S' 6HADAR MOVEMENT IDEOLOGY {■■‘ fX I-*?? . - 7*^| ORGANISATION & STRATEGY HAR1SH K. PURI Vp I. 3 ... GURU NANAK DEV UNiveRSfTY PRESS |;i m GHADAR M0VGM6NT GHADAR MOVEMENT IDEOLOGY ORGANISATION & STRATEGY HARISH K. PURI GURU NANAK DEV UNIVERSITY PRESS HARISH K. PURI 1983 Price : Rs. 80/- Published by S. Jagjit Singh Khanna, Registrar, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar and printed by S. Jagjit Singh Walia, Manager, Guru Nanak Dev University Press, Amritsar-143005 (Phone 33911) To My Parents CONTENTS Acknowledgments i Introduction 1 1. THE BACKGROUND 11 The Social Context of Emigration 11 The Immigrants and the New World 20 Exclusion of Indian Immigrants : Interests of the Empire -27 Beginning of Political Consciousness 38 2. THE GHADAR MOVEMENT 1913-18 : A BRIEF HISTORY 54 Formation of Hindi Association of the Pacific Coast 54 Propaganda War 57 The Cruise or Komagata Maru 7® Rebellion 1915 : Bang and Whimper 31 In the German Band-Wagon 38 End of the Ghadar Phase 93 3. IDEOLOGY OF THE MOVEMENT 104 Har Dayal and His Ideological Formulations 104 Translation of Ideas into the Mother Tongue 116 4. ORGANISATIONAL CHARACTER 126 5. STRATEGY AND PERFORMANCE 146 Jiwen Dao Lagge Tiwen La Laiyey 146 Wartime Activities Outside India 168 ( ii) 6. CONCLUSION 178 BIBLIOGRAPHY 185 INDEX 214 Facsimiles of G kadar and Hindustan Ghadar 7C9 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT My interest in the Ghadar Movement was aroused in 1968 during long meetings with Baba Sohan Singh Bhakna, an important 'organic' leader of the movement and one who, even at the age of 98, exuded the spirit of revolution and idealism. The present work started as a study for Ph.D. during 1972-75 at the Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar. Professor J.S. Bains of University of Delhi guided me and supervised the study. Professor K. R. Bombwall of Guru Nanak Dev University helped me at that stage. I am grateful to them. To Professor J.S. Grewal, I am obliged for providing, during many informal discussions, valuable insights for the understanding of historical reality. Detailed observations and suggestions on the dissertation by Mark Juergensmeyer were very helpful in the preparation of the manuscript for publication. I am also indebted to Randhir Singh, Manoranjan Mohanty, Bipan Chandra, Partha Chatterjee and Indu Banga for reading the dissertation and making valuable comments. I take this opportunity to express my thanks to the staff's of the National Archives of India, New Delhi; Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi; Hardinge (now Har Dayal) Public Library, Delhi; Punjab State Archives, Patiala, Desh Bhagat Yadgar Library, Jalandhar, Sikh History Research Centre, Khalsa College, Amritsar; Motilal Nehru Library, Amritsar and the Library of Guru Nanak Dev University. In 1979, an invitation from the Centre for South and Southeast Asia Studies, University of California, Berkeley provided me an added opportunity to consult records at various libraries abroad. I am thankful to Juergensmeyer and Kanneth Logan, for permitting me to go through the unclassified collection for Ghadar History Project and Jane Singh for assistance, at the University of California Library. Dan Neeland of the Federal Archives and Records Centre, San Bruno, California, was particularly helpful in making available to me records of the ‘Hindu-German Conspi­ racy’ trial both at the Centre and at the District Court in San Francisco and also in getting valuable material xeroxed at short notice. Some of the tracts published by the Ghadar Press which were not available in India were located at the Ghadar Memorial in San Francisco. Thanks to a reference by Emily Brown, I was able to locate complete files of G hadar Weekly both in Urdu and Gurmukhi, which is now a rare possession with me on microfilm. Access to old newspapers published from Vancouver and Victoria was available at University of British Columbia Library, Vancouver. The staff of India Office Library and Public Record Office in London provided generous help in getting select documents xeroxed within a very short time at my disposal there. I owe a debt of gratitude to all of them. My thanks also go to the University Grants Commission for a grant for the purchase of books for the pursuit of work for Ph. D. and to the Indian Council of Historical Research for a contingency and travel grant for the preparation of the present book. To Ghadarite Babas, I owe a special debt for sitting through hours of often tiring interviews. Their recollections in expressive tones, animated and nostalgic, in some cases blurred and even distorted by age and personal preferences, are on tape. My father has been a great source of inspiration to me in the completion of this work. Noteworthy is also my obligation to Ram Singh, Hew McLeod, John Webster, Harsharan Singh, Gumam Singh Rahi, Joginder Singh Rahi and Harsaran Singh Dhillon, from discussions with whom I have benefited greatly, and to M. S. Dhami, B. S. Hira, Pritam