Fakir Majnu Shah

Majnu Shah Madaria sufi saint from Mewat and leader of the Fakir-sannyasi Revolt in Bengal. Nothing is known about the early life of Majnu Shah. His real name is unknown. He is known only by his popular name Majnu Shah, sometimes called Majnu Shah Burhana and often Majnu Fakir. Majnu Shah succeeded Shah Sultan Hasan Suriya Burhana to the leadership of the Madaria sufi order in Bengal. He organised the sufi saints and the yogi sannyasis under a common platform, reported to have moved frequently between the western part of Bihar and the eastern extremity of Bengal mobilising the scattered fakirs and sannyasis and floating the spontaneous support of the professional classes and the common people of Bengal in his fight against the east india company. Majnu Shah used to live at Baliakandi in Hemtabad thana of Dinajpur district. He had also a temporary residence at Madarganj in Bogra.
Majnu Shah while raiding the areas adjacent to Mymensingh in 1786 sustained reverses in a battle against the company army under Lieutenant Brenan in Kaleswar area. He lost large number of his followers, and some of his wounded followers were carried to Mewat. After 1786 Majnu Shah was not found to lead any expedition. From a report of Lieutenant Brenan it reveals that Majnu Shah was defeated and wounded in a battle on 8 December 1786. It is likely that with his wound he repaired to the dargah of Shah Madar at Maqanpur in Cawnpur district where he is reported to have died on 26 January 1788. [Muazzam Hussain Khan]

Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majnu_Shah

Shivram Rajguru

Shivram Hari Rajguru (1908 - 23rd March 1931) was born in an average middle-class Hindu Brahmin family at Khed in Pune District in 1908. He came to Varanasi at a very early age where he learnt Sanskrit and read the Hindu religious scriptures. He had a great admiration for Shivaji and his guerrilla tactics.
At Varanasi, he came in contact with revolutionaries. He joined the movement and became an active member of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army (HSRA). Rajguru had a fearless spirit and indomitable courage. The only object of his adoration and worship was his motherland, for whose liberation, he considered no sacrifice too great. He was a close associate of Chandrashekhar Azad and Bhagat Singh and his field of activity was UP and Punjab, with Kanpur, Agra and Lahore as his headquarters.
Rajguru was a good shot and was regarded as the gunman of the party. He took part in various activities of the revolutionary movement, the most important being Saunder's murder. Chandrashekhar Azad, Shivram Rajguru, Bhagat Singh and Jai Gopal were deputed for the job. On 17th December 1928, while Saunders came out of his office and started his motor-cycle, he was shot dead in front of the police headquarters at Lahore by Rajguru.
At the time of his martyrdom, Rajguru was hardly 23 years of age.
We pay obeisance to this invaluable son of Bharat.

Haji Shariatullah

The first half of the 19th century witnessed a movement known as Faraizi Movement in East Bengal. The founder of this movement was Haji Shariatullah. At this time the condition of the Bengali Muslims in the Sub-continent was very miserable. The British policy of distrust and oppression towards the Muslims rendered them economically and educationally crippled; and the oppression of the Zamindars made their lives unbearable.

Haji Shariatullah went to Mecca on the Pilgrimage. He returned to his country after 20 years and started his reform movement known as the Faraizi movement. His movement basically targeted the most depressed class of the Muslims. He asked them to give up un-Islamic customs and practices and to act upon the commandments of the religion called Faraiz or duties. Hence his followers came to be known as Faraizi. He forbade Tazia on the occasion of Muharram and singing and dancing at the time of wedding ceremonies. His movement was also directed against the oppression of the Zamindars. He declared the country Dar-ul-Harab, as Eid and Friday prayers could not be offered there.


The movement infused new life into the lives of the Muslims of Bengal. It wrought great agitation among them, especially the peasants who were imbued with his doctrines. Thus, he sowed the seeds of independence in Bengal. He died in 1840. His son Muhammad Mohsin, known as Dadhu Mian, succeeded Haji Shariatullah. Dadhu Mian popularized and strengthened the movement by organizing it in a systematic way. He acquired great influence amongst the Muslim peasants and craftsmen of Bakerganj, Dhaka, Faridpur and Pabna districts. He appointed Khalifahs who kept him informed about everything in their jurisdiction. Dadhu Mian vehemently opposed the taxes imposed by the landlords on Muslim peasants for the decoration of the image of Durgah.


