Pandit Ramprasad Bismil was born in 1897 in Shahjahanpur (UP) exactly forty years after the unsuccessful 1857 revolt against the British rule.
The countrymen had gone through a long period of abject frustration, hopelessness and demoralisation. The people had lost self belief.
The aliens had spread the canard that the Indians were worthless people who on their own can achieve nothing.
Then, reformist movements started to fight the social evils to redeem Indian society. The social evils, blind faiths, orthodoxy, casteism and illiteracy were the root causes of the moral decay of Indians. These movements gave hope that the situation could be saved. The political activists had also began to fight the foreign rule. It lifted the morale of the people.
Educationists had begun to create facilities for the masses to push back the darkness of illiteracy and resultant ignorance.
The frustrated youth of Bengal had taken to the arms and were engaged in militant activities creating a lot of problems for the British. The political aspirations of the nation had fructified in the emergence of the Congress party.
At first the British authorities patronised the party in the belief that it could serve as a bridge between the rulers and the natives. It was supposed to be merely a stage from which the natives could air their grievances to cool down their tempers.
But the British were taken aback when the Congress instead of serving as a convenient tool to keep the natives amused began to talk of the native aspirations for freedom from the foreign rule and questioned the very validity of British presence in India.
The colonial rulers began to see Congress as the most potent threat to the continuation of the British rule. The most worrisome factor was that the party was beginning to be led by educated people who could debate and knew the laws.
The authorities began to keep a close watch on the Congress and devised excuses to harass its leading members. The new fangled laws were being drafted to give sweeping powers to the administration and the police force to nip the evil in the bud. Meanwhile the militants were carrying on their show of sporadic bombings and shooting down of targetted British officials.
Such was the turbulent period when Ramprasad Bismil was born. His father was Pandit Muralidhar Tiwari. Economically the family belonged to the lower middle class. Murlidhar was making a living through selling stamp papers sitting outside the town court. The Tiwari family being a traditional Hindu a cow was naturally to be revered part of the household.
Murlidhar had procured a cow of an improved breed from Gwalior. Taking care of that cow and treating her as a deity was Tiwari’s passion. In turn the cow provided enough milk and young Ramprasad was made to drink plenty of it by his father. The father put his son to regular exercise regime to turn the milk into the solid muscles on his body. In the evenings he would carry Ramprasad on his shoulders for a long walk.
Muralidhar was a religious man. Everyday he would worship the deities and meditate for a couple of hours. It left a lasting impression on the boy. In the later years while facing crisis or adverse situations Ramprasad found great solace in meditation, especially in the loneliness of the prison cells.
When Ramprasad became 6-7 years old his father Muralidhar decided that it was time his son got introduced to letters. He took upon himself to do the teaching because there was no school around.
The only teaching facilities available were in the form of Madarsas attached to the mosques. There the accent was on Urdu and the education was Islam oriented. Murlidhar wanted his son to learn Hindi, the native language of Hindu scriptures.
Once Ramprasad was being taught Hindi alphabet by his father. He was writing down the letters on his slate. The fifth vowel of Hindi alphabet ‘©U’ (having sound effect of ‘u’ or ‘oo’) was posing problems for the boy, Somehow he was finding it difficult to write it down in desired shape. Even repeated attempts failed for the boy to get it right.
Muralidhar was getting irritated at it. It was the morning and he was running out of time. He had to depart to reach the court in time not to lose out on business. That was the time when even the stamp paper sellers considered themselves so important part of the legal system. Even the bailiffs of the court told their neighbours that the entire British Empire depended on his reaching the court in time.
As Muralidhar prepared to leave he instructed his son, “Ram, it is time I left for the court. But you must carry on the exercise of writing down ‘©U’ until you get it right. Try again. When I come back I must find you writing it correctly.”
“Yes, father,” Ramprasad said still bent over the slate puzzled over the letter with illusive shape.
“Remember…”, the father said in a stern voice ordering, “don’t do any other work until you get the ‘©U’ right. Or you will be punished.”
He departed for the court.
Little Ramprasad heaved a sigh of relief. He had never felt so tired, so bored and so fed up. Fie on the miserable vowel that sounded like the call of an owl…‘ooo’!
Even before the father was out of sight whatever he had said went out of the mind of his boy. The boy tossed aside his slate and the book. In no time he was busy playing games having erased the horrible memories of the kinky vowel and the stern instructions of his father from his juvenile mind. Ramprasad played all day long. For a kid at play the time runs out incredibly fast.
In a jiffy the morning turned into evening.
And the evening brought Muralidhar Tiwari home from his work. The father remembered what he had instructed his son for the day. The signs were that his order had not been carried out.
He asked his son to show him the problem vowel written correctly. A scared Ramprasad again sat down with the slate in his lap and tried to draw the shape of that kinky letter. He failed. It was as unshapely as it was in the morning. The father was infuriated.
He growled, “Didn’t you practise after I departed for the court in the morning?”
The terrified son shook his head. He had no excuse for his negligence. The father was too orthodox to give allowance to his son for being a child. The thrashing of the boy began.
The father began on his son as if he were dealing with an enemy. He rained punches and kicks. Not satisfied with that he grabbed a metal measuring rod and beat Ramprasad with it so severely, that the rod bent up. Screams of the son evoked no mercy in the angry father.
Such beatings made Ramprasad an obstinate kid. The fear of cane could not instil discipline in the boy. He continued to be erratic. The father beat him at every prank or mischief without making any impression on the boy. More he was beaten more defiant he became.
One day he raided a garden with his friends and they plucked all the peaches from the trees. The gardener saw the plunder of the boys. He ran after the boys. The boys were too swift to be caught by the gardener. They vanished in fast time.
The gardener carried the load of the plucked peaches to Muralidhar and showed to him the destruction wrought on the garden by his son.
It infuriated the father. He got hold of his son and thrashed so soundly that poor Ramprasad had to be laid up in the bed for two days. He continued to play mischievous and getting caned.
Later, he claimed that the constant thrashing had toughened up his body which proved very helpful in enduring the hardships of the life a revolutionary constantly on the run or braving the rigours of the jails.
The father, Muralidhar was a disciplinarian and a believer in the total obedience by the juniors to their elders in an orthodox way. He did succeed in hammering basics of Hindi into his son inspite of the defiance. Then, it was the turn to learn Urdu, the language of the earlier rulers, courts and the popular literature although English was gradually and surely replacing it.
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