Govind Ram was a resident of Lahore, Punjab (now in Pakistan). He was actively associated with the revolutionaries of the 1908 and 1909 sedition being associated with many newspapers such as Inquilab and Swarajya. He was also a member of the Shanti Sabha.
The Indian sedition law, enshrined in Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code, was introduced by the British government in 1870 specifically to deal with revolution and dissent against colonial rule. While initially used against violent revolutionaries like Sarvarkar, the sedition law was gradually used in colonial India to target non-violent writers and nationalist leaders like Tilak and Gandhi. This shift was made in response to the greater threat posed by these leaders spreading anti-British sentiments among the Indians. Sedition in colonial India became synonymous with nationalism. The sedition law was criticized by nationalist leaders in India and used to challenge the legitimacy of colonial rule that criminalized free speech.
On 30 April 1908, two Bengali youths, Prafulla Chaki and Khudiram Bose threw a bomb on a carriage at Muzzafarpur, to kill the Chief Presidency Magistrate Douglas Kingsford of Calcutta fame, but erroneously killed two women traveling in it. While Chaki committed suicide when caught, Bose was hanged. Tilak, in his paper Kesari, defended the revolutionaries and called for immediate Swaraj or self-rule. The Government swiftly charged him with sedition. Tilak was arrested for sedition under Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code, 1870, on July 3, 1908, and his second sedition trial commenced and culminated in his incarceration in the Mandalay Prison in Burma (now Myanmar) till 1914. In this chain of arrest, Govind Ram too was arrested and was subsequently convicted of revolutionary activities. Further after trial, he was deported to Andamans Islands.