the British, by taking arms from them. Narendranath directly took the lead role in it. He leads two robberies to raise money.In this case, the name of another person comes up who selflessly sacrificed his life in the hope of liberating the motherland.

 Narendranath's imprisonment was guaranteed in the robbery case.At that time Jatindranath (Bagha Jatin) and Purnadas ordered a person named "Radhacharan Pramanik" took all the responsibility of the robbery on his head and was caught by the English. For this reason he had to die in prison with the stigma of a traitor.Even today we do not have the idea of how many people have laid down their lives in silence for the independence.

In 1915, Narendranath traveled to Batavia under the pseudonym Charles Martin to procure arms and returned home within a few months.In the same year, Narendranath Hari Singh left the country under the pseudonym of August 15 and went to the Philippines and contacted Rasbihari Bose of Japan under the name of Mr. White. In this way, he traveled around and collected weapons. This incident spread like a sensational story.

The headlines read, "Mysterious Foreigner Arrives in America, Brahmin Revolutionaries or German Spies?"

Seeing such information about himself in a newspaper headline made him immediately wary. He met the famous writer Dhangopal Mukhopadhyay and told him about his plan and on his advice, he took Manvendra Nath Roy as a pseudonym again.He then came to America and under a new name and identity eluded British intelligence for ten months.He was arrested in 1917 but later released on bail.

Then he changed his name again to "Manuel Mendes" and left for Mexico. On reaching Mexico, he reverted to his former name. There Manabendranath participated in the movement led by the Socialist Party and within a few days he became a Marxist.

In 1919, the Socialist Party of Mexico was transformed into the Communist Party. The party was named, "The Communist Party of Mexico". This is how Manabendranath launched the first Communist Party outside Russia.He then came to Russia and assumed the pseudonym D.Garcia.

After Lenin's death in 1924, Borodin was active in planning the Chinese revolution.Manabendranath was sent to China by the International Communist Organization to help him. Borodin had some  dissent with Manabendranath.He was expelled from China in 1927. This incident in China marked the downfall of Manabendranath in the International Communist Organization.

At the Sixth Congress of the Comintern he was heavily criticized for writing the Decolonization thesis in his absence and was expelled from the Comintern. Thus he moved far away from the communists in a very short time, the year was 1929.Then from Berlin he returned to India in 1930 under the pseudonym Dr. Mahmud. 

 The next year in 1931, he was arrested in Mumbai. The trial sentenced him to six years of rigorous imprisonment.After his release from prison he attended the Faizpur session of the Congress but failed to make any impact in the Indian capital. It can be said that his struggle life ended here.

Such are the various unknown people who spent most of their lives fighting for freedom, whose names are found in the pages of history today but are locked away in some old thick book gathering dust in some corner of the library. As a result, most of the times it remains unknown to the general public.

**On behalf of KSI blog, in celebration of independence, numerous tributes and bows are being conveyed to all these people.**

🖋️Collected and Written by Swati Mukhopadhyay.🖋️

🖼️Picture collected from Pexcels.com & Unsplash🖼️