Bipin Chandra Pal was born on 1,November,1858 also known as the “father of revolutionary ideas in India”, was born in Poil, a village in Habiganj district, present-day Bangladesh. Bipin Chandra Pal was born in the village of Poil. His family was a rich Hindu family. Pal’s father was a Persian scholar.
• Joined Presidency College, Calcutta but could not complete his education there. He then started working as a director. He later became a librarian in a public library. It was here that he met several political leaders of the time like Surendra Nath Banerjee, Shivnath Shastri and B K Goswami.
• This interaction made him leave his profession and enter active politics.
• Pal was also inspired by the ideas of Lal Lajpat Rai, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Aurobindo Ghosh.
• In 1898 he went to England to study comparative theology. He returned to India within a year and threw himself into the freedom struggle.
• He started popularizing the idea of ’swaraj’ among Indians.
• Along with Lajpat Rai and Tilak, he preached an extremist form of nationalism that supported revolutionary methods such as boycotting British goods and shops, burning Western clothes, and advocating strikes and lockouts in British factories. This trio was called ‘Lal-Bal-Pal’.
• Pal was sent to jail for six months for refusing to testify against Aurobindo Ghosh in the Bande Mataram sedition case.
• He was a great speaker and writer. He was also a journalist who used this platform to spread his message of patriotism and nationalism. He edited “The Democrat” and “The Independent” magazines. He also started many newspapers and magazines like ‘Paridarsak’, ‘Bande Mataram’, ‘New India’ and ‘Swaraj’.
• Some of the books he wrote are “Indian Nationalism”, “Swaraj and the Present Situation”, “Nationality and Empire”, “The Basis of Social Reform”, “The New Spirit and Studies in Hinduism” and “The Soul of India” ‘.
• In 1886, he joined the Congress Party. He was also involved in the Swadeshi movement and the non-cooperation movement. He agitated against the partition of Bengal in 1905.
• Pal was a fierce critic of Mahatma Gandhi and his pacifist ways. He was against the ‘Gandhi cult’ in the Congress party.
• In 1920, Pal was among the Congress leaders who opposed Gandhi’s non-cooperation resolution because of the fact that it did not deal with self-government.
• After his first wife died, he married a widow and joined the Brahmo Samaj, which, among other things, condemned the caste system. He was also an ardent supporter of gender equality.
• Retired from active politics in 1920. He contributed to magazines until his death on May 20, 1932. He was 73 years old.
• Aurobindo Ghosh called Pala ‘one of the most powerful prophets of nationalism.
Written by : Vaishali Verma
