Focussing on the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army (HSRA), A Revolutionary History delivers a fresh perspective on the ambitions, ideologies and practices of this influential organisation, formed by Chandrashekhar Azad and Bhagat Singh and inspired by transnational anti-imperial dissent. It is a new interpretation of the activities and political impact of the north Indian revolution- aries who advocated the use of political violence against the British. Kama Maclean contends that the actions of these revolutionaries had a direct impact on Congress politics and tested its policy of non-...

The term `revolutionary' is used liberally in histories of Indian anticolonialism, but scarcely defined. Implicitly understood, it functions as a signpost or a badge, generously conferred in hagiographies, loosely invoked in historiography, and strategically deployed in contemporary political contests. It is timely, then, to ask the question: Who counts as a `revolutionary' in South Asia? How can we read `the revolutionary' in Indian political formations? And what does it really mean to be `revolutionary' in turbulent late colonial times? This volume takes a biographical approach to the...