08) A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GHADAR MOVEMENT

 

By Gurpreet Singh  

 

            The Ghadar movement was launched by a group of radical South Asian immigrants on the Pacific coast of North America in 1913 to mainly overthrow the colonial rule of the British government in India and challenge racism abroad. 

 

            The origin of the Ghadar movement can be traced to the first rebellion of 1857 against the British occupation of India. This uprising brought the people of different faith groups, like Hinduism and Islam and caste backgrounds, together against the British Empire. Marx described it as the first war of independence.             The British government termed it as "Ghadar", an Urdu expression which means an act of treason, but was later appropriated by the Ghadar Party members.

 

            This rebellion was a result of anxiety among the Indian soldiers working for the British armies. They were unhappy with their pay. But what triggered the crisis were rumours that the grease inside the cartridges used by the soldiers was mixed with animal fat taken from cows and pigs. The soldiers had to tear off these cartridges with their teeth before loading them in the rifles. Since Hindus did not eat beef and Muslims were forbidden from eating pork, they felt deceived and revolted.

 

            However, the Sikh Chiefs who were largely pro-British back then helped in suppressing the rebellion. Ironically, the Ghadar Party had a big following among the Sikhs, who constituted the majority of South Asian immigrants in North America. The party was originally formed as Hindi Association of the Pacific Coast of America, but came to be known as Ghadar Party after the launching of the newspaper named "Ghadar" on November 1, 1913.  The title was taken from the rebellion of 1857. 

 

            Punjab was a garrison state for the British rulers and provided recruits for the armies. As part of some calculation or perhaps their notorious "divide and rule" policy, the British treated Sikhs as a martial race and preferred recruits from this community. The Sikh clergy was also hand‑in‑glove with the rulers and often prayed for the success of the Empire.

 

            Though the rumours of animal fat inside the cartridges sparked the rebellion of 1857 for religious reasons, underneath this revolt was the discontent of the Indian people with the economic policies of the British rulers. These policies marginalized Indian industry and agriculture at the cost of the prosperity of England.

 

            The British government was not paying attention to the needs of the people of India. As a result many died due to starvation and plague. Local industry was discouraged and the cheaper raw material produced in India was being sent to England.

 

            Land revenue collection also wreaked havoc on the small and middle peasantry. Rigorous methods were used for collection of taxes and no respite was given in an event of crop failure. All this led to a rise in land mortgages and borrowings that further increased rural indebtedness.

 

            The Ghadar newspaper published a regular column exposing this pillage. It gave startling figures to illustrate the loot. It accused the British rulers of spending more on the military budget instead of providing basic services to the Indian population.

 

            The migration of East Indians to US and Canada was an outcome of the economic hardships suffered under the British rulers. These conditions compelled many Sikh farmers from Punjab to migrate to other countries for better living by the end of the 19th century.

 

            Most of the middle level peasants had mortgaged their lands to the money lenders. The irrigation water rates had tripled and land holdings were reduced to small plots. As a result the farmers were compelled to move abroad for better livelihood.

 

            The first immigrants reached Malaya and China and were willing to take any task including lending services to the outposts of British imperialism. They later learnt from the travellers to Canada and US that in those countries, a worker could earn more. Eventually, these immigrants took off to North America.

 

            But the migration was not confined to economic hardships alone; many political refugees lived in exile. The political atmosphere of India had charged up on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the first mutiny. The Punjab in particular witnessed an uprising in the form of a farmers' agitation in 1907. Some of its prominent leaders were forced to leave India.

 

            Others like Vinayak Damodar Savarkar lived in England, where he organized an event to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first Ghadar. He also wrote an important book on the history of the mutiny of 1857 in response to British propaganda against the participants of the first uprising. The book that gave an insight on the upheaval was banned by the British authorities.

 

            In a way these exiled leaders had already laid the ground for the Ghadar movement within the South Asian Diaspora.

 

            Most of these men came to this part of the world as British subjects. Many had previously served in the British armies and trusted the fairness of the British Empire. They were soon disillusioned when they were exposed to racial hatred. The British diplomats did not come to their rescue in an event of hate crimes.             The government of Canada, a former British colony, adopted racist immigration policies to "keep Canada white". These immigrants were neither allowed to bring in their families, nor to vote. The Indians were disfranchised in 1907.

 

            Across the border in the US, the social environment was very hostile towards South Asians. The white labour groups felt threatened because East Indian immigrants were willing to work for lower wages. This reduced their bargaining power and as a result they started intimidating the Asian immigrants.

 

            The Canadian government, buckling under pressure of white supremacy, adopted discriminatory policies, while the US authorities looked the other way during racial violence.

 

            The Indian immigrants soon realized that the root cause of their sufferings was foreign occupation back home. Racial taunts and violence hardened their feelings against the British establishment and they gradually turned their back towards an empire whose interests many of them had served before. Many moderate Sikhs had tried to draw the attention of the authorities to their loyalty towards the Empire during those times.

