1 Revolutionary Pasts
Cambridge University Press 978-1-108-48184-7 — Revolutionary Pasts Ali Raza Excerpt More Information 1 Revolutionary Pasts To articulate what is past does not mean to recognize ‘how it really was’. It means to take control of a memory, as it flashes in a moment of danger.1 Walter Benjamin, On the Concept of History Working on a maize farm deep in the Argentinian heartland in the year 1929, Naina Singh Dhoot was taken aback by an unexpected visit from Rattan Singh, a communist, roving revolutionary, and leader of the Ghadar Party. Prior to his visit, Rattan Singh had already toured Europe, the United States, Canada, and Panama for the party, which had initially been founded by Indian immigrants in North America in 1913 with the single-minded purpose of freeing India from British rule. In the 1920s, the party established links with the Communist International, which enabled it to send its cadres and recruits to Moscow for political and military training. As part of its mission of recruiting new cadres, the party sent its emissaries to Indian diasporas across the world, from North and South America to East Africa and South East Asia. This was how Naina Singh met Rattan Singh, the party’s emissary extraordinaire. Born and raised in the village of Dhoot Kalan, Punjab, Naina Singh had migrated to Singapore in 1927 in search of work. It was in Singapore that he first learnt the poetry of revolution. There, he heard of a collec- tion of poems by Punjabi labourers and farmworkers in North America. The Ghadar di Gunj (Reverberations of Rebellion) lamented the chains of imperialist slavery that bound India and Indians.
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