My dear countrymen and friends across the globe,
Your response thus far has been heartening and you have carried this petition on your shoulders till we are now well past 2000 and surging ahead. Keep up the campaign for it is of utmost moment to the nation's well-being. These neglected heroes who were the architects of our freedom have never been given their due recognition by the Government or by hired historians who have busied themselves in spinning the fine yarn of untruth and burying in the process the grand saga of armed revolution in the ocean bed of oblivion. Thus, generations in post-independent India have grown up hearing the myth that it was Gandhian non-violence that had almost single-handed dealt the deathblow to British imperialism in India and caused it to quit India. But nothing can be farther from the truth. While Gandhi did succeed in mobilising mass support for his passive programmes for freedom, his movements all failed during the tumultuous decade of the 1940s. So ineffective had he become that he could not prevent the Partition of India despite his mass following.
So, why did the British leave India despite having been victors in the Second World War? The Quit India Movement of Gandhi had been long crushed and the Congress had no action programme to speak of in the period 1945-47. Yet, the British left. Why?
The answer lies in Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and his Indian National Army whose assault on the northeastern borders of India and the subsequent trials of its three officers, Colonel Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon, Colonel Prem Kumar Sahgal and Major General Shah Nawaz Khan, in the Red Fort in 1945-46 undermined British authority over its armed forces in India to such an extent that they could no longer be relied on to defend the Raj. The realisation now dawned on the Crown that its time was up and its brightest jewel was about to be lost for good. Circumstances in India were electric with Netaji's popularity in absentia sparking off nationwide revolts in every civil and military department and it was this that forced the colonists to quit the land while a face-saving exit was yet possible.
But the success of Netaji and his INA did not come about all of a sudden with no historical linkages. It had deep historical causes embedded in it, revolutionary motivations of a suppressed people simmering for long, seeking channels of expression whenever the occasion arose but never quite achieving fulfilment in delivering the coup d'e'tat. The idea of armed revolution had been brewing in the minds of the valorous sons and daughters of Mother India ever since the First War of Indian Independence, after initial successes, had been brutally suppressed by a barbarous British regime. The memory of the Revolt remained as a permanent scar on the Indian psyche even as India was totally disarmed by force. The British feared it, too, and would not allow its recurrence at any cost. The conflagration had been extinguished but the embers were glowing still in the hearts and minds of a new generation of young Indians who plotted the downfall of the British Raj.
Swami Vivekananda's arrival on the world scene in the last decade of the nineteenth century set the stage for the ensuing battle of the titans which would decide the course of world history, for India was at the heart-centre of British imperial exploits and aspirations. Vivekananda died in 1902 and the flames of his pyre ignited the revolution in Bengal following its Partition in 1905. Extremist movements were rife along with the Swadeshi and Boycott Movements and, eventually, the cumulative pressure of these, building up unceasingly on the Government, forced it to annul the Partition. This was a big victory for the extremists within the Congress and added fillip to their revolutionary activities, although, Aurobindo Ghosh's withdrawal from active politics to retirement as recluse in Pondicherry came as a severe blow to revolutionary aspirations in Bengal. The capital city of British India was also shifted to New Delhi but this distancing from the Bengal revolutionaries did not protect the Raj from further armed assaults.
Lord Hardinge was bombed by Rash Behari Bose and Basanta Biswas on 23 Dec, 1912. The shifting of capital city from Calcutta to New Delhi did not spare the Viceroy the ire of the revolutionaries. He escaped with injuries but the message of revolution had been sent across the seas to shake up the powers that kept India in bondage. It also quickened revolutionary efforts within the Jugantar led by Bagha Jatin and the Ghadar Party based overseas that now plotted mutiny within the rank and file of the British Indian armed forces.
Your response thus far has been heartening and you have carried this petition on your shoulders till we are now well past 2000 and surging ahead. Keep up the campaign for it is of utmost moment to the nation's well-being. These neglected heroes who were the architects of our freedom have never been given their due recognition by the Government or by hired historians who have busied themselves in spinning the fine yarn of untruth and burying in the process the grand saga of armed revolution in the ocean bed of oblivion. Thus, generations in post-independent India have grown up hearing the myth that it was Gandhian non-violence that had almost single-handed dealt the deathblow to British imperialism in India and caused it to quit India. But nothing can be farther from the truth. While Gandhi did succeed in mobilising mass support for his passive programmes for freedom, his movements all failed during the tumultuous decade of the 1940s. So ineffective had he become that he could not prevent the Partition of India despite his mass following.
So, why did the British leave India despite having been victors in the Second World War? The Quit India Movement of Gandhi had been long crushed and the Congress had no action programme to speak of in the period 1945-47. Yet, the British left. Why?
The answer lies in Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and his Indian National Army whose assault on the northeastern borders of India and the subsequent trials of its three officers, Colonel Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon, Colonel Prem Kumar Sahgal and Major General Shah Nawaz Khan, in the Red Fort in 1945-46 undermined British authority over its armed forces in India to such an extent that they could no longer be relied on to defend the Raj. The realisation now dawned on the Crown that its time was up and its brightest jewel was about to be lost for good. Circumstances in India were electric with Netaji's popularity in absentia sparking off nationwide revolts in every civil and military department and it was this that forced the colonists to quit the land while a face-saving exit was yet possible.
But the success of Netaji and his INA did not come about all of a sudden with no historical linkages. It had deep historical causes embedded in it, revolutionary motivations of a suppressed people simmering for long, seeking channels of expression whenever the occasion arose but never quite achieving fulfilment in delivering the coup d'e'tat. The idea of armed revolution had been brewing in the minds of the valorous sons and daughters of Mother India ever since the First War of Indian Independence, after initial successes, had been brutally suppressed by a barbarous British regime. The memory of the Revolt remained as a permanent scar on the Indian psyche even as India was totally disarmed by force. The British feared it, too, and would not allow its recurrence at any cost. The conflagration had been extinguished but the embers were glowing still in the hearts and minds of a new generation of young Indians who plotted the downfall of the British Raj.
Swami Vivekananda's arrival on the world scene in the last decade of the nineteenth century set the stage for the ensuing battle of the titans which would decide the course of world history, for India was at the heart-centre of British imperial exploits and aspirations. Vivekananda died in 1902 and the flames of his pyre ignited the revolution in Bengal following its Partition in 1905. Extremist movements were rife along with the Swadeshi and Boycott Movements and, eventually, the cumulative pressure of these, building up unceasingly on the Government, forced it to annul the Partition. This was a big victory for the extremists within the Congress and added fillip to their revolutionary activities, although, Aurobindo Ghosh's withdrawal from active politics to retirement as recluse in Pondicherry came as a severe blow to revolutionary aspirations in Bengal. The capital city of British India was also shifted to New Delhi but this distancing from the Bengal revolutionaries did not protect the Raj from further armed assaults.
Lord Hardinge was bombed by Rash Behari Bose and Basanta Biswas on 23 Dec, 1912. The shifting of capital city from Calcutta to New Delhi did not spare the Viceroy the ire of the revolutionaries. He escaped with injuries but the message of revolution had been sent across the seas to shake up the powers that kept India in bondage. It also quickened revolutionary efforts within the Jugantar led by Bagha Jatin and the Ghadar Party based overseas that now plotted mutiny within the rank and file of the British Indian armed forces.
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