Sidhu and many of other friends and colleagues in my department for encouragement and various kinds of help. I am also thankful to the authorities of Guru Nanak Dev University for accepting this book for (iii) publication and to J. S. Walia, the Manager of University Press, for his keen supervision of its publication. Finally, I can at best only record here my gratitude to my wife Vijay who has helped me and supported me in more ways than I could count. Harish K Puri Amritsar 15 January, 1983. INTRODUCTION The Ghadar movement, despite its brief duration, played a significant role in India's struggle for independence. Though it is yet to find its due recognition in the historiography of Indian nationalism, it cannot be said to have remained ‘an unwritten chapter’.of that struggle. More than a dozen published accounts of the movement are already available;1 some of its major landmarks and characteristics have been briefly covered in a number of biographies and autobiographies* and several 1 Randhir Singh's Ghadar Heroes : A Forgotten Story of the Punjab Revolu­ tionaries of 1914-15 (Bombay : People's Publishing House, 1945). an excellent popular account, based mainly on the author's interviews with a few Ghadar leaders was the only available work until the interest of the serious researchers in the subject began over two decades later. Meanwhile two studies were published in Punjabi: Jagjit Singh's Ghadar Party Lehar (Tarn Taran, 1955) and Ghadar Party da Itihas (Jullundur : Desh Bhagat Yadgar Committee, 1961) by Gurcharan Singh Sainsara ef. al. The second one was, in effect, an official account, sponsored and published by Desh Bhagat group of former Ghadarites. A number of research studies have been published since the mid sixties, for instance, Khushwant Singh and Satindra Singh, Ghadar 1915 : India's First Armed Revolution (New Delhi: R & K Publishing House, 1966); Gurdev Singh Deol, The Role of the Ghadar Party in the National Movement (Delhi : Sterling Publishers, 1969); Kalyan Kumar Bannerjee, Indian Freedom Movement: Revolutionaries in America (Calcutta : Jijanasa, 1969); L. P. Mathur, Indian Revolutionary Movement in the United States of America (Delhi : S. Chand & Co., 1970); A.C. Bose, Indian Revolutionaries Abroad 1905-1922 (Patna : Bharati Bhawan, 1971); Sohan Singh Josh, Hindustan Ghadar Party : A Short History (New Delhi : PPH, 1977); and Anil Baran Ganguli, Ghadar Revolution in America (Delhi: Metropolitan Book Co., 1980). 2 Prominent among these are : Bhai Parmanand, The Story ot My Life, trans., N. Sundra Iyer and Lai Chand (Lahore : The Central Hindu Yuvak Sabha, 1934); Shachindra Nath Sanyal, Bandi Jeewan, (Hindi) (Delhi: Atma Ram & Sons, 1963); Sohan Singh Bhakna, Jeevan Sangram (Punjabi) (Jullundur : 2 GHADAR MOVEMENT other books relating to India’s freedom struggle.3 Why then a new book on this movement, and what is its relevance to us today ? An explanation may be necessary. That may also help in clarifying the themes chosen for the present study. The Ghadar movement which was launched in USA in the year 1913 was inspired in its objectives and framework of ideas by the dominant ideological thinking (including its contradic­ tions) that prevailed among the Indian revolutionary nationalists during the period 1905-1920. A small number of these educated revolutionaries played a significant role both in the evolution of the movement and the direction given to it. Most prominent among them was Lala Har Dayal who had resigned a prestigious government scholarship for study at Oxford to dedicate himself completely to the nationalist cause. Among the very large number of those who joined that movement, over ninety-five per cent were Punjabi immigrants, mostly Sikhs, who worked on the Pacific Coast of North America as unskilled labourers, farm workers, owner farmers and contractors. Their real life experiences in North America and their early organised community activity made it possible for the revolutionary nationalist propaganda to effectively link the existing oppress­ ions of these people with their oppressions at home. That underlined the fact that India's interests and those of the British Yuvak Kendar Parkashan. 1967); Dharmavira, Lala Har Dayal and Revolu­ tionary Movement of His Times (New D elhi: Indian Book Co.. 1970); Emily C. Brown, Har Dayal: Hindu Revolutionary and Rationalist (Tucson : The University of Arizona Press,. 1975); Prithvi Singh, Kranti Path Ka Pathik (Hindi) (Chandigarh ; Pragya Prakashan, 1964); Sohan Singh Josh, Baba Sohan Singh Bhakna : Life of the Founder of the Ghadar Party (New D elhi; PPH, 1970); Bhai Sahib Randhir Singh Autobiography, trans., Trilochan Singh (Ludhiana : Bhai Sahib Randhir Singh Publishing House, 1971); Jaswant Singh Jas, Baba V/asakha Singh (Punjabi) (Jullundur ; New Book Co., 1979); V.S. Suri, A Brief Biographical Sketch of Sohan Lai Pathak (Patiala : Punjabi University, 1968); Bhupendra Nath Datta, Aprakashit Rajnitik Itihas (Bengali) (Calcutta : Nav Bharat Publishers, 1953).