Bipin Chandra Pal was a teacher, journalist, orator, writer and librarian, he was famous as one of the triumvirate of three militant patriots of the Congresses - the "Pal" of Lal Bal Pal. The trio were responsible for initiating the first popular upsurge against British colonial policy in the 1905 partition of Bengal, before the advent of Gandhi into Indian politics. Pal was also the founder of the journal Bande Mataram.

Even though he understood the positive aspects of Empire as a `great idea', the `Federal - idea is greater'. In both public and private life he was radical. He married a widow (he had to sever ties to his family for this). At the time of B.G. Tilak's ("Bal") arrest and government repression in 1907, he left for England, where he was briefly associated with the radical India House and founded the Swaraj journal. However, political repercussions in the wake of Curson Wyllie's assassination in 1909 by Madanlal Dhingra led to the collapse of this publication, driving Pal to penury and mental collapse in London.

In the aftermath he totally moved away from his 'extremist' phase and even nationalism, as he contemplated an association of free nations as the great federal idea. His plea for a transcendence to a broader entity than nation derived from the notion of the sociability of human beings, which he thought would create a common bond between nations. He was among the first to criticize Gandhi or the 'Gandhi cult' since it `sought to replace the present government by no government or by the priestly autocracy of the Mahatma.' His criticism of Gandhi was persistent beginning with Gandhi's arrival in India and in opening in 1921 the session of the Indian National Congress he delivered in his presidential speech a severe criticism of Gandhi's ideas as based on magic rather than logic, addressing Gandhi: 'You wanted magic. I tried to give you logic. But logic is in bad odour when the popular mind is excited. You wanted mantaram, I am not a Rishi and cannot give Mantaram... I have never spoken a half - truth when I know the truth... I have never tried to lead people in faith blind - folded', for his 'priestly, pontifical tendencies', his alliance with pan - Islamism during the Khilafat movement, which led to Pal's eclipse from political life from 1922 till his death in 1932 under conditions of abject poverty. Comparing Gandhi with Leo Tolstoy during the year he died, Pal noted that Tolstoy 'was an honest philosophical anarchist' while Gandhi remained in his eyes as 'a papal autocrat' Firm and ethically grounded, not only did he perceive the 'Congress Babel' in terms of its shortsightedness in the late 1920s or, Congress as an instance of repudiating debt's folly, composed of a generation 'that knows no Joseph', Pal's critical comments should be perceived in temporal context. 

The trio had advocated radical means to get their message across to the British, like boycotting British manufactured goods, burning Western clothes made in the mills of Manchester or Swadeshi and strikes and lockouts of British owned businesses and industrial concerns.

He came under the influence of eminent Bengali leaders,not as a hero - worshipper or somebody looking for a guru for guidance of his time such as Keshab Chandra Sen and Sibnath Sastri, as his family were in Brahmo Samaj. He was imprisoned for six months for his refusal to give evidence against Sri Aurobindo in the Vande Mataram sedition case.

He died on May 20, 1932.