Ballia Railway Station
Place: Railway station at Ballia in Uttar Pradesh, Date: 15 August 1942 and Time: 1 pm. There was a sound of chak-chuk and the first Azadi Express started for Lucknow. There were few people inside the train, but the enthusiasm of young people was seen waving tricolor flags on the engine and bogies. This was the same Azadi Express train, which the students of Ballia burnt down the railway station and ran from Ballia to Lucknow in defiance of the British government. This entire incident is recorded in golden letters in the history of independence.
As this occasion is the anniversary of independence, it is customary for us to remember the occasion once again. In this context we will try to explain how all this happened. So let’s start from the beginning. In fact, both the Ganga and Ghaghra rivers, which connected Ballia district, were in a state of flux and eager to break their boundaries themselves. On the other hand, the people of Ballia were desperate to break the chains of slavery. The August Revolution that started with the arrest of Mahatma Gandhi in Mumbai had transformed into the ‘Balia Revolution’ by the time it reached Ballia.
Ballia railway station was set on fire in the afternoon
From August 9 onwards, people started giving direct competition to the British government. Every morning a troop of soldiers would march out and by evening the British would be watering their noses. On August 15, the people of Ballia made a similar plan. On that day, the elders of the district were going to attack the collector’s office, but the youth had something else going on in their minds. As soon as the sun rose, the youth of the district left home and reached Ballia railway station by 10 o’clock. They held a meeting there and set fire to the railway station around 12 noon.
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When a train coming from Ghazipur reached Ballia station, the flames rising from the station did not stop. More than two hundred youth surrounded this train. Taking the driver hostage, the train was started in the name of Azadi Express at around 1 am. At that time all these youth climbed from the engine of the train to the roof of the coach with the tricolor and reached Lucknow the next morning waving the tricolor and singing freedom songs all the way. The train started from Ballia and was welcomed and boarded by freedom fighters in Ghazipur, Faizabad and Barabanki.
On 18 August, all the talukas were captured by the revolutionaries.
By the time it reached Lucknow, the train was packed from inside to outside. The train reached Lucknow on the morning of 17th August, here at Ballia, these 17th and 18th August proved to be a major blow to the British Government. The people of Ballia had captured all the taluks of the district. The situation was such that the people of the police and administration began to defend themselves. Until the day before, the officers who were driving their horses through the crowd at the behest of the British were flogged and scolded, while the same officers were declaring themselves Indians in front of the crowd and saving their lives.
The revolutionaries broke the locks of the jail and the collector escaped.
From that day the people of Ballia also went out of the house with full preparation. Men carried sticks and rods while women participated in this fight with brooms, rolling pins and tweezers etc. These people captured the Bairia police station in no time. At that time, all the policemen, including the police station officer, were locked in their respective lockups. Seeing the situation, on the night of 18th August, Collector Jagadishwar Nigam wrote to the British Government that it was not possible to stop Ballia. In the morning he got news that the revolutionaries were going to break the lock of the jail and come towards the collector’s office. This information wet his pants and he ran away from the chair. After this the brave fighter Chittu Pandey took over the command of Ballia. Thus, Ballia became independent on 19 August 1942, five years before the country’s independence.
