Death of a Revolutionary.....

The name Subodh Roy conjures up nothing for most of us.

And perhaps even after being told that he was involved in one of the greatest acts of rebellion against the British Raj, the blank faces would endure. And there is a reason for that as well....The Chittagong Armoury Raid and the subsequent "liberation" of Chittagong for two days and the guerilla war that followed for 3 more years (during which time large parts of Chittagong) was effectively "lost" to the British, is something that no mainstream history book records, enamoured as we are with the Gandhian side of the movement (which as years are going by and the classified files are becoming unclassfied, shows that as far as freedom of India was concerned, Gandhi's role was minimal).

The amazing spectacle of a rag-tag army of revolutionaries liberating and holding a city against the organized might of an Emprire (and retreating only when their ammunition ran out) is something that is denied to the people who have come after, who can only gather a second hand knowledge of history. This stupenduous event, which surely ranks among one of the most daring of rebellion in the world remains tragically unchronicled in India except for one excellent effort by Manini Chatterjee, with her book "Do and Die" ......

This rebellion was led by Surya Sen (known as Masterda), who was inspired by the Easter Rebellion and consequently named his army as the Indian Republican Army (IRA). This audacious group was not only brave to the extreme but was exteremely egalitarian in nature with some of the most enigmatic women characters in the Indian freedom movement a part of this army.....

This rebellion and its protogonists have been dumped in the bin of history, as have been so many....so have been the people who were a part of it....among them Subodh Roy....He was the youngest to have been sentenced to prison, all of 16 years old when he stole his father's gun to join the rebellion....maybe it is true that it is the circumstances and the time in which they live that makes a man; nevertheless, they dont make men like Subodh Roy anymore.....

That man died about a month ago...not many people noticed....in our celebrity obsessed world, a man whose only claim to fame was his constant faith to his ideals does not exactly set the shutterbugs on fire.....

But some people did mourn his passing, and with him, the passing on of one more of those men and women who lived in a time which seems, at best, a chimera to us.....

Here are a couple of those tributes which featured in The Telegraph and in the Frontline....these are tributes that seem to come straight from the heart...maybe it is better to have one genuine heartfelt tribute than plastic eulogies written by people paid to do the job...Subodh Roy, i am sure would have agreed....

So here are the articles....

Indian Express article and if this link has been moved or removed, click here

The Frontline article

SUBODH ROY (1916 - 2006)