He asked his followers to settle in lands managed by the government. During the revolt of 1857, he was put under arrest for organizing the peasants of Faridpur districts against the British government. He died in 1860.


Mir Nasir Ali, known as Titu Mir is another important figure who was moved by the sufferings of the Muslim of Bengal. After returning from Pilgrimage, Titu Mir devoted himself to the cause of his country. He made Narkelbaria, a village near Calcutta, the center of his activities. Many oppressed Muslim peasants gathered round Titu Mir in their resistance against the Hindu landlord, Krishna Deva Raj. Titu Mir was able to defeat Krishna Deva and set up government. The British aiding the Hindu landlords sent an army of 100 English Soldiers and 300 sepoys to Narkelbaria. In 1831, Titu Mir died fighting the British forces.


The death of Titu Mir did not dishearten his followers. His example rather served as a source of inspiration for them in the years to come.

Dudu Miyan

Dudu Miyan (1819-1862) succeeded to the leadership of the faraizi movement at the death of his father, Haji shariatullah, in 1840. Born in 1819 in a village of Madaripur of greater Faridpur district, Dudu Mia's real name was Muhsinuddin Ahmad, 'Dudu Miyan' being his 'fond name'







He spent about five years at Makka for schooling and at the age of 19 was called back on account of his father's illness. It was a very critical moment of serious confrontation of the Faraizis with the landlords, European indigo planters, conservative Ulama and the Sabiqi or the non-Faraizi Muslim society, who began to attack the Faraizis individually as well as in combination, in which the government sided with them. Though less learned than his father, he was youthful, energetic and astutely diplomatic. For all practical purposes he inaugurated an age of his own in the hapless rural society of Faridpur.






To confront the opponents of the Faraizis effectively, he revived the traditional self-governing organisation of panchayet system for minimising discord in the countryside, to check and control local disputes by good-will compromises and arbitration. For systematic and successful operation of the panchayet, he took several measures. He organised a corps of Lathiyals (affray fighters), with whose help he broke the power of the mercenary and hired clubmen of the zamindars and Indigo Planters so completely that for the two decades from 1838 to 1857 peace and tranquility prevailed all over the Faraizi areas. Besides, he organised the Faraizi hamlets, enclaves and settlements (of say 50 to 500 persons) into core-associations by appointing a gram khalifah (village representative) from amongst them as a coordinator between him and the villagers. A good number of villages, again, were grouped into a gird (circle) over which was appointed a superintendent khalifah. The village khalifahs formed a council headed by the superintendent khalifah and decided various disputes through arbitration courts. He set up his headquarters at Bahadurpur and kept around him a number of uparistha (superior) khalifahs to advise him on important issues raised by circumstances or referred to by the superintended khalifahs for final settlement.






With these tentacles, he maintained his symbolic presence everywhere in the Faraizi societies and developed an effective system of private administration in the rural areas, which had still remained out of the reach of the company administration. So long the Indigo Planters were the autocratic lords and the zamindars, with their long ropes of permanent settlement, were the hands of the government.






Following the socio-economic policy of his father, Dudu Miyan declared equality and brotherhood of mankind and propounded the doctrine of the proprietorship of land as due to the labour. He declared that 'the land belongs to the tiller'. This attracted the attention of all denominations of down trodden peasantry and irrespective of religion and caste all peasantry flocked around him as the supporters of the Faraizi movement. With the help of his core-khilafat organisation, he minimised the quarrels of the people in the rural society, arbitrated their disputes, summoned and tried the culprits in khilafat courts and enforced the judgments effectively. He even conventionally enforced a verbal injunction against referring any case of the dispute to the government courts without the permission of the Faraizi Khalifahs on duress of ensuring non-availability of witness for or against the case.






