Eighteen kilometres from Midnapore town, the village of Mohoboni preserves the birthplace of Khudiram Bose, the youngest martyr of India's independence movement, hanged on 11 August 1908 at the age of eighteen. His story is one of the most arresting in the entire history of Indian resistance: a schoolboy who went from distributing seditious leaflets to throwing a bomb at a British magistrate's carriage, was caught, tried and executed, and who is said to have walked to the gallows smiling, a copy of the Bhagavad Gita in his hand.
Khudiram's Story
Khudiram Bose was born on 3 December 1889 in Mohoboni to Trailokyanath Bose, a tahsildar of modest means. He studied at Midnapore Collegiate School but left before completing his schooling, drawn into the revolutionary movement by his teacher Satyendranath Basu. At fifteen he was first arrested for distributing seditious pamphlets in Midnapore market. He joined the Anushilan Samiti revolutionary group and in April 1908 was tasked with assassinating Douglas Kingsford, the notoriously harsh magistrate who had flogged a young student in a Calcutta courtroom. Khudiram and a companion threw a bomb at Kingsford's carriage in Muzaffarpur, Bihar, but they hit the wrong carriage, killing two innocent English women. He was captured, tried and convicted, and hanged in Muzaffarpur jail. He was eighteen years and two hundred and forty days old. Within days of his execution, his photograph was being sold in the bazaars of Bengal as a devotional image.
The Memorial Today
Khudiram's birthplace at Mohoboni was renovated and opened to tourists to mark his 125th birth anniversary in 2014. The memorial compound includes the original house, a museum with photographs and documents relating to his life and trial, and a small park. The site is maintained by the state government and is signposted on the road from Midnapore. It is a place of quiet pilgrimage for Bengali families, particularly on his birth anniversary (3 December) and execution anniversary (11 August), when small ceremonies and processions are held.
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