Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Tarapur Massacre of 1932
Mains level: NA
Bihar CM has announced that February 15 would be celebrated as “Shahid Diwas” in memory of the 34 freedom fighters who were killed by police in Tarapur town of Bihar’s Munger district 90 years ago.
Why such move?
- The Tarapur massacre was the biggest carried out by the British police after the one in Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar in 1919.
- The freedom fighters had never got their due, the CM said.
- PM Modi too had referred to the Tarapur massacre in his Mann ki Baat radio address of January 2021.
Tarapur Massacre: Course of events
- On February 15, 1932, a group of young freedom fighters planned to hoist an Indian national flag at Thana Bhavan in Tarapur.
- Police were aware of the plan, and several officers were present at the spot. Around 2 pm, even as the police carried out a brutal lathicharge, Gopal Singh succeeded in raising the flag at Thana Bhavan.
- A 4,000-strong crowd pelted the police with stones, injuring an officer of the civil administration.
- The police responded by opening indiscriminate fire on the crowd.
- After about 75 rounds were fired, 34 bodies were found at the spot, even though there were claims of an even larger number of deaths.
Trigger for protest
- The hanging of Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, and Rajguru in Lahore on March 23, 1931, sent a wave of grief and anger around the country.
- Following the collapse of the Gandhi-Irwin Pact, the Mahatma was arrested in early 1932.
- The Congress was declared an illegal organization, and Nehru, Patel, and Rajendra Prasad were also thrown in jail.
- In Munger, freedom fighters Srikrishna Singh, Nemdhari Singh, Nirapad Mukherjee, Pandit Dasrath Jha, Basukinath Rai, Dinanath Sahay, and Jaymangal Shastri were arrested.
- A call given by the Congress leader Sardar Shardul Singh Kavishwar to raise the tricolour over government buildings resonated in Tarapur.
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