Kakori train action 1925

History glossary

Also called: Kakori conspiracy · Topic: The National Movement: Gandhian Era · NCERT: Beyond NCERT

Meaning

The Kakori train action (also called the Kakori conspiracy) was the robbery of government treasury money from a train at Kakori, near Lucknow, on 9 August 1925. It was carried out by young revolutionaries of the Hindustan Republican Association (HRA). It matters because it was the first big revolutionary action after the Non-Cooperation Movement ended. The trial and hangings that followed made martyrs of Ram Prasad Bismil, Ashfaqulla Khan, Rajendra Lahiri and Roshan Singh. The survivors then rebuilt the group as the HSRA in 1928, the organisation of Bhagat Singh.

Explanation

Background: why young Indians turned to revolution

  • The Non-Cooperation Movement (1920-22) was called off suddenly.
  • Gandhi withdrew it in February 1922 after the violence at Chauri Chaura.

  • Many young activists felt let down. They had given up studies and jobs for a swaraj that did not come.

  • Some of them lost faith in the non-violent method.

  • They believed only an armed revolution could end British rule.

  • Not every young Indian accepted non-violence. Many joined revolutionary groups.

  • The Hindustan Republican Association (HRA) was formed in 1924, with its centre in the United Provinces (today's Uttar Pradesh).

  • Its leaders included Sachindra Nath Sanyal and Ram Prasad Bismil.
  • Its aim was a federal republic of India (a country without a king, ruled by elected people), to be won by armed struggle.

The action: what happened on 9 August 1925

  • The HRA needed money to buy weapons and run the organisation.
  • It decided to take government money, not money from ordinary Indians. The idea was to hit the colonial state directly.
  • On 9 August 1925, members stopped a train at Kakori, a village near Lucknow. The train ran from Saharanpur to Lucknow.
  • They took the government treasury bag from the guard's van and escaped.
  • Leading participants:
  • Ram Prasad Bismil, the leader of the action
  • Ashfaqulla Khan
  • Rajendra Lahiri

  • Chandrashekhar Azad, who was never caught

  • One passenger was killed by a stray shot. The government used this death to treat the case as murder as well as robbery.

The crackdown and the Kakori Conspiracy Case

  • The police made mass arrests across north India in the months after the robbery.
  • The accused were tried at Lucknow in the Kakori Conspiracy Case. "Conspiracy" here means the charge of planning together to wage war against the government.
  • Four men were sentenced to death and hanged in December 1927:
  • Ram Prasad Bismil
  • Ashfaqulla Khan
  • Rajendra Lahiri

  • Thakur Roshan Singh

  • Others, such as Sachindra Nath Sanyal, got long prison terms, including transportation for life. This meant being sent to a penal settlement such as the Andaman Islands.

  • Chandrashekhar Azad escaped, and he kept the movement alive.

Results: from HRA to HSRA

  • The HRA was badly broken. Most of its leaders were dead or in jail.
  • The survivors regrouped. In 1928 Azad and younger members, including Bhagat Singh, founded the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) at Ferozeshah Kotla in Delhi. Other members included Jatin Das and Ajoy Ghosh.

  • Adding the word "Socialist" showed a new aim. They wanted not only freedom from Britain but also an end to the exploitation of workers and peasants.

  • The hangings became a symbol. Bismil, a Hindu, and Ashfaqulla, a Muslim, were close friends who died for the same cause. They became a lasting picture of Hindu-Muslim unity at a time when communal riots were spreading in the 1920s.

  • Bismil's poems, and the song "Sarfaroshi ki tamanna" that is linked with the Kakori revolutionaries, kept their memory alive among the young.
  • The name "Kakori train action" is now preferred in official use over the older British term "Kakori conspiracy". It marks the event as a freedom struggle and not a crime.

