Anushilan Samiti
Anushilan Samiti (Ōnūshīlōn sōmītī, "lit": body-building society) was a Bengali Indian organisation that existed in the first quarter of the twentieth century, and propounded revolutionary violence as the means for ending British rule in India. The organisation arose from a conglomeration of local youth groups and gyms ("Akhara") in Bengal in 1902. It had two prominent, if somewhat independent, arms in East and West Bengal identified as Dhaka Anushilan Samiti centred in Dhaka (modern day Bangladesh), and the Jugantar group (centred at Calcutta) respectively.
Anushilan Samiti
The nationalist publication "Jugantar", which served as the organ of the "Samiti", inspired fanatical loyalty among its readers and made a deep impression on this group. By 1907 it was selling 7,000 copies which later rose to 20,000. Its message, aimed at elite politically conscious readers was essentially critique and defiance of British rule in India, and justification of political violence. The publication inspired a proportion of the young men who joined "Anushilan Samiti" cited the influence of "Jugantar" in their decisions. The editor of the paper, Bhupendranath Datta was arrested and sentenced to one-year's rigorous imprisonment in 1907. The "Samiti" responded with the attempt on the life of Douglas Kingsford who presided over the trial. "Jugantar" itself responded with defiant editorials. The defiance of "Jugantar" saw it face five more prosecutions that left it in financial ruins by 1908. These prosecutions brought the paper more publicity, and helped disseminate the "Samiti"'s ideology of revolutionary nationalism. Shukla Sanyal notes in 2014 that revolutionary terrorism as an ideology began to win support amongst a significant populace in Bengal, tacitly even if not overt.
Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, the founder of the Hindu nationalist organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), learned from the Anushilan Samiti. He was sent to Calcutta by B. S. Moonje in 1910 to study medicine, and to learn techniques of violent nationalism from secret revolutionary organizations in Bengal. There he lived with independence activist Shyam Sundar Chakravarthy, and had contacts with revolutionaries like Ram Prasad Bismil.