Simon, Lajpat Rai and the HSRA

The British knew that if crores of Indians rose up there was little they could do. So they kept offering reforms that looked big without coming close to home rule.

The Simon Commission of 1927 came to study constitutional reform, with not a single Indian member. Rallies followed, with the slogan 'Simon Go Back!' and black flags.

In Lahore in October 1928, police brutally lathi-charged a nonviolent march led by Lala Lajpat Rai. Badly injured, he still spoke at a meeting that evening: "The Government which attacks its own innocent subjects has no claim to be called a civilised government … the blows struck at me will be the last nails in the coffin of the British rule in India."

He died two weeks later, and the country's anger grew.

Meanwhile many freedom fighters, disagreeing with Gandhi's nonviolence and its slow pace, believed force was justified. The Hindustan Republican Association robbed a government money train at Kakori to fund its activities; the crackdown led to the execution of Ram Prasad Bismil, Ashfaqulla Khan and others, who became popular heroes at their trial.

Reorganised as the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA), its leaders Chandrashekar Azad and Bhagat Singh set out to avenge Lala Lajpat Rai, and in December 1928 killed a younger officer by mistake.

A year later Bhagat Singh and a comrade dropped two low-intensity bombs in Delhi's Central Legislative Assembly. Nobody was hurt; the aim, in their own words, was only 'to make the deaf hear'. They dropped leaflets and shouted slogans for revolution and justice, and stayed to be arrested.

Tried for the earlier killing, he went on a long hunger strike over the treatment of Indian prisoners. He, Sukhdev Thapar and Shivaram Rajguru were hanged in 1931, aged 22 to 23. Women joined too: the students Suniti Chowdhury and Shanti Ghosh in Comilla, and Bina Das, who fired at the Governor of Bengal at a college convocation.