After the establishment of the colonial rule in India incidents of armed rebellions in the form of tribal uprisings and peasant revolts increased in different parts of the country.
The Great Revolt of 1857 posed an even greater challenge to British supremacy.
1. Not long after the Revolt was suppressed, Bengal and Bihar were rocked by the Indigo Rebellion. Between 1858 and 1860 the peasants refused to submit to forced cultivation.
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There were random attacks on the property of planters, and a violent uprising was feared. Ultimately, the government was obliged to set up an Indigo Commission, which gave some relief to the peasants.
2. Followers of Wahabi Movement (started in India by Syed Ahmed of Rae Bareli) were active in terrorist activities.
On September 20, 1871 Abdullah (said to be a Wahabi) was hanged for killing Mr. Norman, the Calcutta Judge, who was trying a Wahabi Amir Khan in a case. Another Wahabi, Sher Ali stabbed the Viceroy, Lord Mayo, in the Andamans in 1872.
3. In the early 1870s, Ram Singh Kuka founder of the Namadhari Sect attempted to set up a small-scale parallel government in some areas of Punjab but it was brutally repressed. Ram Singh, himself, was arrested in 1872 and sent to Rangoon.
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4. During the late 1870s the Calcutta student community was honeycombed with secret societies.
5. In 1876, Vasudeva Balwant Phadke attempted to raise a violent standard of revolt in Maharashtra with the help of Ramosi tribal’s of the region. He was captured in 1879 and the revolt ended.
6. In June 1897, the brothers Damodar and Balkrishna, killed two British officials, Rand and Ayerst. Rand, the Plague Commissioner of Poona, had gained notoriety for oppressive actions, while searching houses of people in the name of enforcing sanitary regulations, after the outbreak of Plague in Poona. Both the brothers were executed.
The third brother Vasudeva who had killed the informers against his brothers was also hanged.
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7. In 1902, the Calcutta Anushilan Samiti came into existence followed by Dacca Anushilan Samiti that came into being in 1905. They trained their members in physical drill, lathi-play and social work.
In Bengal, revolutionary feelings were aroused by Anushilan Samiti, which had 500 branches and nearly 20,000 members, under the inspiration of P. Mitra and Pulin Das. Severe repression was visited on the Samiti members involved in conspiracy cases.
In 1906, the Bengali weekly “Yugantara’ was founded. It preached fearlessness, violence and the legitimacy of lathi for winning independence.
Aurobindo Ghosh encouraged the revolutionaries and the Maniktalla Garden House, of the four Aurobindo brothers, was the centre of bomb conspiracy case.
8. In Maharashtra Ganesh Savarkar and his younger brother Vinayak Savarkar founded the ‘Mitra Mela’ a secret society.
It was, later, changed into the Abhinava Bharat’. The Nasik District Magistrate, Jackson, was killed by one of the twenty Browning Pistols sent by Vinayak Savarkar from Paris to India. The latter encouraged sedition and sought to revive the memories of the 1857 War of Independence. Poona, Nasik and Bombay became centres of revolutionary activities.
9. Early Indian revolutionaries were also active outside India. In 1905, Shyamji Krishna Verma founded the India Home Rule Society in London.
In 1906, he set up the India House in London, which became a place for holding meetings of Indian nationalists. Shyamji founded a monthly organ Indian Sociologist to spread his views. In 1907, he shifted to Paris.
He was assisted by S. R. Rana a Gujarati merchant in Paris and others. Madam Cama, propagated the message of a free India through her ‘Bande Mataram’, published from Geneva.
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