 

            Enough was enough for these men. Rampant racism taught them to fight back. They started getting organized and decided to buy weapons and resist. A strong urge emerged to form a group that brought all Indian migrants together irrespective of their religious beliefs and castes.

 

            Under these circumstances Hindi Association of the Pacific Coast of America was established on April 21, 1913 in Astoria, with Sohan Singh Bhakna, a Sikh as its President and Har Dayal, a Hindu as a Secretary of the group. The association resolved to launch an armed rebellion against the British Empire. The term "Hindi" represented Hindustanis, a reference to all East Indians.

 

            On November 1, the Association launched its newspaper titled Ghadar. Hay Dayal, the editor of the paper, believed that it would revive the memories of the first uprising. The Ghadar newspaper was initially published in Urdu language. Shortly, the Punjabi edition of Ghadar was also launched. Kartar Singh Sarabha translated the Urdu edition in Punjabi.

 

            The Ghadar newspaper with its radical content soon became popular among the Indian community abroad. It gave an open call for armed resistance. As a result the Association came to be known as Ghadar Party.

 

            The Ghadar Party established its headquarters in San Francisco, considered a hotbed of revolutionaries from different countries, such as China, Ireland and Russia.

 

            The Ghadar leaders anxiously waited for an opportunity to strike. As a crisis between Britain and Germany was brewing, they eyed an opportunity to start an armed revolt in case there was a full scale war between the two countries. Their calculations were that the two nations would take several years to go to war. With such possibilities in mind, many revolutionaries abroad started collaborating with Germany for political and military support. Har Dayal looked upon such a war as a golden opportunity. However, he was served with an arrest warrant for spreading anarchy in US in March, 1914, allegedly under pressure from the British authorities. The party decided to send him to Switzerland. Har Dayal's departure was a big jolt to the party, but it continued to grow even after he was forced to leave America.

 

            The party had a big following in Canada. Ghadar activities in Vancouver also came to the notice of Canadian officials. A groundwork for the Ghadar party was laid in Vancouver much earlier. The Khalsa Diwan Society was established there in 1906. The body not only governed the Sikh temple, but also encouraged its congregation to indulge in political activism, and provided space to all the communities, including non-Sikhs, to hold political meetings.

 

            In a major development of its time, the former Sikh soldiers, who had served in the British armies, burnt their medals, uniforms and certificates as a mark of protest against the systemic racism and discrimination at the Vancouver Sikh temple on October 3, 1909.

 

            The Ghadar activists condemned all peaceful means of struggle, such as boycotts and petitioning. They planned to go back to India and encourage Indian soldiers to quit the British armies and turn their guns against the authorities and toadies.

 

            Although the majority of the members and supporters of the Ghadar Party were Sikhs, the party was secular in composition and character. The party resolved to form an egalitarian and democratic society in independent India and believed in economic and social equality.

 

            Har Dayal was not the only non-Sikh face of the Ghadar Party. The central committee of the party had Kanshi Ram, another Hindu as treasurer and Karim Baksh, a Muslim, as Organizing Secretary.

 

            The Ghadar activists had learnt to work together to resist racism and oppression despite differences of opinion. A case in point is the close friendship between Jawala Singh and Wasakha Singh. The two men had leased a farm land near Stockton, California, that supplied free of cost rations for volunteers working at the Ghadar Party Headquarters in San Francisco. 

 

            Jawala Singh was not a religious person, but Wasakha Singh was a devout Sikh saint. Jawala Singh was opposed to teaching divinity to the Indian students sponsored by them. He believed that such teaching was a waste of time for students who should be spending more hours on studying their curriculum books.

 

            In spite of Jawala Singh's unconventional ideas, Wasakha Singh was very close to him and the two men respected each other. During their detention in the Andaman Jail, when Wasakha Singh had become frail and weak due to poor conditions, a doctor recommended him to eat fish curry. Because of religious reasons he refused to do so, but Jawala Singh convinced him to have it once for the sake of the larger interest of the freedom struggle.

 

            Wasakha Singh also wrote poetry that became a part of the Ghadar narrative. He had passionately written a poem dedicated to Paramanand Jhansi, a Hindu member of the Ghadar Party who suffered physical torture in the Andaman Jail. In his poem he described Jhansi as a brave man, who did not show any sign of weakness despite repression by the authorities.

 

            Jhansi had participated in a hunger strike launched by the Sikh prisoners, against the jail rule that forced the Sikhs to remove their turbans and wear caps during detention.

 

            Casteism had no place in the party, and everyone was treated equally. The Ghadar party explicitly denounced caste-based discrimination. This policy inspired Manguram Muggowal, a Dalit or so-called "untouchable" to join the Ghadar movement. Muggowal later rose to become a towering leader of the Dalit emancipation movement in Punjab. 

