Hindustan Socialist Republican Association

Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA), previously known as the Hindustan Republican Army and Hindustan Republican Association (HRA), was a left-wing Indian revolutionary organization, founded by Sachindranath Sanyal. After changes in Bhagat Singh's ideology and the influence of the Russian Revolution, they held meetings in Feroz Shah Kotla Maidan and added the word socialist to their name. Ram Prasad Bismil, Ashfaqulla Khan, Sachindra Nath Bakshi, Sachindranath Sanyal and Jogesh Chandra Chatterjee were the leaders of the group at the time. HSRA's manifesto titled The Revolutionary and written constitution were produced as evidence in the Kakori conspiracy case of 1925.

The non-cooperation movement of 1919 had led to a large-scale mobilization of the Indian population against the British Raj. Although intended as a non-violent resistance movement, due to heightened tensions, and a brutal response by the British police forces, it had soon become violent. After the Chauri Chaura incident, where several police officers were locked in a police station, which was subsequently set on fire by demonstrators, Mahatma Gandhi suspended the movement to prevent the escalation of violence. This disillusioned a section of nationalists who felt the suspension was premature and unwarranted. Ram Prasad Bismil and his group of youth strongly opposed Gandhi in the 37th session of the Indian National Congress, held in Gaya, Bihar. The political vacuum created by the suspension led to the formation of revolutionary movements by the more radical amongst those who sought to overthrow British Raj.

In February 1922, some agitating farmers were killed in Chauri Chaura by the police. Consequently, the police station of Chauri Chaura was attacked by the people and 22 policemen were burnt alive.

Without ascertaining the facts behind this incident, Mahatma Gandhi, declared an immediate stop to the Non-cooperation movement (he himself had given a call for it) without consulting any executive committee member of the Congress. Ram Prasad Bismil and his group of youth strongly opposed Gandhi in the Gaya Congress of 1922. When Gandhi refused to rescind his decision, the Indian National Congress was divided into two groups – one liberal and the other for rebellion. In January 1923, the liberal group formed a new Swaraj Party under the joint leadership of Moti Lal Nehru and Chittaranjan Das, and the youth group formed a revolutionary party under the leadership of Bismil.

With the consent of Lala Har Dayal, Bismil went to Allahabad where he drafted the constitution of the party in 1923 with the help of Sachindra Nath Sanyal and another revolutionary of Bengal, Dr. Jadugopal Mukherjee.^{[full citation needed]} The basic name and aims of the organisation were typed on a Yellow Paper and later on a subsequent Constitutional Committee Meeting was conducted on 3 October 1924 at Cawnpore in the United Provinces under Sanyal's chairmanship.

This meeting decided the name of the party would be the Hindustan Republican Association (HRA). Bismil was declared the District Organiser for Shahjahanpur and chief of arms division, as well as provincial organiser of United Provinces. Sachindra Nath Sanyal became National Organiser and another senior member, Jogesh Chandra Chatterjee, was Coordinator of the Anushilan Samiti. After attending the meeting in Cawnpore, both Sanyal and Chatterjee left the United Province and proceeded to Bengal for further extension of the organisation.^{[citation needed]}

The HRA established branches in Agra, Allahabad, Benares, Cawnpore, Lucknow, Saharanpur and Shahjahanpur. They also manufactured bombs in Calcutta – at Dakshineswar and Shovabazar and at Deoghar in Jharkhand (then Bihar province). The Calcutta workshops were discovered by the police in 1925 and those in Deoghar were found in 1927.

Sanyal wrote a manifesto for the HRA entitled Revolutionary. This was distributed around large cities of North India on 1 January 1925. It proposed the overthrow of British colonial rule and its replacement with what it termed a Federal Republic of the United States of India. In addition, it sought universal suffrage and the socialist-oriented aim of the abolition of "all systems which make any kind of exploitation of man by man possible"