Bihar was at the centre of India’s freedom movement at three turning points. In 1857 Babu Kunwar Singh of Jagdishpur led one of the longest risings against the East India Company; in 1917 Mahatma Gandhi began his first satyagraha in India at Champaran; and on 11 August 1942 seven students were shot dead at the Patna Secretariat while trying to hoist the national flag. In between, Bihar gave the movement the Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha (founded at Sonepur in 1929 under Swami Sahajanand Saraswati), the Congress Socialist Party (formed at Patna in 1934) and leaders such as Rajendra Prasad, Jayaprakash Narayan and Shri Krishna Sinha.
This page sets out the dates, organisations and people BPSC asks about, with a short note on each phase and a 30-question quiz at the end. Where popular GK books and the record disagree, as they do on when the Bihar Provincial Congress Committee and the Kisan Sabha were founded, the page follows K.K. Datta’s History of the Freedom Movement in Bihar, the Government of Bihar’s official history, and says so.
Key dates at a glance
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 30 June 1855 | Santhal Hul begins at Bhognadih under Sidho and Kanho (now in Jharkhand) |
| 7 July 1857 | Pir Ali and 13 others hanged at Patna after the rising of 3 July; Waris Ali of Tirhut had been hanged on 6 July |
| 25 July 1857 | Sepoys of three regiments mutiny at Danapur and join Kunwar Singh |
| 27 July to 3 August 1857 | Siege of Arrah House |
| 2 August 1857 | Battle of Bibiganj: Major Vincent Eyre defeats Kunwar Singh and relieves Arrah the next day |
| 23 April 1858 | Kunwar Singh defeats Captain Le Grand near Jagdishpur (now celebrated as Vijayotsav); he dies on 26 April |
| 1864 to 1865 | Wahabi trials at Ambala and Patna; Ahmadullah of Patna transported for life |
| 1906 | Bihari Students’ Conference founded |
| Early 1908 | First Bihar Provincial Conference at Patna, Sir Ali Imam presiding |
| 1908 | Bihar Provincial Congress Committee formed at the Sonepur fair |
| 30 April 1908 | Muzaffarpur bomb; Khudiram Bose hanged on 11 August 1908 |
| 22 March 1912 | Province of Bihar and Orissa created (in force from 1 April 1912) |
| 26 to 28 December 1912 | 27th Congress session at Bankipore (Patna), R.N. Mudholkar presiding |
| 16 December 1916 | Home Rule League formed at Bankipur, Mazharul Haque president |
| 15 April 1917 | Gandhi reaches Motihari: the Champaran Satyagraha |
| 1918 | Champaran Agrarian Act ends the tinkathia system |
| 6 February 1921 | Gandhi inaugurates the Bihar Vidyapith at Patna |
| 12 December 1928 | Black flags for the Simon Commission at Patna |
| November 1929 | Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha founded at the Sonepur fair |
| 6 April 1930 | Salt law broken at Bareja in Saran: Civil Disobedience begins in Bihar |
| 15 February 1932 | Police fire on flag satyagrahis at Tarapur (Munger) |
| 17 May 1934 | Congress Socialist Party formed at Patna, Acharya Narendra Deva presiding |
| 11 April 1936 | All India Kisan Sabha founded at Lucknow, with Sahajanand as its first president |
| 20 July 1937 | Shri Krishna Sinha’s Congress ministry takes office, after Mohammad Yunus’s interim ministry from 1 April |
| 31 October 1939 | The Congress ministry resigns over the war |
| 11 August 1942 | Seven students killed at the Patna Secretariat |
| November 1942 | Jayaprakash Narayan escapes from Hazaribagh Central Jail on Diwali night |
| 15 August 1947 | Foundation stone of the Shaheed Smarak laid in Patna |
Organisations and their founders
| Organisation | Founder or leader |
|---|---|
| Bihari Students’ Conference (1906, Patna) | Rajendra Prasad took the lead; the first meeting, in the hall of Patna College, was chaired by Sharfuddin |
| Bihar Provincial Congress Committee (1908, Sonepur fair) | Formed at a meeting presided over by Nawab Sarfaraz Hosain Khan; Syed Hasan Imam was its president by December 1908 |