Dudu Miyan was, however, prudent enough to recognise the political power of the east india company. He frequently associated himself with the English officers, hunted wild buffaloes with them and kept them in good humour. He recognised the legal revenues of land as due to the zamindars as displayed in the rent-roll list of the khas mahal. Following the wisdom of his father, he kept his activities strictly within the legal limits of the lawful subjects of the government, lest the Faraizis should have to meet the fate of the followers of titu mir, whom he met in 1830, one year before the latter was destroyed by a military expedition of the company government.






After the break up of the sepoy revolt in 1857, the government arrested him and kept him under detention at the Alipore Jail near Calcutta till he was set free in 1861. He died at Dhaka in 1862. [Muin-ud-Din Ahmad Khan]






Bibliography Muin-ud-Din Ahmad Khan, History of the Fara'idi Movement, Dhaka, 1984.
 
 

Reference:http://www.banglapedia.org/httpdocs/HT/D_0298.HTM

Sukhdev Thapar

Like many other freedom fighters,Sukhdev Thapar was also a famous Indian revolutionary who sacrificed his life for the cause of India’s independence. He was born on May 15, 1907 in Naughara in Ludhiana. Since childhood, he had witnessed the brutal behavior of British authorities on Indians and grew up with a firm decision and an earnest desire to set India free from British dominion.


Sukhdev was a member of Hindustan Socialist Republican Association and took active part in various revolutionary activities. He along with other revolutionaries founded the Naujawan Bharat Sabha with the aim to aware and gear up Indian youth for the freedom struggle showing them an imaginary picture of India’s future.


As a active participant of Lahore Conspiracy Case in 1928 and Prison Hunger Strike in 1929, Sukhdev shook the established foundation of British Government. On 1929, he along with his accomplice Bhagat Singh and Shivram Rajguru was arrested for assassinating Deputy Superitendent Saunder in 1928, thus avenging the death of Lalaji. The three brave revolutionaries were sentenced to death, as per the verdict, on March 23, 1931 and their bodies were secretly cremated on the banks of River Sutlej.

Ramprasad Bismil

Ramprasad Bismil was a brave revolutionary who gave up his life smilingly for the sake of the Motherland. He was persecuted by an enraged foreign government, hunted by the police and betrayed by follow workers. And yet he lit the fire of revolution to burn down the slavery. He was the brave leader of the Kakori Rail Dacoity episode. His poetry is also a lamp lighted at the altar of the Mother land. Kakori is a village near Lucknow. It became famous, because the attack on the train took place nearby.



It was the evening of the 9th of August 1925; the number eight down train was passing near Kakori. Ramaprasad and his nine revolutionary followers pulled the chain and stopped it. They looted the money belonging to the government, deposited in the Guard's carriage. Excepting that one passenger was killed by an accidental shot, there was no bloodshed. This extremely well planned dacoity jolted the government. After a month of detailed preliminary inquiries and elaborate preparations the government cast its net wide for the revolutionaries. Arrest warrants were issued not only against the ten participants but also against other leaders of the Hindusthan Republican Association. With the lone exception of Chandrashekhar Azad, all participants were caught.


The case went on for over a year and a half, Ramaprasad, Ashfaqullah Roshan Singh and Rajendra Lahiri all four were sentenced to death, A strong campaign was organized throughout India to save the lives of these revolutionary heroes. All the leaders of public life appealed to the British Government to show mercy to the condemned men. But the Government was unyielding. It was the 18th of December 1927. A middle-aged lady was waiting at the main gates of the Gorakhpur Central Jail. Her face was radiant but anxiety was writ large on it. She was eagerly waiting to be called into the prison. By that time her husband also arrived there. He was surprised that his wife was there before him. He also sat down to wait for the call.


Another young man came there. He was not related to them. He knew that the couple would be permitted to enter the prison.But how could he manage to enter? This was his problem.


The officials of the prison called in the husband and the wife. The young man followed them. The guard stopped him and rudely asked, "Who are you?"


