Shivaram Hari Rajguru

01From Khed to Kashi

Shivaram was born at Khed, on the Bhima river north of Pune, into a Deshastha Brahmin family. His father Harinarayan died when he was six. As a teenager he left home and walked to Kashi, where he studied Sanskrit and the shastras and lived very simply. In Varanasi he came into contact with revolutionaries, and through them with Chandrashekhar Azad. He was a famous marksman in the party, and admired the Maharashtrian tradition of physical culture and of Shivaji. In the party he went by the name Raghunath.

02Lahore, 17 December 1928

To avenge Lala Lajpat Rai, the HSRA planned to kill the police superintendent James Scott in Lahore. On 17 December 1928 the man who stepped out of the police office was his assistant, J. P. Saunders. Rajguru fired first and Bhagat Singh followed; Chandrashekhar Azad covered their escape and shot the head constable Chanan Singh, who was chasing them. Rajguru slipped away to Maharashtra and was arrested at Pune in September 1929. Sentenced in the Lahore Conspiracy Case, he was hanged with Bhagat Singh and Sukhdev on 23 March 1931. In 2013 India Post issued a stamp on him.

Place · Old town on the Mula–Mutha; resettled by Shahaji and Jijabai in the 1630s; Peshwa capital from 1730PuneThe town where Shivaji grew up under Jijabai’s eye, and for nearly a century the seat of the Peshwas, from which Maratha armies rode to Attock and Bengal. Later it became the workshop of Tilak, Agarkar and the Deccan Education Society.Read →