KAKORI AT 100: MARTYRS' LAST WISH

As legendary freedom fighter Bhagat Singh noted in an essay after Kakori, Bismil implored that if people truly mourned their martyrdom, they should honor it by ensuring communal amity: "with whatever means, they must establish Hindu-Muslim unity; that was our last wish and only this can be our memorial".

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August 2025 marked the centenary of the Kakori Conspiracy (also known as the Kakori Train Action), a pivotal revolutionary episode in India's anti-colonial struggle.

A hundred years on, India is revisiting the Kakori incident through exhibitions, tributes, and educational events, casting new light on its heroes across community lines and reflecting on how their martyrdom informs citizenship today. This article retraces the dramatic 1925 train robbery led by Ram Prasad Bismil and Ashfaqulla Khan, examines their legacy as martyrs transcending religious boundaries, and analyzes how commemorating them in 2025 is shaping public memory and patriotism.

THE KAKORI CONSPIRACY OF 1925

On 9 August 1925, a group of young Indian revolutionaries from the Hindustan Republican Association (HRA) carried out one of the most daring acts of the Indian freedom movement - the Kakori train robbery. Ram Prasad Bismil, Ashfaqulla Khan, Chandrashekhar Azad, Rajendra Nath Lahiri, Thakur Roshan Singh and others stopped the 8-Down Saharanpur-Lucknow passenger train near Kakori (a village near Lucknow) and looted the British government treasury it was carrying. The aim was twofold: to acquire funds for their armed struggle against British rule, and to send a defiant political message against colonial exploitation. The audacity of this act "shook the foundations of British rule," as later tributes would note, by showing that Indian patriots could directly challenge the Raj's economic stronghold.

British authorities responded with a massive crackdown. In the ensuing Kakori Conspiracy case, more than 40 people were arrested and tried for their involvement. The trial culminated in severe sentences: Bismil, Ashfaqulla Khan, Rajendra Lahiri, and Roshan Singh were sentenced to death and executed by the end of 1927, while others received long prison terms.