Ram Prasad Bismil

Ram Prasad Bismil

News: Recently, birth anniversary of Ram Prasad Bismil was celebrated.

Who was Ram Prasad Bismil?
 Born on 11th June, 1897, Ram Prasad Bismil was an Indian poet, writer, revolutionary and freedom fighter who participated in the Mainpuri Conspiracy of 1918 and the Kakori Conspiracy of 1925 against the British Raj.
 He was one of the founding members of the Hindustan Republican Association, which aimed to overthrow the colonial rule by armed rebellion.
 He joined the Arya Samaj and became a prolific writer and poet, penning patriotic verses in Hindi and Urdu under pen names like ‘Agyat’, ‘Ram’, and the one that is most known – ‘Bismil’ (meaning ‘wounded’, ‘restless’)
 He started a revolutionary organisation called Matrivedi (The Altar of the Motherland).

What are some of his works?
 At the age of only 18, he penned the poem Mera Janm (My Birth), venting out his anger over the death sentence handed out to Arya Samaj missionary Bhai Parmanand.
 Mainpuri ki Pratigya, Mera rang de Basanti Chola.
 Translated works such as Bolshevikon ki Kartoot (from Bengali)
 Autobiography – Kakori ke Shaheed
 Man ki Lahar – Collection of poems

What was the manifesto of HRA?
 Their manifesto, largely penned down by Bismil, was officially released on January 1, 1925 and titled Krantikari (Revolutionary)
 It proclaimed, “The immediate object of the revolutionary party in the domain of politics is to establish a federal Republic of United States of India by an organized and armed revolution.”
 Their envisioned republic would be based on universal suffrage and socialist principles, importantly, the “abolition of all systems which make the exploitation of man by man possible.”

Death:
 After an eighteen month long trial (Kakori Train Action), Bismil, Ashfaqullah and Rajendranath Lahiri were sentenced to death. The sentence was carried out on December 19, 1927. Ram Prasad Bismil was just 30 years old when he died.
Source – The Indian Express