Bhagat Singh and his Comrades (Memoirs of HSRA veteran Ajoy Ghosh, 1945)

Ajoy Ghosh was a prominent freedom fighter of India. He was born in Purba Bardhaman District of West Bengal, in 1909. Ajoy Ghosh was a member of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association that was led by people like Bhagat Singh and Chandrasekhar Azad. In 1945, Ghosh wrote a memoir on his experiences in the HSRA; which commemorated the heroic struggle of his comrades in the cause of India’s freedom. This memoir, titled Bhagat Singh and his Comrades, gives a brief but precise account of the course of the revolutionary movement in India in the 1920’s and 30’s and its principal actors. In his memoir, Ghosh fondly remembered his interactions with HSRA comrades. He described the various activities that the HSRA engaged in; like assassination of Saunders in Lahore or the Bombing in the Central Legislative Assembly. He also expressed disillusionment with the course of the freedom movement which, in his opinion, could not move beyond constitutionalism. He was convinced that only violent struggle by organizing the masses could win India freedom. Ajoy Ghosh’s memoir, as a first-hand account of the revolutionary movement in India, serves as a primary source in understanding the less known chapters of the Indian freedom struggle.