(i) The revolutionary goal was the end of British rule through extreme self sacrifice. Their methods were to assassinate unpopular colonial officials who were responsible for giving shape to the repressive acts of the government.

(ii) The colonial response to the mass movements was always two fold. On the one hand, it gave concessions to the leaders by undertaking constitutional reforms and inviting them to participate in the limited elections, on the other hand, there was large scale repression mainly through arrest of key leaders.

(iii) The extremist leadership spent several years in jail. Their being in and out of jails resulted in the revolutionary movement largely being underground, operated by secret organisations. These organisations had their genesis in the samitis of the Swadeshi days.

(iv) The revolutionaries also undertook Swadeshi dacoities to raise funds for their movement.

(v) At Deoband, in an Islamic centre of learning in Uttar Pradesh, a group of learned men, or Ulema, also preached the revolutionary message which had a large following among Muslims.

(vi) The revolutionary movement had also started slowly spreading beyond the shores of India. Shyamji Krishnaverma had started in 1905 a centre for Indian students in London called India House.

(vii) In 1907 this organisation was taken over by a revolutionary group under VD Savarkar. Madanlal Dhingra of this organisation assassinated the India Office bureaucrat Curzon-Wyllie in London in 1909.

(viii) In Europe (Paris and Geneva) Madame Cama, a Parsi revolutionary, established contacts with French socialists and brought out the revolutionary journal Bande Mataram.

(ix) In Berlin, Virendranath Chattopadhay and others operated since 1909. In Britain and Europe the revolutionary groups were fairly isolated.

(x) However, the movement found something of a mass base in the United States of America, specially in the states of British Columbia and those along the Pacific coast. These states had a population of 15000 Indians mainly of the Sikh community who were facing considerable amounts of racial discrimination in spite of being successful traders and workers. Amongst this population began the Ghadr Movement in 1913 in the city of San Francisco, the movement was founded by Sohan Singh Bhakna and Har Dayal who were its most prominent leaders.