The history of popular slogans raised during Indian independence movement

The history of popular slogans raised during Indian independence movement

Subject :History

Section: Modern history

Context: Be it ‘Jai Hind!’ or ‘Vande Mataram!’, most of the popular patriotic slogans raised today are likely to have their origins in the movement for Indian independence.

‘Jai Hind’ by Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose

• Bengal’s Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose popularised ‘Jai Hind’ as a salutation for soldiers of his Indian National Army (INA), which fought alongside Netaji’s ally Japan in the Second World War. But according to some accounts, Netaji did not actually coin the slogan.
• In his 2014 book, ‘Lengendotes of Hyderabad’, former civil servant Narendra Luther said the term was coined by Zain-ul Abideen Hasan, the son of a collector from Hyderabad, who had gone to Germany to study. There, he met Bose and eventually left his studies to join the INA. His grand-nephew, Anvar Ali Khan, later wrote that Khan was tasked by Bose to look for a military greeting or salutation for the INA’s soldiers, a slogan which was not caste or community-specific, given the all-India basis of the INA.

‘Tum mujhe khoon do, main tumhe aazadi doonga’ by Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose

• As per the book ‘Subhas Chandra Bose: The Nationalist and the Commander – What Netaji Did, What Netaji Said’ edited by Vanitha Ramchandani, the slogan had origins in a speech Netaji made in Myanmar, then called Burma, on July 4, 1944.

‘Vande Mataram’ by Bankim Chandra Chatterji

• The term refers to a sense of respect expressed to the motherland. In 1870, Bengali novelist Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay wrote a song which would go on to assume a national stature, but would also be seen as communally divisive by some.
• Written in Bengali, the song titled ‘Vande Mataram’ would not be introduced into the public sphere until the publishing of the novel Anandamath in 1882, of which the song is a part. Vande Mataram would soon be at the forefront of sentiments expressed during the freedom movement.
• The novel Anandmath, set in the early 1770s against the backdrop of the Fakir-Sannyasi Rebellion against the British in Bengal, came at a time of the Bengal agrarian crisis when the region was hit by three famines one after another.

‘Inquilab Zindabad’ by Maulana Hasrat Mohani

• ‘Inquilab Zindabad’ (Long live the revolution) was first used by Maulana Hasrat Mohani in 1921.
• Hasrat Mohani was a labour leader, scholar, poet and also one of the founders of the Communist Party of India in 1925.
• Along with Swami Kumaranand — also involved in the Indian Communist movement — Mohani first raised the demand for complete independence or ‘Poorna Swaraj’, at the Ahmedabad session of the Congress in 1921. He was later elected a member of the Constituent Assembly and was also a member of the drafting committee of the Constitution along with Dr B R Ambedkar.
• It was from the mid-1920s that this slogan became a war cry of Bhagat Singh and his Naujawan Bharat Sabha, as well as his Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA). Bhagat Singh also wished for a social revolution to break age-old discriminatory practices. This slogan got major traction when he and B K Dutt dropped bombs in the Assembly on April 8, 1929, and shouted it.

‘Sarfaroshi ki Tamanna’ by Bismil Azimabadi

• “Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamare dil men hai, dekhna hai zor kitna bazu-e-qatil men hai” (Our hearts are now longing to die for a good cause, that we shall see what strength the arms of killers possess), are the first two lines of a poem written by Bismil Azimabadi, a freedom fighter and poet from Bihar, after the Jallianwalah Bagh Massacre of 1921 in Amritsar, Punjab.
• The lines were popularised by Ram Prasad Bismil, another revolutionary. They convey a deep longing to take on an enemy, a spirit seen in the way Bismil, an Urdu poet and revolutionary, was part of major events that raised the spirits of fellow freedom fighters at the time. He was a part of the Kakori train robbery, a successful and ambitious operation in which a train filled with British goods and money was robbed for Indian fighters to purchase arms.

‘Do or Die’ by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

• In 1942, with the Second World War commencing and the failure of Stafford Cripps Missions – which only promised India a ‘dominion status’ where it would still have to bear allegiance to the King of England – it was realised that the movement for freedom needed to be intensified.
• On August 8, 1942, the All-India Congress Committee met in Gowalia Tank Maidan (August Kranti Maidan) in Bombay. Gandhi addressed thousands after the meeting to spell out the way forward. He told the people that he would firmly take his demands to the Viceroy, saying, “I am not going to be satisfied with anything short of complete freedom. Maybe he will propose the abolition of salt tax, etc. But I will say, ‘Nothing less than freedom’”.

‘Quit India’ by Yusuf Meherally

• While Gandhi gave the clarion call of ‘Quit India’, the slogan was coined by Yusuf Meherally, a socialist and trade unionist who also served as Mayor of Mumbai. A few years ago, in 1928, Meherally had also coined the slogan “Simon Go Back” to protest the Simon Commission – that although was meant to work on Indian constitutional reform, but lacked any Indians.