Chandrashekhar Azad — the freedom fighter who renounced non-violence

Chandrasekhar Azad died young, at the age of 24, but not before creating a stir with other revolutionaries such as Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev.

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New Delhi: Forever synonymous with that image of a young man twirling his moustache, Chandrashekhar Azad’s legacy endures more in popular imagination and culture than any official or academic history. Of the recent such portrayals, Aamir Khan’s character in the iconic Rang De Basanti was loosely based on Azad.   

As a freedom fighter, Azad died young, at the age of 24, but not before creating a stir with other revolutionaries such as Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev. The four men were part of the radical Hindustan Socialist Republican Army (HSRA), which had grown disillusioned with the non-violence struggle. They took to violence and were implicated in a number of incidents that targeted British interests in colonial India, most famously the killing of a police officer as retaliation for the lathi-charge that killed Lala Lajpat Rai. 

In recent years, there has been a revival of their memories and acknowledgement of their roles in India’s freedom struggle. In a Mann Ki Baat last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed Azad’s contribution and described him as an inspiration to the youth of the country.

“The valour of Chandrashekhar Azad and his passion for freedom has inspired many youths,” Modi said. “Azad sacrificed his life but did not bow down before foreign rule.”   

A revolutionary spark from an early age 

The freedom fighter was born Chandrashekhar Tiwari on 23 July 1906 in Bhambri village, Alirajpur district, in what is now Madhya Pradesh. It is believed that his mother Jagrani Devi wanted him to become a Sanskrit scholar but the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919 greatly affected him and he chose to join the freedom struggle. 

Legend has it that when a 15-year-old Tiwari was arrested for participation in the non-cooperation movement, and produced before a judge, he mentioned his name as Azad and his father’s as Swatantrata (Independence). That’s how, perhaps, Chandrashekhar Tiwari came to be known as Chandrashekhar Azad. 

The book India’s Struggle for Independence authored by Bipan Chandra, Mridula Mukherjee, Aditya Mukherjee, K.N. Panikkar and Sucheta Mahajan, notes that Azad and other young revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Jatin Das had all enthusiastically participated in the non-cooperation movement. But when Mahatma Gandhi abruptly called off the movement in 1922, they all became disillusioned with the national leadership and the strategy of non-violence. This paved the way for their adoption of violent methods to achieve India’s independence.

Association with revolutionary politics 

After this, Azad joined the Hindustan Republican Association (HRA) led by revolutionaries Sachindranath Sanyal and Jogesh Chandra Chatterjee. As Kama Maclean notes in her book, A Revolutionary History of Interwar India, one of the HRA’s most daring acts was to attack “a train transporting a cache of government funds in Kakori (near Lucknow) on 9 August 1925, in which Rs 4,500 was stolen and a passenger on the train killed”. 

Four members of the HRA — Ashfaqallah Khan, Ramprasad Bismil, Roshan Singh and Rajendra Lahiri — were sentenced to death for the incident. Azad, who was also charged in the case, managed to evade the police. 

The HRA was later revamped under the leadership of Azad and Bhagat Singh and rechristened as the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army (HSRA). Azad was the All-India coordinator of the newly-formed group while Bhagat Singh was its general secretary. Maclean writes that the group was greatly influenced by the trade unionism and communism of its times.  

One of the first and most famous acts of the HSRA occurred in December 1928. In November of the same year, writes Maclean, the Congress had organised protests against the Simon Commission — “the all-white parliamentary delegation that had come to determine India’s suitability for legislative reforms”. 

During the protests, J.A. Scott, the senior superintendent of police in Lahore, ordered a lathi-charge in which Lala Lajpat Rai got severely injured and succumbed to his injuries a few days later. 

The HSRA decided to avenge his death. Even though the plan was to target Scott, the group ended up killing the 21-year-old assistant superintendent of police J.P. Saunders. As they were fleeing, Azad shot an Indian constable, Channan Singh, who had decided to chase them.  

Azad, records Maclean, was known as quicksilver within HSRA for his ability to move between bases undetected.

Assistance from Motilal Nehru

Azad had a close relationship with Motilal Nehru, the father of India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru. S.K. Mittal and Irfan Habib recall in their paper The Congress and the Revolutionaries in the 1920s, that Motilal regularly handed over money to Azad. 

Maclean cites Rajendrapal Singh, “a peripheral member of the HSRA who later served as a member of the Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee”, who told her in an oral interview that Motilal had once given Rs 500 to Azad. She further writes that many “revolutionary memoirs” claim that Azad also secretly took part in Motilal’s funeral procession. 

End of Azad & the HSRA 

On 27 February 1931, Azad was killed in a gunbattle with two police officers at Allahabad’s Alfred Park (the park has since been renamed Chandrashekhar Azad Park in his honour). 

After his death, many Congress leaders organised events as a tribute to the freedom fighter. Maclean notes that Purushottamdas Tandon, the president of the UP Congress Committee, “collected Azad’s ashes and organised a procession through Allahabad, culminating in a public meeting”. Similarly, she writes, in another meeting chaired by the president of the Delhi Congress Committee, a motion was passed congratulating Azad on his “brave martyrdom” and appreciating his “great patriotism, sincere bravery and selfless sacrifice”. 

The end of Azad, however, also led to the beginning of the end of the HSRA. Less than a month later, on 23 March 1931, Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were hanged by the British. The loss of all these leaders hit the HSRA hard from which it could never recover. 

Maclean describes HSRA’s state at that point as follows, “the loss of their [Azad and Bhagat Singh’s] organisational skills removed a vital element of focus and restraint that had informed HSRA actions. 

“These factors, combined with the multifaceted repression of absconding revolutionaries that slowly culminated in the arrests of much of the HSRA, substantially limited the scope for organised revolutionary activity in north India after 1932.”