Get out your flags and tiranga clothing. Independence Day is nigh. But first let’s brush up our history facts and revisit the most unusual places that played a defining role in our freedom struggle.
We already did a round up of the more well-known sites connected with the freedom movement: Jallianwala Bagh And 10 Other Freedom Movement Landmarks. Let's look at 14 more significant places, some outside of India...
In 1997 the Government Freedom Struggle Museum was set up at this memorial that honours the martyrs who laid down their lives during India’s fight for independence, especially in Meerut where the First War of Independence began in 1857.
It was built to welcome a British king in 1911, but the last British troops ceremonially -- as the British are wont to do things -- departed through the Gateway in 1948, closing, with pomp, the colonial chapter of India’s history.
Freedom fighters like Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose (3 years), Lala Lajpat Rai (6 years), Sardar Ajit Singh Sandhu were shipped off to Burma and jailed at the grim prison, now over a century old, on the banks of the Irrawaddy river.
During the Quit India Movement, Mahatma Gandhi, his wife Kasturba, poet Sarojini Naidu, among others, were imprisoned in this palace that once belonged to the leader of the Nizari Ismaili Muslims. Kasturba Gandhi died here.
Mahatma Gandhi's Dandi Salt March in 1930 began in Sabarmati Ashram, Ahmedabad, and ended 387 km later at Dandi, near Navasari, on the shores of the Arabian Sea. The National Salt Satyagraha Memorial stands here.
Mahatma Gandhi scheduled his first satyagraha movement in the north Bihar district in 1917 on behalf of indigo farmers, who had to grow the crop with little financial return. The ashram stands at Bhitiharwa. Read about it here: Why Gandhi can never be erased from history.
Its name tells you about its history... In the years leading up to independence, the ground became the address for huge demonstrations led by figures like Mahatma Gandhi, Lal Bahadur Shastri, earning its sobriquet. Earlier, it was called Esplanade Maidan.
Constructed in 1909 by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s father, advocate Janakinath Bose, on Lala Lajpatrai Sarani, Bose escaped house arrest at this residence and fled to Berlin in 1941. The home is now a museum and a library.
In June 1857, when the First War of Independence began, Rani Lakshmibai seized control of the fort and led Jhansi’s troops against the East India Company. She resisted fiercely before making a bold escape on horseback.
The museum at Qaiserbagh, located in the Residency, the scene of much fighting during the Seige of Lucknow, between July and November 1857, presents details of the First War of Independence.
The Buddhist shrine in Tokyo, established in 1594 in honour of the deity of prosperity and joy, some believe has the remains of Indian freedom fighter Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, kept there since 18 September 1945.
At Kot Lakhpat Jail, also called Central Jail Lahore, Banga, Punjab-born Sardar Bhagat Singh Azad was hanged at 23 for killing a British police officer, who murdered an Indian freedom fighter.
Mahatma Gandhi announced, via his Do or Die speech, the Quit India Movement at the Bombay Session of the All India Congress Committee on August 8, 1942 at this maidan. He and 100,000 across India were arrested the next day.
At 65, Cromwell Road stands the India House, linked with several nationalists and revolutionaries like Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Bhikaji Cama, VN Chatterjee, MPT Acharya. The Indian Socialist, a nationalist newspaper, later banned by the British government, was published from here.