| Home Rule League, Bihar (16 December 1916, Bankipur) | Mazharul Haque (president), with Chandra Bansi Sahay and Baijnath Narayan Singh as secretaries |
| Sadaqat Ashram (1920 to 1921, Digha, Patna) | Mazharul Haque |
| Bihar Vidyapith (6 February 1921, Patna) | Inaugurated by Gandhi; Mazharul Haque chancellor, Brajkishore Prasad vice-chancellor, Rajendra Prasad principal of the Bihar National College |
| Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha (November 1929, Sonepur) | Swami Sahajanand Saraswati (president) and Shri Krishna Sinha (secretary) |
| Bihar Socialist Party (1931) | Founders usually named: Phulan Prasad Varma, Ganga Sharan Sinha and Rambriksh Benipuri |
| Congress Socialist Party (17 May 1934, Patna) | Conference presided over by Acharya Narendra Deva; Jayaprakash Narayan became general secretary |
| All India Kisan Sabha (11 April 1936, Lucknow) | Swami Sahajanand Saraswati (first president), N.G. Ranga (general secretary) |
| Azad Dasta (1942 to 1943) | Guerrilla squads organised by Jayaprakash Narayan and trained in the Nepal terai; Suraj Narayan Singh led the Bihar unit |
Newspapers of the movement
| Newspaper | Founder or editor |
|---|---|
| Bihar Bandhu (Hindi, 1872; Patna from 1874) | Keshav Ram Bhatt |
| Behar Herald (English weekly, 1870s) | Guru Prasad Sen |
| The Behar Times (1894; renamed The Beharee in 1906) | Sachchidananda Sinha, with Mahesh Narayan |
| The Searchlight (1918) | Sachchidananda Sinha, with Rajendra Prasad among the founders |
| The Motherland (1921) | Mazharul Haque, from Sadaqat Ashram |
1857 in Bihar
The revolt reached Bihar in July 1857. At Patna a rising on 3 July ended with Commissioner William Tayler hanging Pir Ali, a bookseller, and 13 others on 7 July; Waris Ali, a police jamadar of Tirhut, had been hanged the day before. On 25 July sepoys at Danapur mutinied and marched to Arrah, where Babu Kunwar Singh of Jagdishpur, then about 80, took command. They besieged Arrah House from 27 July until Major Vincent Eyre defeated them at Bibiganj on 2 August and relieved the house the next day.
Kunwar Singh then led his men on a long march through central India and Awadh, as far as Azamgarh, before recrossing the Ganga in April 1858. He defeated Captain Le Grand near Jagdishpur on 23 April 1858, the victory now marked every year as Vijayotsav, and died three days later. His brother Amar Singh carried on the fight. The whole campaign is in the note on Veer Kunwar Singh and the Revolt of 1857 in Bihar.
The Wahabi movement at Patna
Patna was the Indian centre of the movement begun by Syed Ahmad of Rae Bareli, who stayed in the city from 1820 to 1822. Under Wilayat Ali and Inayat Ali, and later Ahmadullah and Yahya Ali of the Sadiqpur family, Patna sent money and men to the movement’s base on the north-west frontier. The British broke it in the trials of the 1860s: at Ambala in 1864 Yahya Ali and others were sentenced to death, commuted to transportation, and at Patna in 1865 Ahmadullah was transported for life to the Andamans.
Tribal risings in the old Bihar province
Three major tribal risings took place in areas that were part of Bihar until 2000 and are now in Jharkhand: the Santhal Hul led by Sidho and Kanho, which began at Bhognadih on 30 June 1855; Birsa Munda’s Ulgulan of 1899 to 1900 (Birsa died on 9 June 1900); and the Tana Bhagat movement begun by Jatra Oraon in 1914, whose followers later joined the Congress. They are covered in the note on tribal and peasant movements in Bihar.
Political awakening and the new province, 1872 to 1912
Political life began with the press. Bihar Bandhu, a Hindi paper founded by Keshav Ram Bhatt in 1872, moved to Patna in 1874; Guru Prasad Sen edited the English Behar Herald; and in 1894 Sachchidananda Sinha and Mahesh Narayan started The Behar Times (renamed The Beharee in 1906) to argue for a province separate from Bengal. Students organised early: the Bihari Students’ Conference was founded in 1906, with the young Rajendra Prasad in the lead.
