Surya Sen

Early life and organisation

Sen taught mathematics at a national school in Chittagong and became involved in revolutionary nationalist politics in Bengal in the 1910s and 1920s, drawing the honorific "Masterda" (respected teacher) from his students and followers, many of whom he recruited into underground work. He briefly took part in Congress-led activity during the Non-Cooperation Movement but concluded that mass civil disobedience alone would not dislodge colonial rule, and organised a disciplined network of young revolutionaries — including several women members, unusual for armed revolutionary groups of the period — under the name Indian Republican Army, Chittagong branch, with the aim of striking a direct, symbolic blow against colonial authority in the district.

The Chittagong armoury raid

On the night of 18 April 1930, Sen led a group of several dozen armed revolutionaries in coordinated raids on the Police Armoury and the Auxiliary Force Armoury in Chittagong, aiming to seize weapons, cut telegraph and rail communications, and proclaim a provisional revolutionary government. The raiders succeeded in occupying both armouries and raising the national flag, though they were unable to locate ammunition stores at the site. Sen and his followers then withdrew to the Jalalabad hills outside the city, where they fought a pitched engagement with pursuing British troops in which casualties were suffered on both sides; the group subsequently dispersed into the countryside to continue underground resistance.

Aftermath and execution

Members of Sen's network, including Pritilata Waddedar and Kalpana Dutta, carried out further attacks over the following years while evading capture — among them an assault on the Pahartali European Club in 1932, in which Waddedar died — and the colonial government mounted an extended manhunt across Chittagong district, arresting and prosecuting large numbers of suspected sympathisers along the way. Sen himself remained at large until 1933, when he was betrayed by an associate and captured by police. He was tried, and, according to widely reported accounts, subjected to torture in custody before being convicted and sentenced to death. He was executed by hanging in Chittagong jail in January 1934, and his body was reportedly disposed of at sea to prevent his grave from becoming a site of nationalist commemoration.

The Chittagong armoury raid is regarded as one of the most significant armed actions of the revolutionary strand of the Indian independence movement, distinct from the mass, largely nonviolent campaigns led by the Congress in the same period, and it remains a subject of continued historical and popular commemoration in both India and Bangladesh.