2016-10-22 Sat

“Kucch aarzu nahi hai, hai aarzu to yah
Rakh de koi zara-si khake-watan kafan me.
Dar-o-deewar pe hasrat se nazar karte hain
Kush raho ahle watan hum to safar karte hain”

Were the last parting words of the great freedom fighter Ashfaqulla Khan.

Ashfaqullah Khan was born today in 1900 in Shahjahanpur in Utter Pradesh. His father, Shafiq Ullah Khan belonged to a Mughal family which was famous for their military background. Ashfaqullah was the youngest amongst all his four brothers.

In 1922, Mahatma Gandhi withdrew the Non-Cooperation Movement after the Chauri Chaura incident, so many Indian youths were left dejected. Ashfaq was also one of them. He felt that India should become free as soon as possible and so he decided to join the revolutionaries and also win the friendship of Pandit Ram Prasad Bismil, one of the famous revolutionaries of the time.

The revolutionaries felt that soft words of non-violence could not win India its Independence. This was a beginning of Kakori train robbery. The Kakori Revolution (also known as Kakori Train Robbery) was a train robbery that took place between Kakori and Alamnagar, near Lucknow, on 9 August 1925 during the Indian Independence Movement against the British Indian Government. The robbery was organised by Ram Prasad Bismil and Ashfaqullah Khan who belonged to the Hindustan Republican Association (HRA).

The commemorative stamp of this incident was released by Indian postal service on 19th December 1997 along with the first-day cover. The denomination on the stamp is INR 2. The stamp has a print of newspaper of the day when Ashfaqullah Khan and Ram Prasad Bismil were executed along with their portrait and names.

On his birth anniversary let us remember the unsung hero Ashfaqullah Khan of our freedom struggle.