1908 was the year of organisation. The first Bihar Provincial Conference met at Patna early in the year under Sir Ali Imam, and at the Sonepur fair a meeting presided over by Nawab Sarfaraz Hosain Khan formed the Bihar Provincial Congress Committee; Syed Hasan Imam was its president by the Madras Congress that December. The campaign for separation succeeded when the Delhi Durbar of 12 December 1911 announced the province of Bihar and Orissa, created on 22 March 1912. Patna then hosted its first Congress session, the 27th, at Bankipore on 26 to 28 December 1912, presided over by R.N. Mudholkar, with Mazharul Haque as chairman of the reception committee. The story of the new province is told in Bihar at a Glance.
When was the Bihar Provincial Congress Committee formed?
Many GK books give 1920, and some exam questions have assumed that year. K.K. Datta’s official history is clear that the committee was formed at the Sonepur fair in 1908; what happened in 1920 and 1921 was its reorganisation under the new Congress constitution adopted at Nagpur. If a question asks for the year of formation, 1908 is the year supported by the record.
The Champaran Satyagraha, 1917
European planters in Champaran forced tenants to grow indigo on 3 kathas of every bigha (3/20 of the holding), the tinkathia system. When synthetic dye made indigo unprofitable, they took tawan (lump-sum compensation) and higher rents to release tenants from it. Rajkumar Shukla, a Champaran cultivator, met Gandhi at the Lucknow Congress in December 1916 with Brajkishore Prasad, who moved the Champaran resolution there, and kept after him until he agreed to come.
Gandhi reached Patna on 10 April 1917 and Motihari on 15 April. On 16 April he was served an order under Section 144 to leave the district. He refused, pleaded guilty before the court at Motihari on 18 April, and on 20 and 21 April the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir Edward Gait, had the case withdrawn. With Rajendra Prasad, Brajkishore Prasad, Mazharul Haque, Anugrah Narayan Sinha and J.B. Kripalani, Gandhi then recorded the statements of thousands of tenants. The government appointed the Champaran Agrarian Committee under F.G. Sly in June 1917, with Gandhi as a member; on its report the Champaran Agrarian Act, 1918 abolished tinkathia, and the planters refunded a quarter of the tawan.
Non-Cooperation and Khilafat, 1920 to 1922
Bihar took up Non-Cooperation at the 12th Bihar Provincial Conference at Bhagalpur on 28 and 29 August 1920, under Rajendra Prasad. Students who left government colleges were taken in at Sadaqat Ashram, which Mazharul Haque set up at Digha in Patna, and on 6 February 1921 Gandhi inaugurated the Bihar Vidyapith and the Bihar National College, with Haque as chancellor, Brajkishore Prasad as vice-chancellor and Rajendra Prasad as principal of the college. Haque’s weekly, The Motherland, began from the ashram in the autumn of 1921. In December 1922 Gaya hosted the 37th Congress session under C.R. Das, which rejected his proposal to contest the council elections.
The Simon Commission and Civil Disobedience, 1928 to 1934
The Simon Commission was met at Patna on 12 December 1928 with black flags and a demonstration of about 30,000 people. Civil Disobedience began in Bihar with the salt satyagraha: volunteers broke the salt law at Bareja in Saran on 6 April 1930, in Champaran on 15 April and at Nakhas Pind in Patna on 16 April, and Shri Krishna Sinha was arrested at Gadhpura in Begusarai on 23 April. Bihar then turned to a campaign against the chaukidari tax; at Bihpur in Bhagalpur, Rajendra Prasad and his companions were beaten by the police on 9 June 1930.
The bloodiest day came on 15 February 1932 at Tarapur in Munger, when police fired on volunteers trying to hoist the national flag on the police station. The official count was 8 dead and unofficial enquiries at the time counted at least 14; the Bihar government, which now marks 15 February as Shaheed Diwas, honours 34 martyrs. After the earthquake of 15 January 1934, which killed about 20,000 people, Rajendra Prasad led the Bihar Central Relief Committee.
The Kisan Sabha and the socialists
The peasant movement was Bihar’s distinctive contribution. The Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha was formed in November 1929 at the Sonepur fair, with Swami Sahajanand Saraswati as president and Shri Krishna Sinha as secretary. (Some GK books give 4 March 1929; the official history and later research place it at the fair in November.) Sahajanand went on to become the first president of the All India Kisan Sabha, founded at Lucknow on 11 April 1936, and led the Bakasht struggles of 1937 to 1939, when tenants fought evictions from land that zamindars claimed as their own cultivation (bakasht), at places such as Barahiya Tal and Reora.