"Permit him also, brother. He is my sister's son", the lady said in an entreating voice.


The guard relented.


All the three entered the prison to visit a freedom fighter that was to face his death on the morrow. The freedom fighter was brought there in chains. They were like ornaments on him. This was the last time that he could see his mother, the last time he could address her as 'Mother'. At this thought grief welled up in him. He stood speechless and tears rolled down his cheeks.


In a firm voice the mother said, 'What is this, my son? I had thought of my son as a great hero. I was thinking that the British Government would shiver at the very mention of his name. I never thought that my son would be afraid of death. If you can die only in this way, weeping, why did you take up such activities?"


The officials were astounded at the firmness of the mother. The freedom fighter replied, "Mother dear, these are not tears of fear - the fear of death. These are tears of joy - joy at beholding so brave as mother!"


The brave son of that brave mother was Ramaprasad Bismil. He was the leader of the famous Kakori Rail Dacoity case. The last meeting ended.Next morning Ramaprasad got up earlier than usual, bathed and said his morning prayers. He wrote his last letter to his mother. Then he sat down with a calm mind awaiting his death.


The officials came and removed his chains. They took him from the prison cell-towards his death.He was completely untroubled and walked like a hero. The officials were amazed. As he moved to the gallows he joyfully chanted Vande Matharam' and 'Bharath Matha ki Jai'. At the top of his voice he shouted down with the British Empire." Then he calmly recited prayers like 'Vishwani deva savithaha dunithani.... And embraced death.


As he was being executed, there was a strong guard around the prison. When he was dead the officials brought out the dead body. Not only his parents but also hundreds of his countrymen were waiting in tears.The people of Gorakhpur deco rated the body of the brave son of Bharath as befitted a hero and carried it in a procession. Flowers were showered on the body, and the last rites were performed.


Ramaprasad Bismil joined the select band of martyrs who dreamt of a free India and made the supreme sacrifice, so that the dream might come true.


'Bismil' is the penname of Ramaprasad. As 'Bismil' he is well known as a great revolutionary poet in Hindi. At the end of his autobiography, he has reproduced some selected poems. Every line of his poems throbs with patriotic fervor. In one poem he prays: 'Even if I have to face death a thousand times for the sake of my Motherland, I shall not be sorry. Oh


Lord!Grant me a hundred births in Bharath. But grant me this, too, that each time I may give up my life in the service of the Mother land.'


In a poem written just before going to the gallows, he prays: 'Oh Lord! Thy will be done. You are unique. Neither my tears nor I will endure. Grant me this boon, that to my last breath and the last drop of my blood, I may think of you and be immersed in your work.'

Jatindra Nath Banerjee(Bagha Jatin)

