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The history of Indias struggle for freedom is usually told from the perspective of the nonviolent movement Yet the story of armed resistance to colonial occupation is just as important Names such as Vinayak Savarkar Aurobindo Ghosh Rashbehari Bose Bagha Jatin Sachindra Nath Sanyal Bhagat Singh Chandrashekhar Azad and Subhas Chandra Bose are still widely remembered Their story is almost always presented as acts of individual heroism and not as part of a wider movement that had any overarching strategy or significant impact on the overall struggle for Independence In reality the revolutionaries were part of a large network that sustained armed resistance against the British Empire for half a century They not only created a wide network inside India but also established nodes in Britain France Thailand Germany Persia Russia Italy Ireland the United States Japan and Singapore At various points they received official support and recognition from the governments of some of these countries Even the internal dynamics of the Indian National Congress of the time cannot be understood without the revolutionaries who enjoyed widespread support within the organization This was no smallscale movement of naive individual heroism but one that involved a large number of extraordinary young men and women who were connected in multiple ways to each other and to the evolving events of their times