The socialists organised in Bihar too. A Bihar Socialist Party was formed in 1931, and on 17 May 1934, the day before the All India Congress Committee met at Patna, a conference presided over by Acharya Narendra Deva formed the Congress Socialist Party within the Congress. Jayaprakash Narayan became its general secretary at the party’s Bombay conference that October.
Revolutionaries
Bihar’s best-known revolutionary episode involved two young Bengalis. On 30 April 1908 Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki threw a bomb at Muzaffarpur at a carriage they took to be District Judge Kingsford’s, killing two Englishwomen. Chaki shot himself at Mokama when cornered, and Khudiram was hanged in Muzaffarpur jail on 11 August 1908.
In the 1930s Yogendra Shukla, a founder member of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association, led a revolutionary group in north Bihar. One of its members, Baikunth Shukla, attacked Phanindra Nath Ghosh, the approver who had given evidence against Bhagat Singh’s comrades, at Bettiah on 9 November 1932; Ghosh died a week later, and Baikunth Shukla was hanged in Gaya jail in 1934.
The 1937 ministry and the Quit India Movement
After the 1937 elections the Congress, the largest party, at first refused office, and Mohammad Yunus of the Muslim Independent Party headed an interim ministry from 1 April 1937. Shri Krishna Sinha’s Congress ministry, with Anugrah Narayan Sinha as his chief colleague, took office on 20 July 1937 and resigned on 31 October 1939, when India was declared at war without consultation.
Bihar saw some of the fiercest resistance of the Quit India Movement. On 11 August 1942 students marched on the Secretariat at Patna to hoist the tricolour, and seven of them were shot dead: Umakant Prasad Sinha, Ramanand Singh, Satish Prasad Jha, Jagatpati Kumar, Devipada Choudhary, Rajendra Singh and Ramgovind Singh. The Shaheed Smarak in front of the old Secretariat marks the spot; its foundation stone was laid on 15 August 1947. On Diwali night in November 1942 Jayaprakash Narayan escaped from Hazaribagh Central Jail with five companions, among them Yogendra Shukla, Suraj Narayan Singh and Ramnandan Mishra, and organised the Azad Dasta, guerrilla squads trained in the Nepal terai. When the Nepal police arrested him and Ram Manohar Lohia in May 1943, an Azad Dasta raid freed them from Hanumannagar jail. More on 1942 is in the note on Bihar in the Quit India Movement.
Leaders of Bihar’s freedom movement
| Leader | Remembered for |
|---|---|
| Babu Kunwar Singh | Led the 1857 revolt in Shahabad at about 80; victory over Le Grand on 23 April 1858 |
| Pir Ali | Patna bookseller hanged on 7 July 1857 |
| Sachchidananda Sinha | The Behar Times (1894) and the campaign for a separate province |
| Syed Hasan Imam | President of the Bihar Congress Committee by 1908; presided over the special Congress session at Bombay in 1918 |
| Mazharul Haque | Home Rule League president (1916), Sadaqat Ashram, The Motherland, chancellor of the Bihar Vidyapith |
| Rajkumar Shukla | Persuaded Gandhi to come to Champaran |
| Brajkishore Prasad | Moved the Champaran resolution at Lucknow in 1916; vice-chancellor of the Bihar Vidyapith |
| Rajendra Prasad | Champaran, the Bihar Vidyapith and the 1934 earthquake relief; Congress president in 1934, 1939 and 1947; first President of India |
| Anugrah Narayan Sinha | Champaran; presided over the 1928 provincial conference against the Simon Commission; minister from 1937 |
| Shri Krishna Sinha | “Bihar Kesari”; first secretary of the Kisan Sabha; Premier from 1937 and the first Chief Minister |
| Swami Sahajanand Saraswati | Founded the Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha (1929); first president of the All India Kisan Sabha (1936) |
| Jayaprakash Narayan | General secretary of the Congress Socialist Party; the Hazaribagh escape and the Azad Dasta (1942) |
| Yogendra and Baikunth Shukla | Revolutionaries of the HSRA; Baikunth Shukla was hanged in 1934 |
Short biographies of Rajendra Prasad and Swami Sahajanand Saraswati are in Great Personalities of Bihar.