Bagha Jatin, born Jatindranath Mukherjee was a Bengali Indian revolutionary activist against British rule. He was one of the leaders of the Yugantar party that was the main association of revolutionaries in Bengal, and was responsible for the planned German Plot during World War I. Jatin was born in Kayagram, a village in the Kushtia subdivision of Nadia district in what is now Bangladesh. His parents were Umeshchandra Mukherjee and Sharatshashi; he grew up in his ancestral home at Jhenaidah till his father's death when Jatin was five years old. His mother settled in her parents' home in Kayagram with him and his elder sister Benodebala. As he grew older, Jatin gained a reputation for physical bravery and great strength; the name by which he came to be known ("Bagha Jatin" - Tiger Jatin) derived from an incident in which he killed a tiger with nothing but a knife. After passing the Entrance examination in 1895, he joined the Calcutta Central College (now Maulana Azad College), for his First Arts. Soon he started visiting Swami Vivekananda, whose social thought, and especially his vision of a politically independent India, had a great influence on him. In 1900, Jatin married Indubala Banerjee of the Kumarkhali upazila in Kushtia; they had four children: Atindra (1903-1906), Ashalata (1907-1976), Tejendra (1909-1989) and Birendra (1913-1991). Jatin, together with Barindra Ghosh, set up a terrorist bomb factory near Deoghar, while Barin did the same at Maniktala in Calcutta; the aim, aside from the general production of terror, was the elimination of certain British officers. In 1908 Jatin was not one of over thirty revolutionaries accused in the Alipore bomb case following the Muzaffarpur bombing. During the Alipore Bomb Case, Jatin took over the leadership of the Yugantar Party, and revitalised the links between the central organization in Calcutta and its several branches spread all over Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and several places in U.P. On 24 January 1910, as part of a Yugantar campaign against those who had been responsible for the arrests and trials in the Alipore bomb case, Samsul Alam, the Deputy Superintendent of Police, was shot and killed by Biren Dutta Gupta on the stairs of the Calcutta High Court building. Jatin was arrested in connection with this murder, but was released and immediately re-arrested along with forty-six others in connection with the Howrah conspiracy case. While held in Howrah jail, awaiting trial, Jatin made contact with many fellow prisoners, prominent revolutionaries belonging to various groups operating in different parts of Bengal, who were all accused in the case. He was also informed by his emissaries abroad that very soon Germany was to declare war against England. He counted heavily on this war to organise an armed uprising among the Indian soldiers in various regiments. The Howrah conspiracy case failed due to lack of proper evidence ,and Jatin was acquitted in 1911 and released. He lost his government job, and started a contract business constructing the Jessore-Jhenaidah railway line. He went on a pilgrimage, and at Hardwar visited Bholananda Giri who had given him spiritual instruction in 1906. Jatin went on to Brindavan where he met Swami Niralamba (who, before becoming a sanyasi, had been Jateendra Nath Bannerjee), a renowned revolutionary who followed Sri Aurobindo's teachings. Niralamba gave Jatin information about and links to the units set up by him in Uttar Pradesh and the Punjab, revolutionary activities in these regions being led by Lala Hardayal and Rash Behari Bose. On return from his pilgrimage, Jatin started reorganising Yugantar. During the flooding of Hughli and Midnapore, relief work brought together the leaders of various of these groups, and they chose Jatin and Rashbehari Bose as leaders in Bengal and northern India respectively. There were also attempts to organise expatriate Indian revolutionaries; a Yugantar Ashram was set up in San Francisco, California, and the Sikh community also became involved. When World War I broke out, European-based Indian revolutionaries met in Berlin in order to form the Indian Independence Party, and gained the support of the German government. In September 1914, the International Pro-India Committee was formed at Zurich by Champakaraman Pillai, who also became its president. Later it was merged into a bigger body, the Berlin Committee, led by Chatto, alias Virendranath Chattopadhyaya, which had as members almost all the prominent Indian revolutionaries abroad, including the leaders of the Ghadar Party. Many members of the Gadhar party arrived in India, and helped the revolutionaries in their attempts to create an uprising inside India during World War I, with the help of arms, ammunition, and funds supplied by the German government. Yugantar, under Jatin's leadership, had been planning and organising an armed revolt. Rash Behari Bose accepted the task of carrying out the plan in Uttar Pradesh and the Punjab. This plan came to be known as the the German Plot, the Indo-German Conspiracy, or the Zimmermann Plan. Yugantar started to collect funds by organising a series of dacoities (armed robberies) known as "Taxicab dacoities" and "Boat dacoities". As the police activities to prevent any uprising increased, eminent members of Yugantar suggested that Jatin should move to a safer place. Balasore on the Orissa coast was selected as a suitable place, as it was very near the spot where German arms were to be landed for the Indian rising. To facilitate transmission of information to Jatin, a business house under the name "Universal Emporium" was set up, as a branch of Harry & Sons in Calcutta, which had been created in order to keep contacts with revolutionaries abroad. Jatin therefore moved to a hideout outside Kaptipada village in the native state of Mayurbhanj, more than thirty miles away from Balasore. Jatin was alerted and advised to leave his hiding place, but his insistence on taking Niren and Jatish with him delayed his departure by a few hours, by which time a large force of police, headed by top European officers from Calcutta and Balasore, reinforced by the army unit from Chandbali in Mayurbhanj State, had reached the neighbourhood. Jatin and his companions walked through the forests and hills of Mayurbhanj, and after two days reached Balasore Railway Station. The police had announced a reward for the capture of the fleeing revolutionaries, so the local villagers were also in pursuit. With occasional skirmishes, the revolutionaries, running through jungles and marshy land in torrential rain, finally took up position on September 9, 1915 in an improvised trench in undergrowth on a hillock at Chashakhand in Balasore. Chittapriya and his companions asked Jatin to leave and go to safety while they guarded the rear. Jatin refused to leave them, however. The contingent of Government forces surrounded them. A gunfight ensued, lasting seventy-five minutes, between the five revolutionaries armed with Mauser pistols and a large number of police and army armed with modern rifles. It ended with an unrecorded number of casualties on the Government side; on the revolutionary side, Chittapriya Ray Chaudhuri died, Jatin and Jatish were seriously wounded, and Manoranjan Sengupta and Niren were captured after their ammunition ran out. Jatin died in Balasore hospital on 10 September 1915.