Time, place and evidence

  • Period: the Gandhian era. It falls in the quiet gap between the end of Non-Cooperation (1922) and the start of Civil Disobedience (1930).
  • Place: Kakori, near Lucknow, in the United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh).
  • Date of the action: 9 August 1925.
  • Executions: December 1927. The four men were hanged in different jails in the United Provinces.
  • Organisation: the Hindustan Republican Association (HRA), founded in 1924.
  • Key people:
  • Ram Prasad Bismil, the leader and a poet
  • Ashfaqulla Khan, from Shahjahanpur and Bismil's close comrade
  • Rajendra Lahiri
  • Thakur Roshan Singh
  • Sachindra Nath Sanyal, a founder of the HRA

  • Chandrashekhar Azad, who escaped

  • How we know:

  • the official court records of the Kakori Conspiracy Case
  • the revolutionaries' own writings, especially Bismil's autobiography, which he wrote in jail before his execution, and his poems
  • later memoirs of surviving members

Don't confuse with

  • HSRA (1928): the Kakori men belonged to the older HRA (1924). The HSRA was founded in 1928 at Ferozeshah Kotla, Delhi, by survivors such as Azad and new members such as Bhagat Singh. The "S" for Socialist was added only then.
  • Lahore Conspiracy Case: this was the trial of Bhagat Singh and his comrades. Bhagat Singh was hanged at Lahore on 23 March 1931, aged 23 [1]. The Kakori men were hanged earlier, in December 1927, after a trial at Lucknow.
  • Central Legislative Assembly bomb (April 1929): this was Bhagat Singh and Batukeswar Dutta's protest against the Public Safety Bill and the Trade Disputes Bill, to "make the deaf hear" [2]. It was a symbolic protest with no robbery. The men surrendered on the spot [1][2]. Kakori was an action to raise money for weapons, and the men tried to escape.
  • Chauri Chaura (1922): a crowd of villagers burnt a police station during Non-Cooperation, and this made Gandhi end the movement. It was mass violence, not a planned revolutionary act. Kakori was a planned action by an organised secret group three years later.

Prelims Hooks

  • Kakori train action: 9 August 1925, near Lucknow, carried out by the Hindustan Republican Association.
  • Hanged for Kakori (December 1927): Ram Prasad Bismil, Ashfaqulla Khan, Rajendra Lahiri and Roshan Singh. Trap: Chandrashekhar Azad took part but was never caught.
  • Organisation pairs: HRA, 1924 goes with Kakori (1925). HSRA, 1928, Ferozeshah Kotla goes with Bhagat Singh, Jatin Das and Ajoy Ghosh.
  • Chronological order: Chauri Chaura (1922), then HRA (1924), then Kakori (1925), then HSRA (1928), then the Assembly bomb (April 1929) [2], then Bhagat Singh hanged (23 March 1931) [1].
  • What was robbed: government treasury money, not private passengers' money. This was a deliberate choice to target the colonial state.

Mains Points

  • Why revolution came back in the 1920s.
  • Non-Cooperation was called off after Chauri Chaura, and this left many young nationalists frustrated.
  • Kakori shows how a section of the youth turned from mass non-violence to armed action by small groups.

  • This is useful for showing that the national movement was never only Gandhian. Revolutionaries were a parallel stream that pushed Congress from the left.

  • From individual heroism to socialist ideas.

  • The state crushed the HRA after Kakori.
  • Its rebirth as the HSRA (1928) shows a shift in goals: from simply ending British rule to building a socialist society.

  • Bhagat Singh later disclaimed "the cult of the bomb and pistol", which shows the movement growing beyond terror alone.

  • A symbol of unity and sacrifice.

  • Bismil and Ashfaqulla died together at a time when Hindu-Muslim relations were getting worse.
  • Their story gives a strong example for GS-I answers on communal harmony in the freedom struggle.
  • The change of name from "conspiracy" to "action" shows how the event is now remembered as patriotic resistance, not a crime.

Related concepts

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Sources

  1. 1Bhagat Singh | Biography, Death, Lahore Conspiracy Case, Martyrs' Day, & Factsbritannica.com · tier 3
  2. 2To Make the Deaf Hear (Pamphlet Thrown by Bhagat Singh in the Central Assembly Hall); Assembly Bomb Case No. 9 of 1929, Crown vs. Bhagat Singh and Bhatukeshwar Duttaindianculture.gov.in · tier 1