Thirty documented events, in order: the life of Surya Sen, the Chittagong movement around him, and the aftermath that reached into the 1990s. Filter by period, or read straight through.
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30 events shown — All periods.
22 March 1894
OriginsBorn in the Raozan area of Chittagong district, Bengal Presidency — today in Bangladesh. His father was a teacher; published sources give the name differently, and this archive does not choose between them.
1916
OriginsWhile reading for a BA at Berhampore College in Murshidabad, Sen is introduced to nationalist politics by his teacher Satish Chandra Chakrabarti and drawn into the Anushilan Samiti, and later the Jugantar circle.
1918
Congress yearsHe comes to Chittagong, takes up a post at a national school and becomes president of the district branch of the Indian National Congress in the same year. His students give him the name Masterda.
1920–1922
Congress yearsHe works as a Congress organiser through Gandhi’s Non-Cooperation campaign. Its suspension in February 1922 leaves a large body of trained young volunteers without a programme — the pool from which the Chittagong revolutionary network would later be built.
December 1923
Congress yearsSurya Sen takes part, with Ambika Chakrabarty, in the robbery of the railway treasury at Chittagong — his first documented armed action, undertaken to fund the organisation. Colonial records classify it as dacoity.
1925
ContextThe province creates a special political jurisdiction: detention without ordinary trial, and commissioners empowered to try political cases. It is the statute under which Surya Sen is imprisoned in 1926 — and, eight years later, sentenced to death.
1926–1928
Congress yearsHeld for two years from 1926 and released towards the end of 1928. He returns to Chittagong into a changed national situation and begins rebuilding the network that will act in April 1930.
December 1929
ContextThe Indian National Congress resolves on purna swaraj as its demand, ending the long argument over dominion status and setting the terms of the year that follows.
6 April 1930
ContextThe civil disobedience campaign opens nationally. Twelve days later, and in explicit disagreement with its method, the Chittagong group acts.
18 April 1930
The uprisingFrom about ten at night, roughly sixty-five people acting as the Indian Republican Army, Chittagong Branch, move on four objectives. The police armoury falls to a group under Ganesh Ghosh; the Auxiliary Force armoury to about ten men under Lokenath Bal; telephone and telegraph lines are cut and rail movement disrupted. The European Club at Pahartali is found nearly empty. Rifles are seized but ammunition is not located. At the police armoury Surya Sen takes a military salute, hoists the national flag and proclaims a Provisional Revolutionary Government.
22 April 1930
The uprisingBritish forces locate the revolutionaries in the hills outside Chittagong and engage them. Twelve revolutionaries are killed, among them Harigopal Bal, younger brother of Lokenath Bal, who is commanding. Figures given for British casualties differ widely between accounts. The survivors disperse.
28 June 1930
ResistanceHaving escaped to Chandernagore, Ananta Singh gives himself up to the police on learning of the treatment of imprisoned comrades. He is sentenced to transportation for life and sent to the Cellular Jail at Port Blair.
1 September 1930
ResistancePolice raid the safe house in Chandernagore, then French territory. Jiban Ghoshal is killed and Ganesh Ghosh is arrested. Lokenath Bal is also arrested on this date following a gunfight with police.
1 December 1930
ResistanceRamkrishna Biswas and Kalipada Chakrabarty, assigned to kill a senior British police official named Craig, shoot a railway inspector, Tarini Mukherjee, instead. Both are arrested the following day.
May 1931
ResistanceA science student at Bethune College in Calcutta, she joins the Indian Republican Army, Chattagram branch — one of the first two women to enter the Chittagong group.
4 August 1931
ResistanceHe was twenty-one. Pritilata Waddedar had visited him in prison some forty times under an assumed identity before the execution.
1 March 1932
ResistanceThe commander of the Auxiliary Force armoury group and of the revolutionaries at Jalalabad is sent to the Cellular Jail at Port Blair. He is released in 1946.
13 June 1932
ResistanceA party under Captain Cameron surrounds the house at Dhalghat where Surya Sen is meeting comrades. Cameron is killed; Nirmal Sen and Apurba Sen die covering the escape of Surya Sen, Pritilata Waddedar and the others. It is also the day Pritilata Waddedar first meets Surya Sen.
24 September 1932
ResistancePritilata Waddedar leads the attack on the objective that had failed on the night of the raid, taking command after Kalpana Datta’s arrest. The club is set alight and fired into; one person is killed and eleven injured. Wounded and cut off, Pritilata takes potassium cyanide rather than be captured. She was twenty-one.
16 February 1933
Capture & trialTaken at a house in the Gairala area of Chittagong district after almost three years underground, betrayed by Netra Sen, who informed the police. Netra Sen was killed by revolutionaries before the reward reached him. Kalpana Datta, present that night, escapes.
19 May 1933
Capture & trialDastidar, who had taken charge of the movement after February, is taken following an armed encounter with police at Gahira. Kalpana Datta is arrested the same day. With these arrests the Chittagong organisation effectively ends.
14 August 1933
Capture & trialCommissioners appointed under the Bengal Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1925 sentence Surya Sen and Tarakeswar Dastidar to death, and Kalpana Datta to transportation for life, on charges including conspiracy to wage war and waging war against the King.
14 November 1933
Capture & trialThe court upholds the convictions with a single exception, sets aside one conviction under the Explosive Substances Act, and confirms both death sentences.
11 January 1934
Capture & trialSurya Sen writes to his comrades on the day before the execution, asking that 18 April 1930 be remembered along with those who died for a free India. It is the one extended statement in his own words that is widely reproduced.
12 January 1934
Capture & trialBoth are hanged at Chittagong. Surya Sen was thirty-nine; Tarakeswar Dastidar was in his mid-twenties.
1939
AfterwardsShe graduates from Calcutta University in 1940, joins the Communist Party of India, and in 1943 marries its general secretary, Puran Chand Joshi.
1945
AfterwardsKalpana Datta’s memoir is published while several of her comrades are still imprisoned in the Andamans. It becomes one of the principal first-hand sources on the movement.
1946
AfterwardsGanesh Ghosh, Lokenath Bal, Ananta Singh and Ambika Chakrabarty are among those released in 1946, after fourteen years in the Andaman penal settlement and on the mainland. Several enter electoral politics almost immediately.
1978
AfterwardsForty-four years after the execution, the successor state formally honours a man its predecessor hanged for waging war against the King.
1999
AfterwardsManini Chatterjee’s narrative history brings the uprising to a wide English-reading audience and later provides the basis for a feature film.