Ram Prasad Bismil, poet and freedom fighter, remembers his birthday
New Delhi:
Ram Prasad Bismil, poet and freedom fighter, today remembers his 123rd birthday. Leaders across the country tweeted about the icon who died young after being sentenced to death by British colonial leaders.
Lok Sabha Om Birla president, Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri, Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot, BJP chief Vasundhara Raje Scindia and Manish Tewari of Congress were among those who paid tribute.
Ram Prasad Bismil was born in Shahjahanpur in 1897. He was sentenced to death by the British for what was known as the “Kakori conspiracy”. He was hanged on December 19, 1927, at the age of 30.
He was associated with Arya Samaj and was inspired by books written by Swami Dayanand Saraswati. Born to a civic worker, he was forced to drop out of school due to lack of money. But that didn’t kill his passion for reading and poetry.
Bismil became a member of the Hindustan Republican Association at an early age. It was there that he met freedom fighters like Chandra Shekhar Azad, Ashfaqullah Khan, Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, Rajguru and others.
On August 9, 1925, Bismil, Ashfaqullah Khan and their associates stopped a train in a town called Kakori, just before Lucknow, and looted the coffers of the British government. More than 40 freedom fighters were arrested after the historic event.
The freedom fighter is also valued for his literary heritage.
The collection of poems by Ram Prasad Bismil – “Man Ki Lahar” and “Swadeshi Rang” is well known. The famous lines “Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamare dil mein hai, dekhna hai zor kitna baazu-e-qatil mein hai” written by the Urdu poet Bismil Azimabadi, for young freedom fighters, was the war cry of Ram Prasad Bismil.
Bismil has also translated books of regional languages.
