established by the Arya Samajist and Congress activist Lala Lajpat Rai with the aim of promoting social service and providing a quality education to Indians who did not want to be taught in British-administered colleges. Hindustan Socialist Republican Association It was at National College that Yashpal met people such as Bhagat Singh and Sukhdev Thapar who were later to become the nucleus of the Punjabi armed revolution movement. Encouraged by the tutelage of Jaichandra Vidyalankar, a historian and associate of Ghadarites, this group of students read widely of political theory and past revolutionaries from Europe and India. The Hindustan Republican Association became known as the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) in 1928, with the change of name probably being largely due to the influence of Bhagat Singh, who was a prominent figure in it. Sharing Singh's disillusionment with the impact of Gandhi's non-cooperation strategy, Yashpal joined with it. His work for the HSRA was generally behind the scenes and he had a lower public profile than people who physically engaged in acts of revolution, such as Singh, Rajguru and Chandrashekar Azad. While continuing his activism, he was employed as a clerk by the Lakshmi Insurance Company, a role that he deeply disliked and described Yashpal became a fugitive in April 1929, hiding for a few weeks with a relative (Pandit Shyama) in the Kangra area (village Samhoon near Rail in Hamirpur) after a recently established HSRA bomb factory in Lahore was raided by police. Realizing that the HSRA cause could not be furthered unless its members were organised, he was back in Lahore before June. Bhagat Singh and Sukhdev Thapar had both been arrested and he did not have contact details for any members who were free. Sukhdev Thapar was able to give him details of another member after Yashpal visited him in prison, posing as a lawyer, but the information was voided soon after due to a police raid on the HSRA's other bomb factory, in Saharanpur. Some of those arrested at both factories became informants. Yashpal then held discussions with leaders of the Hindu Mahasabha. However, he differed from them ideologically. Their offer to pay the HSRA 50,000 rupees to assassinate Muhammad Ali Jinnah was the final straw: the organisation of which he was a member were not to be guns for hire. The last significant armed act of the HSRA was the attempt on 23 December 1929