 

            People were encouraged to leave aside their spiritual beliefs and work in harmony as Indians. Vegetarians or non-vegetarians, beef eaters of pork eaters, were treated alike in the party. The taboos that triggered the Ghadar of 1857 were broken by the Ghadar Party.

 

            Though the party sometimes invoked religion where it was necessary to attract public support, it was never biased towards any particular religious group and denounced all kinds of prejudices. For instance the Ghadar activists instigated the Sikhs to react when an outer wall of a historical Sikh temple in Delhi was demolished during the extension of the Viceroy's palace in 1913. Similarly, the Ghadar party also condemned the demolitions of Hindu temples and mosques under British rule. It also recognized heroes of Sikh history and Hindu mythology to ensure mass appeal and encourage people to follow the ideals of these figures and fight against oppression.

 

            The Ghadar party heavily emphasized people's unity and cautioned against the divide and rule policies of the British rulers.

 

            Against all calculations of the Ghadar Party, war broke out between Britain and Germany in August 1914. Seeing this as an opportunity to strike, the Ghadar newspaper gave a call for war against occupation.

 

            Around this time another episode occurred in Vancouver that galvanized the Ghadar movement. On May 23, 1914 a Japanese vessel named Komagata Maru reached Vancouver with 376 Indian passengers aboard. The passengers were not allowed to disembark under the discriminatory "continuous journey" law which aimed at preventing permanent settlement of Indians in Canada. The ship remained stranded for two months and was forced to return.

 

            When the ship reached India, a shootout occurred near Calcutta that left 22 people dead on September 29, 1914. The violence ensued when the police tried to forcibly send the passengers to Punjab by a special train, fearing them to be subversives.

 

            The Ghadar Party was in touch with the South Asian community activists who were providing support to the passengers during the Komagata Maru standoff. The Ghadar newspaper brought out a special issue in solidarity with the passengers.

 

            Both the war and the Komagata Maru incident encouraged Ghadar activists to return to their home country to seek revenge for all their sufferings from the British Empire.

 

            On way to India the Ghadar activists recruited supporters from among the police and army officials working for the Empire. The Ghadar propaganda in Singapore culminated in a revolt by Indian soldiers, mainly Muslims, who turned their guns against the British authorities on February 15, 1915. But after much bloodshed the authorities were able to suppress the rebellion. 

 

            Scores of Ghadar activists returned to India to face the gallows or long imprisonments. Those who escaped arrest continued their activities secretly. While men like Bhakna and Wasakha Singh were arrested upon reaching India, others like Sarabha gave slip to the police and continued to reorganize the Ghadar activists. He approached the Indian soldiers directly with intent to incite them for a coup.

 

            The party had made plans to engineer a coup in the armies in different parts of India on February 21, 1915. But the plot was foiled by the government with the help of their moles in the Ghadar Party. A number of Ghadar activists were arrested and the army cantonments were alerted. Sarabha was held in March 1915. He and six others were hanged in Lahore Jail on November 16, 1915. Among those executed alongside Sarabha was Vishnu Ganesh Pingle, a Hindu from Maharashtra.

 

            Many of those who were awarded long sentences were sent to Andaman jail, situated on a faraway island. The political prisoners detained there were subjected to inhuman treatment. Bhakna and Wasakha Singh were sent to the Andaman Jail.

 

            The British government was able to crush the second Ghadar with an iron fist, but the spark of activism lit by the movement refused to subside. The Party activists who escaped the police dragnet continued their work. Some joined other nationalist movements and carried on the struggle until India gained its independence in 1947.

 

            Karam Singh Daulatpur was one of them. He had spent years in Canada. He gradually joined another militant movement that was aimed at liberating the historical Sikh temples from the clutches of corrupt priests who were patronized by the British government. Known as Babbar Akali movement, it inspired many former supporters of the Ghadar Party. The Babbar Akali movement also believed in an armed struggle. Daulatpur died in a police shootout in September, 1923.

 

            Bhagat Singh, a towering revolutionary who was hanged by the British in 1931 for killing a police officer, was influenced by the Ghadar Party. Bhagat Singh considered Sarabha as his role model.

 

            The Ghadar activists continued their struggle for social justice even in post-independent India. People like Bhakna were thrown into jail for challenging the policies of the government. Likewise, Boojha Singh, a former Ghadar party activist was killed by the police in a staged shootout in 1970 for being a member of the ultra-leftist Naxalite movement that sought equality for the oppressed classes.

 

            The Ghadar ideology remained popular among the radical youth seeking complete freedom through an armed rebellion. The moderate leadership that sought nothing more than a dominion status for India was ultimately forced to seek complete independence from foreign occupation because of the continued efforts of the militants.

 

            The moderate Congress party that dominated the political landscape of India for years claimed to have a monopoly over the history of freedom struggle. Its propaganda of having achieved freedom without spilling blood was recognized internationally, while the Ghadar history remained obscured. But the legacy of the Ghadar movement remains alive and never gave up its rightful claim over the history of resistance.

 

(The above article is from the November 1-15, 2013, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)