Lost Plot of Uprising

This final part of the two-part article explores how, when India stood at the crossroads of World Wars, revolutionaries like Hedgewar contemplated a nationwide uprising

- ANIRBAN GANGULY

Earlier in October 1912, historian Uma Mukherjee tells us, in her opus Two Great Indian Revolutionaries, as a preparation for organising a mass uprising the decision was taken at a meeting of revolutionaries in Lahore which was presided over by Rash Behari "towards the publication of anonymous leaflets with the object of fomenting discontent in the people against the British Government." The leaflet named Liberty was issued in May 1913; it was printed in Kapurthala and distributed throughout north India from Lahore, preaching revolution. The Liberty obviously aimed to prepare the ground for a nationwide uprising. "Revolution has never been the work of men. It is always God's own will worked through instruments... The debt we owe to the noble spirits of the martyrs will be paid only when young men of India will begin to come forward in numbers, each to prove a worthy successor of these departed sons... A grim Revolution is the greatest need of the time. Rise, brothers, in spirit..." Words such as these were meant to galvanise the youth into action. In fact, first copies of Liberty, once out, were seen almost everywhere, in school and college premises and were, as McQuade describes it, "distributed by mail to a wide recipient from across the political spectrum." Copies of Liberty must have most certainly reached Nagpur.