They did not wait for permission to resist. TMC MP Mahua Moitra marked the occasion with a sharp reminder that India's freedom struggle was not only a story of peaceful marches — it was also written in gunpowder and sacrifice, and Bengal was at the centre of it.

Three Bombings, Three Moments That Shook Colonial India

Moitra's post traces a precise arc of revolutionary action across more than two decades. In 1908, Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki attempted to assassinate British magistrate Douglas Kingsford in Muzaffarpur by hurling a bomb at his carriage. The attempt failed — the carriage carried the wrong passengers — but its audacity announced a new chapter in anti-colonial resistance. Khudiram was hanged at just 18 years of age, becoming one of the youngest martyrs of the independence movement. Prafulla Chaki died by suicide to avoid capture.

Four years later, in 1912, Rashbehari Bose and Basanta Biswas threw a bomb at the howdah of Viceroy Lord Hardinge during a state procession in Delhi. Hardinge survived, but the attack — in the heart of the colonial capital — demonstrated that the empire was not invulnerable on its own ceremonial ground. Rashbehari Bose would go on to lead the Indian National Army from exile in Japan.

Then came 1929. Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt walked into the Central Legislative Assembly in Delhi and threw smoke bombs from the public gallery — not to kill, but to be heard. The act was a protest against the Public Safety Bill and the Trade Disputes Bill, repressive legislation the colonial government was pushing through. 'Deaf ears must be made to hear,' Bhagat Singh famously declared. Both men surrendered willingly and used the subsequent trial as a platform.

Bengal's Thread Through the Revolutionary Strand

The Partition of Bengal in 1905 is widely credited with igniting the first wave of organised revolutionary activity in eastern India. The anger it generated fed directly into the networks that produced Khudiram, Prafulla Chaki, and Rashbehari Bose. Moitra's post draws this line explicitly, closing with: 'Bengal has always been associated with the freedom movement. Jai Hind.'

The armed revolutionary strand she highlights ran parallel to — and often in tension with — the Congress-led non-violent campaigns. Both currents shaped the final outcome of 1947, though the revolutionaries rarely received equal space in the mainstream retelling of that history.

As India marks another Independence Day, Moitra's tribute is a pointed insistence that the full ledger of sacrifice be kept open — not just the names that made it into the textbooks, but the ones who threw themselves at an empire with a bomb and a slogan and no guarantee of tomorrow.