Surya Sen

Surya Sen, also known as Surya Kumar Sen (22 March 1894 – 12 January 1934), was an Indian revolutionary who played a significant role in the Indian independence movement against British colonial rule. He is best known for leading the Chittagong Armoury Raid in 1930. Sen was a schoolteacher by profession and was popularly known as Master Da ("da" is an honorific suffix derived from "dada", meaning "elder brother" in the Bengali language). He was influenced by the nationalist ideals in 1916 while he was a student of B.A. at Berhampore College (now Murshidabad Maharaja Krishnath University). In 1918, he was selected as president of the Indian National Congress's Chittagong branch. Sen was known for recruiting a group of young and passionate revolutionaries known as the Chittagong group. The group included Ananta Singh, Ganesh Ghosh, and Lokenath Bal, and fought against the British stationed in Chittagong. He was an active participant in the Non-co-operation movement and was later arrested and imprisoned for two years, from 1926 to 1928, for his revolutionary activities. A brilliant and inspirational organiser, Sen was fond of saying, "Humanism is a special virtue of a revolutionary." After the Chittagong raid in 1930 and a fierce battle where over 80 British Indian Army soldiers and 12 revolutionaries were killed, Sen and other surviving revolutionaries dispersed into small groups and hid in neighbouring villages, launching raids on government personnel and property. Sen was arrested on 16 February 1933 when he was hiding in his close family member's house of Khirodprova Biswas. He was tried and was hanged on 12 January 1934. Many of his fellow revolutionaries were also caught and sentenced to long periods of imprisonment.