Chandrashekhar Azad

Achievements: Involved in Kakori Train Robbery (1926), the attempt to blow up the Viceroy's train (1926), and the shooting of Saunders at Lahore (1928) to avenge the killing of Lala Lajpatrai; formed Hindustan Socialist Republican Association with fellow compatriots Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, and Rajguru.

Chandrashekhar Azad was a great Indian freedom fighter. His fierce patriotism and courage inspired others of his generation to enter freedom struggle. Chandrasekhar Azad was the mentor Bhagat Singh, another great freedom fighter, and along with Bhagat Singh he is considered as one of the greatest revolutionaries that India has produced.

Chandra Shekhar Azad was born on July 23,1906 in village Bhavra in Jhabua district of Madhya Pradesh. His parents were Pandit Sitaram Tiwari and Jagarani Devi. He received his early schooling in Bhavra. For higher studies he went to the Sanskrit Pathashala at Varanasi. He was an ardent follower of Hanuman and once disguised himself as a priest in a hanuman temple to escape the dragnet of British police.

Chandrashekhar Azad was deeply troubled by the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre in Amritsar in 1919. In 1921, when Mahatma Gandhi launched Non-Cooperation movement, Chandrasekhar Azad actively participated in revolutionary activities. He received his first punishment at the age of fifteen. Chandra Shekhar was caught while indulging in revolutionary activities. When the magistrate asked him his name, he said "Azad" (meaning free). Chandrashekhar Azad was sentenced to fifteen lashes. With each stroke of the whip the young Chandrasekhar shouted "Bart Mata Kid Jai". From then on Chandrashekhar assumed the title of Azad and came to known as Chandrashekhar Azad. Chandrashekhar Azad vowed that he would never be arrested by the British police and would die as free man.

After the suspension of non-cooperation movement Chandrashekhar Azad was attracted towards more aggressive and revolutionary ideals. He committed himself to complete independence by any means. Chandrashekhar Azad and his compatriots would target British officials known for their oppressive actions against ordinary people and freedom fighters. Chandrashekhar Azad was involved in Kakori Train Robbery (1926), the attempt to blow up the Viceroy's train (1926), and the shooting of Saunders at Lahore (1928) to avenge the killing of Lala Lajpatrai.

Along with Bhagat Singh and other compatriots like Sukhdev and Rajguru, Chandrashekhar Azad formed the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HRSA). HRSA was committed to complete Indian independence and socialist principles for India's future progress.

Chandrashekhar Azad was a terror for British police. He was on their hit list and the British police badly wanted to capture him dead or alive. On February 27, 1931 Chandrashekhar Azad met two of his comrades at the Alfred Park Allah bad. He was betrayed by an informer who had informed the British police. The police surrounded the park and ordered Chandrashekhar Azad to surrender. Chandrashekhar Azad fought alone valiantly and killed three policemen. But finding himself surrounded and seeing no route for escape, Chandrashekhar Azad shot himself. Thus he kept his pledge of not being caught alive.

Born: July 23,1906
Martyrdom: February 27, 1931