History of NBS

"Young Comrades, our country is passing through a chaos."

Bhagwati Charan Vohra

Manifesto of Naujawan Bharat Sabha, 6 April 1928

March 1926 — Lahore

The Indian nationalist movement was at a crossroads.

The Non-Cooperation Movement had been withdrawn by Mahatma Gandhi in 1922 following the violence at Chauri Chaura. A generation of disillusioned youth was left searching for a more militant, uncompromising path to freedom.

The revolutionary movement had suffered a severe blow after the suppression of the Hindustan Republican Association (HRA) in the Kakori Conspiracy case of 1925. Revolutionary activity had largely been confined to secret societies operating in the shadows, groups like the Anushilan Samiti, Yugantar, and the early HRA.

Their methods were conspiratorial. Their reach was limited. Their engagement with the masses was minimal.

It was into this vacuum between the constitutionalism of the Congress moderates and the sudden halt of mass civil disobedience that a new, more ideological, and more class-conscious revolutionary current emerged.

The Founding

In March 1926, in Lahore, a group of young radicals - Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, Bhagwati Charan Vohra, Yashpal, and others founded the Naujawan Bharat Sabha (NBS) .

It was not merely another youth organisation. It was, in many ways, a pioneering experiment in mass mobilisation.

Bhagat Singh and his comrades recognised that armed revolution without popular support was doomed to fail. The revolutionary must not remain a romantic figure operating in isolation, but must become an organiser of the people.

The Sabha was conceived as a public, legal front, a mass organisation that would mobilise youth, workers, and peasants openly, distinct from the secret activities of the underground revolutionary groups.

Its founding president was Bhagat Singh, with Sukhdev serving as its secretary. But the Sabha was never a one-man show; it was built through the collective efforts of young radicals who would go on to shape India's revolutionary legacy.

The Naujawan Bharat Sabha was a radical departure from the traditional revolutionary societies 

The Sabha actively sought to break the barriers of caste and community:

It was a socialist, secular, non-communal platform. It actively sought and included members from Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh communities, united by a single dream: An India free from not just British rule but from all oppression, a republic of workers and peasants.

Within a few years, the Sabha established branches across Punjab, Delhi, United Provinces, and beyond. Its membership swelled into the thousands, a remarkable feat for an organisation led by young men in their early twenties, operating under the watchful eye of an empire determined to crush dissent.

The aim? As Bhagat Singh would later declare: "We want a socialist revolution, the indispensable preliminary to which is the political revolution."

This was not just a fight for flags and anthems. It was a fight for a new social order.

The Sabha's first major public outing came with its inaugural conference, held in Amritsar on 11-13 April 1928. The venue was the historic Jallianwala Bagh a sign of defiance. The inaugural conference not only announced the Sabha it provided the political direction. It finally spread out of the college campuses and declared itself as a major provincial force in the undivided Punjab. Presiding over the conference was Kedarnath Sehgal and several committees were created to steer Sabha’s future works led by people like Sohan Singh Josh as chairman, along with Ram Chander, M.A. Majid, Ehsan Ilahi, Professor Chhabildas, Gopal Singh Qaumi and Hari Singh.

Barely ten months later, the second provincial conference was held in Lahore from 22 to 24 February 1929, under the presidentship of Sohan Singh Josh. The political climate was highly charged at this point. The murder of J.P. Saunders the previous December had provoked a wave of government arrests, and the Sabha responded by passing resolutions that censured the British authorities in the severest possible terms for their indiscriminate round ups of young men. It also demanded the repeal of the repressive Arms Act.

The third conference scheduled for 9-11 August faced immediate and severe obstruction from the authorities. The designated president, Master Mota Singh, was arrested before he could take the chair, and the responsibility fell upon Amir Alam Awan. This crisis was turned into a propaganda victory by the organizers as thousands of people came to Amritsar railway station to welcome Alam Awan and thousands attended the conference defying the authorities.

The fourth conference was organised in same year in Lahore on 26-27 December 1929, this time under the presidentship of Suhasini Nambiar, sister of Sarojini Naidu. This session passed a remarkable resolution congratulating Dhanwantri, Ram Kishan and other Sabha activists who had just been arrested for bombing Viceroy Lord Irwin's train near Delhi — a gesture that openly celebrated direct action against the colonial state. The conference also resolved to expand the Naujawan Bharat Sabha to an all-India level, it also passed a resolution condemning the barbaric treatment given to Bhagat Singh and his comrade in the prison keeping them firmly in the public eye.

Apart from these conferences, Sabha also continuously engaged in grassroot activism. For example, when prisoners of Lahore conspiracy case went on a hunger strike in 1929, Sabha organised several protests and conferences in support throughout Punjab. In July 1930, it observed Bhagat Singh Remembrance Day in Amritsar despite sever repression by the authorities.

The Sabha placed enormous emphasis on student organisation, recognising that the youth were essential part of any mass movement. It helped form the Punjab Students Union, with Abdul Majid serving as its first president in 1928, and its conference in Lahore that year was addressed by both Subhas Chandra Bose and Jawaharlal Nehru. The 1929 session of the Punjab Students Union, presided over by Subhas Chandra Bose and chaired by Manmohini Zutshi, read out a message from Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt from prison, forging an unbreakable link between the student movement and the revolutionary underground. For younger children, the Sabha sponsored the Bal Students' Union, with Dyanat Rai as its president, and the Bal Bharat Sabha, formed in 1929 for those between the ages of twelve and sixteen, with Kahn Chand as president. These organizations were not just for show over 1100 students and youths from these organisations faced imprisonment.

Repression 

NBS was officially banned on 23 June 1930, along with other leftist organisations like the Kirti Kisan Party, its activists simply regrouped under a slightly altered name - Hind Naujawan Sabha with Babu Singh as its president. Dhanwantri, Ram Kishan, Mangal Das, Abdul Malik and several other members of the Sabha were arrested after the ban. But the Sabha continued its work under different aliases. In early 1931, it formed the Bhagat Singh Appeal Committee, which organized a march in Lahore that was attended by more than 15 thousand people mostly students who paraded through the city, it collected lakhs of signatures opposing the death penalty of Bhagat Singh and his comrades.

Between April and August 1931, immediately after the martyrdom of Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev, more than a hundred NBS activists were arrested. After a year of severe repression, the Sabha attempted a revival in May 1932, when seventeen representatives met and formed a seven-member organising committee, and it even managed to hold a conference on 16 July 1933, demanding that political prisoners not be sent to the Andamans and condemning the repression on prisoners. Fearful of the influence and revolutionary activities of the NBS, on 10 September 1934, the government finally banned the Naujawan Bharat Sabha for good under section 16(1) of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1908, along with the Communist Party of India and other leftist organisations. That effectively marked the end of the Sabha's revolutionary one decade existence. Many of its members later joined the Punjab Socialist Party or the Revolutionary Socialist Party, and other revolutionary organisations. 

The Naujawan Bharat Sabha in its brief and turbulent decade of existence was in many ways first attempt at engaging with mass revolutionary politics. Its founders Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, Bhagwati Charan Vohra, Yashpal and their comrades were not merely patriots who wished to see one flag replaced with others but they understood the very roots of all oppression and wished for a world where all forms of oppressions will be uprooted and a better world can be structured on socialist basis. They understood that no revolution could succeed without active participation of the youth and masses, secret societies conspiracies can only take you so far, to build a successful revolution you need the support of masses. 

Much remains to be learned from the Naujawan Bharat Sabha, and even more remains to be done to realise the dream they left unfinished.