History of Kolkata - Contribution To The Independence Movement of India

Contribution To The Independence Movement of India

Historically, Calcutta was the centre of activity in the early stages of the national movement of independence. Exactly a hundred years after the fall of Bengal in the Battle of Plassey, Calcutta saw the beginning of what is often called the First Independence Movement of India. It should be noted here that it is also just as often as not referred to as a War of Independence, and as one historian put it, "The so called First National War of Independence was neither First, nor National, nor a War of Independence". In the suburbs of Calcutta, at the Barrackpore military barracks, sepoy Mangal Pandey sparked off a huge revolt that shook the foundations of the British Empire. This movement is sometimes also called the Indian Mutiny, although recent evidence goes against using this name and suggests "The Revolt of 1857" as a better and less controversial choice.

In 1883, Surendranath Banerjea organised a national conference - the first of its kind in 19th century India. This conference heralded the birth of The Indian National Congress. The first native president of the Indian National Congress was Sir Womesh Chunder Bonnerjee and he was also the first Congress president to advocate self-rule by Indians, Sir Surendra Nath Banerjea (referred to by the British as "Surrender Not") were early eminent Calcuttans, who provoked and influenced nationalist thinking in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Other societies based on nationalist or religious thoughts were started, like the Hindu Mela. Revolutionary organisations like the Jugantar and the Anushilan Samiti were formed with the goal of using force against the British rulers. Among early nationalist leaders, the most prominent were Sri Aurobindo, Indira devi Chaudhurani, Bipin Chandra Pal. The early nationalists were inspired by Swami Vivekananda, the foremost disciple of the Hindu mystic Sri Ramakrishna and helped by Sister Nivedita, disciple of the former. The rousing cry that awakened India's soul was penned by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay. Now the national song of the nation, it is an ode to the land of Bharat (India) as the Divine Mother, "Vande Mataram."

The Elgin Road residence of Subhash Chandra Bose in Calcutta was the place from where he escaped the British to reach Germany during the Second World War. He was the co-founder of the Indian National Army and the Head of State of the Arzi Hukumate Azad Hind, formed to counter and combat the British Raj in India. Renamed Netaji by poet laureate Rabindranath Tagore, he is regarded by many as perhaps the most prominent and influential freedom fighter in Indian history and is venerated in many Bengali households even today.

Muslims were also involved in the nationalist movement, most notably Fazl Huq who from Calcutta in the 1930s attempted to organise a non-communal peasant party to agitiate against the British and the wealthy Indian landowning class. The fact that many of the Hindus in this latter group were linked to the local Congress organisation and dominated the mainstream nationalist movement in Bengal from Calcutta led to attempts to thwart Huq's activities and fed into the tragic decline in communal relations that savaged Calcutta in 1946 and 1947 (see Kenneth McPherson, "The Muslim Microcosm: the Muslims of Calcutta 1918-1935", Steiner, Wiesbaden, 1973).