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A tribute to the architects of freedom
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Always yours, the Class of 1947
Bhagat Singh, 1907–1931
What he actually did
Bombed an empty bench in the Assembly — and refused to run
On 8 April 1929 he and Batukeshwar Dutt threw non-lethal bombs and leaflets into the Central Legislative Assembly, shouting Inquilab Zindabad, and stayed to be arrested so the trial itself would become a platform. In jail he led a 116-day hunger strike demanding that political prisoners be treated as such. He was hanged at Lahore on 23 March 1931, aged twenty-three.
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Subhas Chandra Bose, 1897–1945
Cuttack, Odisha / Bengal
We have lived in freedom and we shall die in freedom; we shall never be slaves.
c. 1802–1835
The British wanted a road through the Khasi Hills to link Guwahati with Sylhet. When their promises over the duars were broken, the Syiem of Nongkhlaw summoned his durbar and ordered them to evacuate. They refused, so on 4 April 1829 his men stormed the garrison. With only swords, shields and bows against firearms, the Khasis fought a guerrilla war for four years. Wounded and hiding in a cave, he was betrayed for gold coins, captured in January 1833, and died a prisoner in Dhaka on 17 July 1835 — still a state holiday in Meghalaya.
The sepoy who fired the shot that became a war.
Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi, 1828–1858
Jhansi, Bundelkhand
c. 1820–1879
A courtesan of the Awadh court who became queen after the British deposed Nawab Wajid Ali Shah in 1856, she rallied talukdars and sepoys, held Lucknow through the siege of the Residency, and issued a public counter-proclamation answering Queen Victoria's 1858 amnesty offer point by point before crossing into Nepal.
Babu Veer Kunwar Singh, 1777–1858
Jagdishpur, Bihar
Swaraj is my birthright, and I shall have it!
1865–1928
He was leading a boycott of the Simon Commission because it had not a single Indian member; Superintendent James Scott's men clubbed him on the chest. His death drove Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru to shoot police officer J. P. Saunders in Lahore that December.
Ran Indian ships against the empire's monopoly — and paid for it in the oil press of a colonial jail.
Sarojini Naidu, 1879–1949
Hyderabad
1875–1900
He preached against forced labour and the loss of khuntkatti tribal land to outside landlords, gathered thousands of followers who called him Dharti Aba, and fought the police at Dombari hill in January 1900. Arrested on 3 February, he died in Ranchi jail four months later; the Chotanagpur Tenancy Act of 1908 finally barred the sale of Adivasi land.
Pingali Venkayya, 1876–1963
Machilipatnam, Andhra Pradesh
Eighteen years old, and the first of his generation to hang for the idea of freedom.
1897–1927
On 9 August 1925 ten men led by him stopped the 8-Down train at Kakori and looted the government treasury chest to buy arms for the revolution. The trial put forty men in the dock; four, including him, were hanged, and he wrote his autobiography in the death cell at Gorakhpur.
Ashfaqulla Khan, 1900–1927
Shahjahanpur, United Provinces
Manyam Veerudu — the hero of the jungle, who fought the forest laws with the forest itself.
1906–1931
An informer told the police he was meeting fellow revolutionary Sukhdev Raj in the park. He fought a twenty-minute gunfight with a Colt pistol, covered his companion's escape, and kept his last round for himself — he had vowed never to be captured alive.
Inquilab Zindabad! — Long live the revolution.
Tirupur Kumaran, 1904–1932
Tirupur, Tamil Nadu
1869–1948
On 6 April 1930, after walking 240 miles to Dandi with seventy-eight marchers, he bent down and picked up a lump of natural salt from the sea mud — breaking a law that made it a crime for Indians to make their own salt. Over 60,000 people were jailed in the months that followed.
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, 1875–1950
Nadiad, Gujarat
Vande Mataram.
1909–1996
She was thirty-three, and the only Congress figure of any standing still free on 9 August 1942. The British put a reward of five thousand rupees on her head and seized her property; she stayed underground for almost four years, editing the magazine Inqilab, and refused to surrender until the warrant against her was withdrawn in 1946.
Preserving the flame · Est. 1947
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