Bipin Chandra Pal was an Indian nationalist and a prominent leader of the Indian nationalist movement. UPSC prelims has prominent focus on Indian Freedom Fighters UPSC Prelims Syllabus in History Discusses the role of freedom fighters in extensive way.

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  • Important Contributions of Bipin Chandra Pal
  • Bipin Chandra Pal was born on 7th November 1858 in Poil village in Syllhet district on present day Bangladesh.
  •  Bipin Chandra Pal is known as the ‘Father of Revolutionary Thoughts’ in India.
  • He was also an eminent radical of his time.
  • He married a widow for which he had to sever all ties with his family.
  • He was admitted to the Presidency College in Calcutta but could not complete his studies and started his career as a headmaster. In the later years, he was working ad a librarian in Calcutta public library where he met many political leaders like Shivnath Shastri, S.N. Banerjee and B.K. Goswami.
  • He was influenced to quit teaching and take up politics as career.

Contributions in Literature

  • He went to England in 1898 to study comparative ideology. However in a span of one year he came back to India and since then he started preaching the idea of Swaraj among the local Indians.
  • He also wrote a number of articles and write ups for imparting social awareness and nationalism among the people. Bipin Chandra Pal used his profession of journalism in spreading patriotic awareness.
  • He published a number of journals, weekly and books to spread Swaraj. His prominent books include ‘Nationality and Empire’, ‘Indian nationalism’ , ‘Swaraj and the Present Situation’, ‘The Soul of India’, ‘The Basis of Social Reform’ , ‘The Hinduism’ and ‘The New Spirit’. He was also the editor of the ‘Democrat’, the ‘Independent’ and many other journals.

Bipin Chandra Pal's Role in Indian freedom movement

  • Bipin Chandra Pal was famous as one of the triumvirate of the three militant patriots popularly known as ‘Lal-Bal-Pal’. These three was responsible for initiating the first popular upsurge against the British colonial policy in the 1905 partition of Bengal.
  • This was before the entry of Mahatma Gandhi into politics. Bipin Chandra Pal was also the founder of the journal ‘Bande Mataram’. At the time of Bal Gangadhar Tilak’s arrest and government repression in 1907, Bipin Chandra Pal left for England where he was briefly associated with the radical India House and also founded the Swaraj journal. However, during that time the political repercussions in the wake of Curzon Wyllie’s assassination in 1909 led to the collapse of the publication and as a result it drove Pal to penury and mental collapse in London. Later, he moved away from his extremist phase and nationalism and he contemplated an association of free nations as the great federal idea.
  • He was among the first to criticize Mahatma Gandhi or the ‘Gandhi cult’ as it sought to replace the present government by no government or by the priestly autocracy of the Mahatma.

Participation

  • Bipin Chandra Pal history is the history of pre-independent India when the youth of the day were struggling to throw away the yoke of British rule.
  • Contrary to moderate he along with Lokmanya Tilak, Lala Lajpat Rai advocated the Swadeshi movement involving the boycott of all imported items and the use of Indian-made goods. In short, they were not inclined towards following moderate ideals but were leaned towards extremist ideas.
  • The trio Lal-Bal-Pal has advocated radical means like burning Western clothes made in the mills of Manchester or Swadeshi, boycotting British manufactured goods and strikes and lockouts of British owned businesses and industries to get their message across to the British.
  • Bipin Chandra Pal was imprisoned for six months on the grounds of his refusal to give evidence against Sri Aurobindo in the Vande Mataram case. Bipin Chandra Pal participated in a number of events like the Bombay session of the Indian National Congress in the year 1904, the Partition of Bengal in 1905, the Swadeshi Movement, the Non Cooperation Movement and the Bengal Pact in the year 1923.
  • He joined the Indian National Congress in the year 1886. He made a strong plea for repelling of Arms Act in the year 1887 as it was discriminatory in nature. He was also effectively involved in removing social evils from the nation and in arousing the feelings of nationalism through national criticism.

Indian National Movement is one of the major subjects in UPSC syllabus which is given requires good amount of attention from the UPSC aspirants is one of the most important part of UPSC syllabus. To read more articles on Economics click here