A Soldier of the Anushilan Samiti

As a young medical student in Kolkata, Hedgewar was deeply involved with the revolutionary Anushilan Samiti—which was influenced by Bengal's Swadeshi movement—and later channeled his nationalist fervor into founding the RSS

- ANIRBAN GANGULY

Dr. Hedgewar had a close association with and was an active member of the Anushilan Samiti as a student in Kolkata. Like Sri Guruji later, Dr. Hedgewar also spent some of his formative and most impressionable years in Bengal, then in the throes of the Swadeshi movement. He spoke fluent Bengali and was well versed with the spirit and psyche of Bengal. Even while in Nagpur as a student, Dr. Hedgewar had been associated with groups which were active in mobilizing funds for the famous Alipore Bomb Case which had Sri Aurobindo, Barindra Kumar Ghose, Upendranath Banerjee and Ullaskar Dutt, among other revolutionaries, as the principal accused.

The Alipore Bomb Case was the first such trial with a national impact and magnitude. In his authoritative 1922 study of the Alipore Bomb Trial, Bejoy Krishna Bose observes that the Alipore Bomb Trial, "was the first state Trial of any magnitude in India, because it was held at a time when discontent reached its highest point in Bengal and it concerned people who were gentlemen belonging to the best society, cultured, educated and highly intelligent." Referring to the plethora of evidence presented in the court for this historic trial, Bose pointed out that even ten volumes would not "afford sufficient space for a complete history of the trial."

Doctorji's association as a member of the Anushilan Samiti while studying medicine at the National Medical College in Kolkata had brought him in close contact with a number of leading revolutionaries of that era. His involvement with the Anushilan Samiti as a member of its inner circle is well documented. Those who minimize Doctorji's involvement with the freedom movement belong to an ideological class and ecosystem whose members were collaborationists and have had a history of opposing the freedom struggle.