What BPSC has asked
- 60th to 62nd CCE: who led the 1857 revolt in Bihar (Kunwar Singh), who drew Gandhi to Champaran (Rajkumar Shukla), the first president of the All India Kisan Sabha (Sahajanand Saraswati) and the years of the Santhal revolt (1855 to 1856)
- 65th CCE: the formation of the Bihar Socialist Party in 1931
- 69th CCE: who organised the Bakasht movement (Sahajanand Saraswati), the Champaran Agrarian Committee and the year Bihar was separated from Bengal (1912)
- 70th CCE: the president of the 1912 Bankipore Congress (R.N. Mudholkar) and when the new province came into force (April 1912)
- 71st CCE: a matching question on Champaran, the Azad Dasta and the Bihar Kisan Sabha, and a question on the Home Rule League in Bihar
For the full set, practise with the 152 Bihar history previous-year questions.
Bihar freedom movement quiz: 30 MCQs
Test yourself on this page. The quiz is scored the way BPSC scores the OMR sheet. For more practice, try the Gandhian era quiz and the modern history 1937 to 1947 quiz.
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Frequently asked questions
What was Bihar’s role in the freedom movement?
Bihar led at three turning points: Kunwar Singh’s revolt in 1857, Gandhi’s first satyagraha in India at Champaran in 1917, and the Quit India rising of 1942, when seven students were killed at the Patna Secretariat. It also produced the Kisan Sabha under Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, the Congress Socialist Party (formed at Patna in 1934) and leaders such as Rajendra Prasad and Jayaprakash Narayan.
Who founded the Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha?
Swami Sahajanand Saraswati. The Sabha was formed in November 1929 at the Sonepur fair, with Sahajanand as president and Shri Krishna Sinha as secretary. Sahajanand also became the first president of the All India Kisan Sabha in 1936.
When was the Bihar Provincial Congress Committee formed?
In 1908, at a meeting during the Sonepur fair presided over by Nawab Sarfaraz Hosain Khan, according to the Government of Bihar’s official history. It was reorganised in 1920 and 1921 under the Congress’s new constitution, which is why 1920 also appears in some books.
Who were the seven martyrs of the Patna Secretariat?
Umakant Prasad Sinha, Ramanand Singh, Satish Prasad Jha, Jagatpati Kumar, Devipada Choudhary, Rajendra Singh and Ramgovind Singh, students shot dead on 11 August 1942 while trying to hoist the national flag on the Secretariat.
Related pages
- Veer Kunwar Singh and the Revolt of 1857 in Bihar
- Bihar in the Quit India Movement, 1942
- Tribal and peasant movements in Bihar, 1855 to 1947
- Great personalities of Bihar
- Bihar at a Glance: ancient names, formation in 1912 and key facts
- Bihar history PYQ: 152 questions in one test
Sources
Checked 4 November 2026. Dates follow K.K. Datta’s official history where sources disagree; the exam topics in “What BPSC has asked” are from published solved papers.
- K.K. Datta, History of the Freedom Movement in Bihar, Vol. I, 1857 to 1928 (Government of Bihar, 1957)
- K.K. Datta, History of the Freedom Movement in Bihar, Vol. II, 1928 to 1941 (Government of Bihar, 1957)
- Gandhi Heritage Portal: Champaran, April 1917, day by day
- Indian Culture Portal: Gandhi’s satyagraha in Champaran
- Gandhi Heritage Portal: Sadaqat Ashram and the Bihar Vidyapith
- Report of the 27th Indian National Congress, Bankipore, 26 to 28 December 1912
- Jitendra Kumar, Agrarian Issues, Peasant Movements and the Congress Politics in Bihar, 1929 to 1950 (NMML, 2020)
- Anil Nauriya, Narendra Deva in India’s Freedom Movement (NMML, 2015)
- Bihar Legislative Assembly: a brief history
- PTI via ThePrint: the seven martyrs of the Patna Secretariat, 1942
- PTI via ThePrint: the Shaheed Smarak foundation, 15 August 1947
- The Better India: Jayaprakash Narayan’s escape from Hazaribagh jail
- All India Radio: Hul Diwas, 30 June
- Newslaundry: the history of Bihar’s press
Harsha