Write short note on The Chittagong Armoury Raid?
The Chittagong Armoury Raid.
Suryasen, the secretary of Chittagong District Congress Committee formed a large band of revolutionaries such as Anent Singh, Ganesh Ghosh, Ambika Chakravarty and Loknath Paul in order to showed the British rule that they could challenged Britishers through arms. But for the arms struggle they needed arms. In order to equip themselves with the arms the revolutionaries planned to organize raid on the two main armouries of Chittagong.
At the night of 18 April 1930, the revolutionary forces captured the police armoury and Auxiliary Force armoury and hoisted the national flag outside the Police Armoury. The raid was undertaken in the name of Indian Republican Army.
On 22, April, the revolutionary band on the Jalalabad hills surrounded by enemy forces which killed 12 revolutionary. Consequently, Surya Sen called off the frontal warfare and launched guerilla warfare from neighboring villages. However on 12 January 1934 Surya Sen was hanged.
But this raid had a tremendous impact on the people of Bengal and in Midnapore alone, three British magistrates were assassinated. In responses government made every possible and brutal effort to suppress the movement, it burnt several villages, arrested all the nationalist indiscriminately.
This new phase of revolutionary terrorism witnessed the participation of women on a large scale. e.g., Kalpana Datta arrested with Surya Sen and got life imprisonment, In December 1931, two school girls Comilla, Santi Ghosh and Suniti Chowdhary shot dead the District magistrate and in Feb.1932 Bina Das shot at the governor.
And in this new phase the revolutionary now understood the importance of communal unity in order to got rid of the British. They shed their religiosity and many of the Muslims such as, Satter, Mir Ahmed, Fakir Ahmed Mian, Tunu Mian, Abdur Razzaque Khan, Razia Khatun etc. included in the revolutionaries bands. However the revolutions of Bengal unable to brought any socio-economic programme.
