After changes in Bhagat Singh's ideology and the influence of the Russian Revolution, they held meetings in Feroz Shah Kotla Maidan and added the word socialist to their name.

Ram Prasad Bismil, Ashfaqulla Khan, Sachindra Nath Bakshi, Sachindranath Sanyal and Jogesh Chandra Chatterjee were the leaders of the group at the time.

Although intended as a non-violent resistance movement, due to heightened tensions, and a brutal response by the British police forces, it had soon become violent.

Ram Prasad Bismil and his group of youth strongly opposed Gandhi in the 37th session of the Indian National Congress, held in Gaya, Bihar.

[4] The political vacuum created by the suspension led to the formation of revolutionary movements by the more radical amongst those who sought to overthrow British Raj.

Without ascertaining the facts behind this incident, Mahatma Gandhi, declared an immediate stop to the Non-cooperation movement (he himself had given a call for it) without consulting any executive committee member of the Congress.

With the consent of Lala Har Dayal, Bismil went to Allahabad where he drafted the constitution of the party in 1923 with the help of Sachindra Nath Sanyal and another revolutionary of Bengal, Dr. Jadugopal Mukherjee.

[6][full citation needed] The basic name and aims of the organisation were typed on a Yellow Paper and later on a subsequent Constitutional Committee Meeting was conducted on 3 October 1924 at Cawnpore in the United Provinces under Sanyal's chairmanship.

The Kakori event occurred on 8 August 1925, when HRA members looted government money from a train around 10 miles (16 km) from Lucknow and accidentally killed a passenger in the process.

The outcome was that four leaders – Ashfaqullah Khan, Ram Prasad Bismil, Roshan Singh and Rajendra Lahiri – were hanged in December 1927 and a further 16 imprisoned for lengthy terms.

[8] Responding to the rise in anti-colonial sentiment in 1928,[8] the HRA became the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association, with the change of name probably being largely due to the influence of Bhagat Singh.

[a] The socialist leanings voiced in the earlier HRA manifesto had gradually moved more towards Marxism and the HSRA spoke of a revolution involving a struggle by the masses to establish "the dictatorship of the proletariat" and the banishment of "parasites from the seat of political power".

[11] Bhagat Singh vowed to take revenge,[11] and joined other revolutionaries, Shivaram Rajguru, Jai Gopal, Sukhdev Thapar and Chandra Shekhar Azad, in a plot to kill Scott.

[5] The next day the HSRA acknowledged the assassination by putting up posters in Lahore that read J. P. Saunders is dead; Lala Lajpat Rai is avenged. ...

[14]The perpetrators of the Saunders murder having eluded capture and gone into hiding, the next major action by the HSRA was the bombing of the Central Legislative Assembly in Delhi on 8 April 1929.

This was a provocative propaganda exercise, intended to highlight the aims of the HSRA and timed as a protest against the introduction of the Public Safety Bill and the Trade Disputes Bill, both of which had been drafted in an attempt to counter the effects of communist activities and trade unionism[5][15] Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt threw bombs at the empty benches, being careful to ensure that there were no casualties in order to highlight the propagandist nature of their action.

They made no attempt to escape and courted arrest while shouting Inquilab Zindabad (Long Live the Revolution), Vande Mataram (Hail to motherland) and Samrajyavad Murdabad' (Down with Imperialism).

Later, the Lahore faction of HSRA broke away and formed the Atishi Chakar (The Ring of Fire) party under the leadership of Hans Raj Vohra.

On 21 January 1929, Bhagat Singh and his fellow comrades were accused in the Lahore Conspiracy Case, appeared in the court wearing red scarves.

During this period the leading members of the HSRA were Chandra Shekhar Azad, Yashpal, Bhagwati Charan Vohra and Kailash Pati.

Responding to the attack on Lord Irwin's train, Gandhi wrote a harsh critique of the HSRA titled "The Cult of the Bomb" (Young India, 2 January 1929).