Khudiram Bose

Today an advertisement issued by the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting in The Hindu caught my eye. It carried a photo of a young lad, Khudiram Bose, with the words "The Youngest Revolutionary who laid his life in the Service of mother India". He has lived hardly 19 years ! I vaguely recall reading about him long back in NCERT history book alongside the names of well known revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh and Chandrasekhar Azad. I set about to research about him on the net. Wikipedia had an entry on him about how he planned to assassinate Kingsford, the Calcutta Presidency Magistrate, but inadvertently killed two British ladies instead. He was arrested and sentenced to death. Wikipedia says "he was hanged on August 11, 1908. But the one thing that surprised everyone was that as he was hanged he was still smiling. And to this the Bengali poet Kaji Najrul Islam wrote a poem to honor him."
As our 61st Independent Day is fast approaching, let us pause a moment and think about the immense sacrifice of people like Khudiram Bose and do our bit towards making our motherland proud.