Ram Prasad Bismil:
The Ministry of Culture organised a special ceremony at Shahjahanpur, Uttar Pradesh to mark the birth anniversary of freedom fighter Ram Prasad Bismil.
- Was born on 11th June 1897, in a village in Uttar Pradesh’s Shahjahanpur district to Murlidhar and Moolmati.
- Was among the most noteworthy Indian freedom fighters who resisted British colonial forces till his last breath.
- Joined the Arya Samaj founded by Dayananda Saraswati in 1875. This had a profound influence on him, he often employed poetry as his weapon of choice in the fight against the imperialist forces.
- The ideals of a revolution first took root in his mind when he read about the death sentence awarded to Bhai Parmanand, an Indian nationalist and Arya Samaj missionary.
- He was all of 18 then and vented his anguish through his poem ‘Mera Janm’.
- Believed that freedom cannot be achieved without violence, bloodshed, which meant his views were in stark contrast to Mahatma Gandhi’s ideals of ‘ahimsa’.
- Formed organisation Matrivedi and got in touch with Genda Lal Dixit, a school teacher.
- Both shared revolutionary ideas and wanted to organise the youth of the country to fight the British government.
- Bismil was one of the chief founders of the Hindustan Republican Association (HRA) along with Sachindra Nath Sanyal and Jadugopal Mukherjee.
- HRA was founded in 1924 and its constitution was drafted chiefly by Bismil.
- He Was involved in the Mainpuri Conspiracy of 1918 in which police found a few young people including Bismil selling books that were not prescribed by the government.
- Published a pamphlet titled ‘Deshwasiyo ke Naam’ and distributed it along with his poem ‘Mainpuri ki Pratigya’. To collect funds for the parties, they looted government coffers.
- He escaped arrest by jumping into the Yamuna River.
- In 1925, Bismil and his companions Chandrasekhar Azad and Ashfaqulla Khan decided to loot a train in Kakori near Lucknow.
- They were successful in their attempt but were arrested alongside a dozen other HRA members within a month of the attack and tried under the Kakori Conspiracy Case.
- The legal process lasted 18 months. Bismil, Lahiri, Khan and Thakur Roshan Singh were awarded death sentences.
