Ram Prasad Bismil

Ram Prasad Bismil planned the Kakori train robbery of 1925. It was one of the boldest revolutionary actions against British rule.

He was also a poet and a writer. This lesson covers his early life, his groups, Kakori, his hanging and the famous line wrongly credited to him.

1How did his early life shape him?

He grew up in a modest family and found a cause in the Arya Samaj.

• Ram Prasad Bismil was born on 11 June 1897 in Shahjahanpur.
• His father, Muralidhar, worked for the Shahjahanpur Municipality.
• He learned Hindi from his father at home.
• A Moulvi taught him Urdu.
• He later joined an English-medium school, against his father’s wishes.
• As a young man he joined the Arya Samaj.
• He was inspired by Swami Dayananda Saraswati’s Satyarth Prakash.
• The Arya Samaj gave him a strong sense of duty and self-discipline.
• He started writing poems early. He used the pen names Ram, Agyat and Bismil.

2How did he build the HRA?

He moved from small groups to a bigger revolutionary party.

• Bismil formed a revolutionary group called Matrivedi.
• He took part in the 1918 Mainpuri Conspiracy.
• In January 1918, he published a pamphlet, Deshvasiyon Ke Nam Sandesh, urging countrymen to resist British rule.
• With it he published his poem Mainpuri Ki Pratigya, or “The Vow of Mainpuri”.
• Police caught his group looting funds near Delhi.
• Bismil jumped into the Yamuna and swam away underwater.
• Police believed he had drowned.
• A Mainpuri court declared him an absconder on 1 November 1919.
• In October 1924, he co-founded the Hindustan Republican Association at Kanpur.
• The HRA aimed at armed revolution to set up a federal republic.
• He founded it with Sachindra Nath Sanyal and Jogesh Chandra Chatterjee.
• Chandrashekhar Azad joined its ranks.

3What happened at Kakori?

The HRA robbed a train to fund its work.

• The HRA needed money for weapons and for its work.
• On 9 August 1925, ten revolutionaries stopped a train near Kakori, close to Lucknow.
• They pulled the alarm chain to stop the train.
• The train was carrying government treasury bags.
• They looted bags worth about ₹4,600.
• During the robbery, a pistol went off by accident.
• It killed a passenger. It did not kill a guard.
• The government treated the case as a serious conspiracy.
• Police arrested many HRA members in the months that followed.
• Bismil was among those arrested.
• Azad escaped capture.
• Bismil planned and led the Kakori action.

4How did the case end?

Four men were hanged in December 1927.

• The case was tried in Lucknow.
• Four men were sentenced to death in the Kakori case.
• Ashfaqulla Khan was a close friend of Bismil. They are remembered together as a symbol of unity.
• They were Bismil, Ashfaqulla Khan, Roshan Singh and Rajendra Lahiri.
• Lahiri was hanged two days early, on 17 December 1927, at Gonda Jail.
• Bismil was hanged on 19 December 1927 at Gorakhpur Jail. He was 30.
• Ashfaqulla Khan was hanged the same day at Faizabad.
• Roshan Singh was hanged the same day at Naini Jail.
• Bismil’s body was cremated on the banks of the Rapti river, at a site now called Rajghat.
• Roshan Singh, at 35, was the oldest of the four. Lahiri, at 26, was the youngest.
• Exams mix up Kakori with the Chittagong Armoury Raid.
• Kakori was in 1925 in north India. The Chittagong raid was in 1930 in Bengal, led by Surya Sen.

5What did he write?

Bismil was a poet, a translator and an autobiographer.

• In prison he wrote his autobiography, Nij Jeevan Ki Ek Chhata.
• The title means “A Glimpse of My Own Life”.
• He wrote it while waiting for execution.
• The book condemned female infanticide, forced veiling and caste-based violence against lower castes.
• He published a poetry collection, Man Ki Lahar.
• It mixes Vedantic imagery with revolutionary themes.
• He translated two Bengali works into Hindi.
• They were Bolshevikon Ki Kartoot and Yogik Sadhan.
• He is famous for the line “Sarfaroshi ki tamanna”, which he recited on his way to the gallows.
• But he did not write it. The poet Bismil Azimabadi of Patna wrote it in 1921.
• Bismil made the line famous by reciting it. That is a classic exam trap.