Historically, Calcutta was the centre of activity in the early stages of the national movement of

independence. Exactly a hundred years after the fall of Bengal in the Battle of Plassey, Calcutta
saw the beginning of what is often called the First Independence Movement of India. It is also
just as often as not referred to as a War of Independence, and as one historian put it, "The so
called First National War of Independence was neither First, nor National, nor a War of
Independence". In the suburbs of Calcutta, at the Barrackpore military barracks, sepoy Mangal
Pandey sparked off a huge revolt that shook the foundations of the British Empire. This
movement is sometimes also called the Indian Mutiny, although recent evidence goes against
using this name and suggests "The Revolt of 1857" as a better and less controversial choice.

In 1883, Surendranath Banerjea organised a national conference – the first of its kind in 19th
century India. This conference heralded the birth of The Indian National Congress. The first
native president of the Indian National Congress was Sir Womesh Chunder Bonnerjee and he
was also the first Congress president to advocate self-rule by Indians, Sir Surendra Nath
Banerjea (referred to by the British as "Surrender Not") were early eminent Calcuttans, who
provoked and influenced nationalist thinking in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Other societies based on nationalist or religious thoughts were started, like the Hindu Mela.
Revolutionary organisations like the Jugantar and the Anushilan Samiti were formed with the
goal of using force against the British rulers. Among early nationalist leaders, the most
prominent were Sri Aurobindo, Indira devi Chaudhurani, Bipin Chandra Pal. The early
nationalists were inspired by Swami Vivekananda, the foremost disciple of the Hindu mystic Sri
Ramakrishna and helped by Sister Nivedita, disciple of the former. The rousing cry that
awakened India's soul was penned by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay. Now the national song of
the nation, it is an ode to the land of Bharat (India) as the Divine Mother, "Vande Mataram."

The Elgin Road residence of Subhas Chandra Bose in Calcutta was the place from where he
escaped the British to reach Germany during the Second World War. He was the co-founder of
the Indian National Army and the head of state of the Arzi Hukumate Azad Hind, formed to
counter and combat the British Raj in India. Renamed Netaji by poet laureate Rabindranath
Tagore, he is regarded by many as perhaps the most prominent and influential freedom fighter in
Indian history and is venerated in many Bengali households even today.

Muslims were also involved in the nationalist movement, most notably Fazl Huq who from
Calcutta in the 1930s attempted to organise a non-communal peasant party to agitate against the
British and the wealthy Indian landowning class. The fact that many of the Hindus in this latter
group were linked to the local Congress organisation and dominated the mainstream nationalist
movement in Bengal from Calcutta led to attempts to thwart Huq's activities and fed into the
tragic decline in communal relations that savaged Calcutta in 1946 and 1947 (see Kenneth
McPherson, "The Muslim Microcosm: the Muslims of Calcutta 1918–1935", Steiner,
Wiesbaden, 1973).