During the first quarter of the 19th century, Rammohan Roy introduced modern education into India. Swami Vivekananda was the chief architect who profoundly projected the rich culture of India to the west at the end of 19th century. Many of the country's political leaders of the 19th and 20th century, including Mohandas K. Gandhi and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, were influenced by the teachings of Swami Vivekananda. According to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, who was a major proponent of armed struggle for Indian independence, Swami Vivekananda was "the maker of modern India"; for Mohandas Gandhi, Swami Vivekananda's influence increased his "love for his country a thousandfold." His writings inspired a whole generation of freedom fighters. Many years after Swami Vivekananda's death, Rabindranath Tagore told French Nobel Laureate Romain Rolland, "If you want to know India, study Vivekananda. In him everything is positive and nothing negative."
The first organised militant movements were in Bengal, but they later took to the political stage in the form of a mainstream movement in the then newly formed Indian National Congress (INC), with prominent moderate leaders seeking only their basic right to appear for Indian Civil Service examinations, as well as more rights, economic in nature, for the people of the soil. The early part of the 20th century saw a more radical approach towards political independence proposed by leaders such as the Lal, Bal, Pal, Aurobindo Ghosh and V. O. Chidambaram Pillai.
The last stages of the freedom struggle from the 1920s onwards saw Congress adopt