By Krishna Jha
August 12 this year marks the 90th anniversary of the foundation of All India Students’ Federation. Right since its inception in 1936, AISF got involved in the struggle for national independence. When ‘Quit India Movement’ was launched 84 years back, on August 9, 1942, AISF had a leading role in it.
One of the first August rebels, arrested and sent to gallows in Sindh, was from AISF. His name was Hemu Calani and was from a school in Sukkur in Sindh. One of the active workers of Sukkur Students’ Union, under which AISF worked in the region, Hemu became target of the British rulers and was arrested in the night of August 24, 1942. He was later awarded capital punishment and hanged on 21 January, 1943 with slogans on lips like Inquilab Zindabad. He became a household name in Sindh. A public square in Jodhpur bears his name as Hemu Calani Chowk.
Soon with unending stream of boys and girls joining the list of martyrs, floodgates were released. It turned into a historic event sweeping the entire country. UP (then United Provinces) was a major centre of the movement. Sarjoo Pandey was among leading figures of the movement. He, along with his associates like Rama Singh and others, reached Kasimabad Police Station on August 15, 1942, and forced the police officer to take down the Union Jack and hoist the Tricolour. They also took away all the arms and disappeared. Kasimabad police station kept the Tricolour flying for full one week.
Orders were circulated to shoot SarjooPandey at sight. The event became famous everywhere. Sarjoo and associates remained underground for a long time, going from village to village. The villagers never gave him away. Police began to harass their families.
A few months later, Sarjoo got arrested in Susundi village along with his associate Rama Singh. Sarjoo was first sent to Gazipur jail, from where he was shifted to Benaras and other jails. He was treated inhumanly, kept in solitary confinement, put in shackles, beaten brutally and was forced to work on flour mills. He shouted ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ and ‘Vande Mataram’ whenever he was beaten with cane to the point of getting unconscious. He fought his own case and accepted all the charges. He was awarded 42 years of rigorous imprisonment and a heavy penalty.
The AISF activists rebelled in the same manner in many other parts of the state. In BHU the situation became so uncontrollable that the military moved in and kept it occupied for eight days. Students belonging to both the SF organisations – Shah group of the Congress and (Muqueem) Farooqui group of the Communist Party of India — worked in unison: they worked together, faced lathis and bullets together and went to jails together.
The SF organisations of the BHU soon spread their activities from Varanasi to Ghazipur. Vishwanath Singh, an AISF activist, led a large procession of students to the Kotwali in the district headquarters.
Om Prakash Paliwal of Ferozabad issued appeal to students exhorting them to sacrifice their lives to protect the dignity of Mother India so that the later generations remembered them. Paliwal later became a prominent leader of the AISF (Farooqui).
In Bihar most AISF leaders, including Chandrashekhar Singh, Rahul Sankrityayan and Indradeep Sinha, were attending the AISF’s Bhagalpur district conference at Naugachhia when the Quit India movement started. The conference continued for two days and the Quit India movement kept dominating all the discussions. It was at Naugachhia where they got the news of Gandhiji’s arrest. The very next day, Chandrashekar Singh and his friends reached Patna. AISF gave a call for a day long strike to protest against the arrest of Gandhiji and other nationalist leaders.
On August 12, students organised a massive demonstration at Secretariat under the leadership of Bihar AISF’s general secretary Chandrashekhar Singh. The British government resorted to lathicharge and firing in which seven students were martyred and several others were injured. AISF activists carried them to hospitals. Many AISF leaders including Karyanand Sharma, Sant Lal Singh, Bhogendra Jha, Tejnarayan and others, were arrested and sent to jail.
Besides Chandrashekhar Singh, other AISF activists leading the students’ protests in Bihar included Krishnachandra Choudhary, Chaturanan Mishra, Gangadhar Das, Jaymangal Singh, Dr. Ramvilas Sharma, Siyavar Sharan, etc. Police resorted to firings at a total of 122 places in the state. At Bihat in Begusarai district people fought pitched battle against the police. On the road between Bihat and Teghara, police opened fire on people in which a youth, Uchit Singh, was martyred.
One of the important flashpoints of the AISF’s participation was Satara where Nana Patil formed Patri Sarkar as part of Quit India movement. Student activists of the AISF and peasants educated upto sixth or seventh standards constituted the bulk of the underground workers of this movement. The Prati Sarkar continued upto January 1946 leaving a deep impression on the area and on the nationalist movement with its social, organisational, administrative and judicial work. Students and youth made notable contributions to this historic movement.
Some of the organisations which began as non-violent ones took to violent methods in 1942 movement using Gandhiji’s statement that methods should be used according to the situation. Thus, Pulin Behari Sen, an AISF activist, led a militia in Khejuri, whose secret workers trained youth in lathis and daggers and distributed revolutionary literature.
In Ahmedabad, Jayanti Thakor, an AISF activist who was also Congress socialist leader, issued directive from his “Azad Government” that all the houseowners should contribute to the nationalist fund at the rate of one anna each, and Rs 50 was earned. Soon he became popular as the head of the Ahmedabad city. Under him, there were “Pol Nayaks” who were leaders of the enclosed caste-based enclaves known as “Pols”. Under his supervision, 19 leaders looked after 14 city wards. (IPA Service)
