Chandra Shekhar Azad

Chandra Shekhar Azad

Young Chandra Shekhar was fascinated by and drawn to the great national upsurge of the non-violent, non-cooperation movement of 1920-21 under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. When arrested and produced before the magistrate, he gave his name as 'Azad', his father's name as 'Swatantra' and his residence as 'prison'. The provoked magistrate sentenced him to fifteen lashes of flogging. The title of Azad stuck thereafter.After withdrawal of the non-cooperation movement, Azad was attracted towards revolutionary activities. He joined the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army (HSRA) and was involved in the Kakori Conspiracy (1926), the attempt to blow up the Viceroy's train (1926), the Assembly bomb incident, the Delhi Conspiracy, the shooting of Saunders at Lahore (1928) and the Second Lahore conspiracy.

Chandra Shekhar was born on 23 July 1906 in village Bhavra in Jhabua district of Madhya Pradesh to Pandit Sita Ram Tiwari and Jagrani Devi. He received his early schooling in Bhavra. For higher studies he went to the Sanskrit Pathashala at Varanasi.

Azad was on the wanted list of the police. On 27February 1931, in the Alfred Park, Allahabad, when an associate betrayed him, well-armed police circled Azad. For quite sometime he held them at bay, single-handedly with a small pistol and few cartridges. Left with only one bullet, he fired it at his own temple and lived up to his resolve that he would never be arrested and dragged to gallows to be hanged.Betrayed by an informer on 27 February 1931 Azad was encircled by British troops in the Alfred park, Allahabad. He kept on fighting till the last bullet. Finding no other alternative, except surrender, Azad shot himself in the temple.

Till his last breath the soldiers were terrified of his sharp shooting skills. And this was to be the final stage of a this movement, the final scene in his life as well as the end of the revolutionaries of the HSRA. Seeing no way out Azad loaded his last bullet into his Mauser pistol, it would be the last bullet he ever fired; he would be the last man he ever killed in the struggle for Indian Independence. Chandrashekhar Azad put the gun to his temple and shot himself. He had vowed to remain Azad, meaning free in Urdu, all his life. He said that as long as he had his bumtulbukara or his pistol no one would ever catch him alive. He said that he would never be taken to the gallows tied up the way monkeys are, and made to dance by the British. His favourite couplet and only known composition is as follows: "Dushman ki goliyon ka hum samna karenge Azad hee rahein hain, azad hee raheinge!" Years of man hunt, terror, raids, assassinations and demonstrations had at last ended for the British Raj. With him all the revolutionaries were finished. The next time the British would face so grave a problem and so fierce an enemy would be 10 years later in 1941. There would be a much more developed and well organised army then lead by none other than the Netaji - Subhash Chandra Bose, an ardent supporter and sympathizer of Chandrashekhar Azad and Bhagat Singh.