Militant and Revolutionary Movements
Moderates → Extremists → Revolutionaries
The arc of strategy — petition → mass agitation → armed challenge → mass Satyagraha. MODERATE 1885–1905 → EXTREMIST / SWADESHI 1905– → REVOLUTIONARY armed action → GANDHIAN mass phase → Independence, 1947.
6.1 Moderate nationalism & constitutionalism (1885–1905)
Leaders: Dadabhai Naoroji, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Surendranath Banerjea, M.G. Ranade, Pherozeshah Mehta. Method: the 3 P’s — petitions, prayers, memorials — plus speeches, resolutions, council work, appeals to British liberal opinion. Naoroji: the British are justice-loving; demands must be shown reasonable. Ranade: British rule as historical preparation. Gokhale: conditions not yet ripe for direct action.
| Defence | Achievement | Contemporary criticism |
|---|---|---|
| Bipan Chandra: Moderates laid the constitutional foundation; not mere submissiveness — they exposed colonial injustice. Shekhar Bandyopadhyay: fused Western constitutionalism with indigenous democratic imagination. | Built a political language; produced the drain theory; decolonised educated minds; prepared the militant & Gandhian phases. | Tilak: constitutional method before an alien bureaucracy is “political suicide”. Sri Aurobindo: it reflected “intellectual bankruptcy”. Nehru: it cannot work where there is no constitutional government. |
6.2 Extremist / militant nationalism & Swadeshi
Triggers: failure of moderate methods, Curzon‘s repression, economic distress, the Partition of Bengal (announced 19 Jul 1905, implemented 16 Oct 1905 — ostensibly efficiency, actually to split the bhadralok and divide Hindus & Muslims). Leaders: Bal Gangadhar Tilak (Maharashtra), Bipin Chandra Pal (Bengal), Lala Lajpat Rai (Punjab), Sri Aurobindo. Programme: Swaraj, boycott, Swadeshi, national education, passive resistance; Ganapati & Shivaji festivals as mobilisation.
“Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it.”
Bal Gangadhar Tilak
Sri Aurobindo in New Lamps for Old dismissed moderate politics as “political mendicancy”.
Swadeshi — Sumit Sarkar’s four trends
Moderate · Constructive Swadeshi · Political extremism · Revolutionary nationalism
Institutions: Bengal Chemicals; Bengal National College, 1906; Satish Chandra Mukherjee‘s Dawn Society; Tagore‘s Shantiniketan. Idiom: Atma-Shakti (Tagore, Swadeshi Samaj, 1904), Sakta imagery, Vivekananda’s “alternative manliness”. Limits: weak Muslim & lower-caste (Rajbanshi, Namasudra) participation; costlier Swadeshi goods; social coercion in boycott; the Surat Split, 1907.
| Dimension | Moderates | Extremists |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Gradual reform, representation, later Home Rule. | Swaraj, demanded more directly. |
| View of British | Trusted British liberalism / goodwill. | Rejected benevolence; rule shown as exploitative. |
| Means | Petitions, prayers, memorials, constitutional agitation. | Boycott, Swadeshi, national education, passive resistance, mass mobilisation. |
| Signature | Naoroji — communicate reasonable demands. | Tilak — “Swaraj is my birthright…”. |
| Contribution | Drain theory, ideological critique. | Emotional, cultural & mass energy. |
Bipan Chandra: both phases were necessary predecessors of Gandhi’s struggle–truce–struggle strategy.
6.3 Revolutionary nationalism
Influences. Internal: Bankim Chandra‘s Anandamath / “Vande Mataram”, Vivekananda‘s Shakti, Tilak‘s Gita, Aurobindo. External: American, Irish & Italian struggles, Mazzini & Garibaldi, Japan’s 1905 win, the 1917 Russian Revolution.
| Region | Bodies & figures | Early actions |
|---|---|---|
| Maharashtra | Chapekar Brothers; V.D. Savarkar; Mitra Mela, 1900; Abhinav Bharat, 1904 (Mazzini’s Young Italy). | Assassinations; ideological groundwork. |
| Bengal | Anushilan Samiti; Jugantar; Pramathanath Mitra; Barindra Kumar Ghosh; Bhupendranath Datta. | Rangpur dacoity, 1906; Muzaffarpur attack (Khudiram Bose & Prafulla Chaki); Manicktala / Alipore case — C.R. Das defended Aurobindo, acquitted. |
Tilak: the bomb had changed Indian politics.
Ghadar & international links
Ghadar Movement (USA, 1913): Lala Hardayal‘s paper Ghadar; aim — overthrow British rule, a Panchayat-Raj / republican state; Barkatullah Khan built Asian branches; Raja Mahendra Pratap‘s Kabul provisional government. The Komagata Maru incident & WWI sharpened revolutionary feeling.
HRA → HSRA
| Body | Figures & goal | Landmark |
|---|---|---|
| HRA, 1924 | Sachindranath Sanyal, Ram Prasad Bismil, Ashfaqulla Khan, Chandrashekhar Azad. Goal: Federated Republic of the United States of India; organise workers & peasants. | Manifesto The Revolutionary, 1 Jan 1925; Kakori, 1925 — four hanged. |
| HSRA, 1928 | Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, Shiv Verma, Azad. Ideology: socialism, secularism, anti-communalism, classless society; Naujawan Bharat Sabha (Lahore). | Saunders, Dec 1928; Assembly bomb, 8 Apr 1929 (“make the deaf hear”, Inquilab Zindabad); Jatin Das’s 63-day fast; Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, Sukhdev hanged 23 Mar 1931. |
“Chaos is necessary to the birth of a new star.”
HRA manifesto, The Revolutionary, 1925
Chittagong & women revolutionaries
Chittagong Armoury Raid, 18 Apr 1930 — Surya Sen (“Master Da”) seized armouries, declared a provisional government; hanged 12 Jan 1934. Women: Pritilata Waddedar, Kalpana Dutt, Shanti Ghosh, Suniti Chaudhury — challenging gender roles, widening the movement’s moral appeal.
Assessment. Shattered the myth of British invincibility, inspired youth, kept complete independence alive in passive phases, linked nationalism with socialism & secularism, internationalised the struggle, produced martyrdom as political memory. Limits: secretive, urban middle-class, thin mass base; individual heroism could not replace mass movement.
“INA was to become a much more powerful enemy of the British empire in defeat than it had been during its … triumphal march on Delhi.”
Christopher Alan Bayly
What UPSC has asked
Ten years of PSIR Mains questions, each with the flow snapshot and the model answer.
Open the PYQ Finder →How this is taught
The same ground, taught in the order the subject holds together, with the answer written in class.
The first session of Foundation 2027 is published in full.
Six programmes across three levels.