Gadar – Overseas Indians Attempt
to Free India
from British Serfdom
By
Inder Singh
Gadar Movement is the saga of courage,
valor and determination of overseas Indians who had come to Canada and the United States either for higher
education or for economic opportunities. They imbibed the fire and zeal of
revolutionaries and became the trail blazers of freedom struggle for their
motherland, India.
They may have lived ordinary lives but they left an
extra-ordinary legacy.
At the dawn of the twentieth century,
both India and Canada were British dominions, so, Indians had
easier access to emigrate to Canada.
The new immigrants were hard working and accepted lower wages, so some Canadian
companies publicized the economic and job opportunities available in Canada to seek more cheap labor from India.
During the first few years, every year about 2000 immigrants, mostly Punjabi
farmers and laborers were permitted to come. As the number of immigrants
increased, the locals felt threatened by labor competition from the hardy and
adventurous Punjabis. Fear of labor competition led to racial antagonism and
demands for exclusionary laws from cheap foreign Asian workers. In 1909, severe
immigration restrictions virtually ended legal Indian immigration to Canada.
When Indian immigrants saw the
doors closing on them in Canada,
they started coming to the United
States which needed more people to do hard
labor work to build new communities. In the U.S, they
faced many difficulties, suffered numerous hardships and encountered rampant
discrimination. Initially, they could find only menial jobs, but over a period
of time and with their hard work and determination, many of them became
successful farmers with their own land.
Within a span of few years, number
of immigrant workers had swelled, so they starting facing widespread hostility
which led to racial riots, resulting in certain cases, a loss of life and
property. Like Canada, the United States, which had initially welcomed the
Asian labor to do menial jobs, enacted Asian exclusionary laws to bar Asians
emigrating to the United
States.
For discriminatory treatment and
damages in race riots, the Japanese and Chinese governments sympathized with
their overseas nationals and negotiated with the American government for
compensation for life and property losses. But the British Indian Government
would not make any representation to the U.S. Government for similar losses. Indians
soon realized the difference between the citizens of a “slave” country and
those ruled by their own people.
The United States had also welcomed
qualified Indian students seeking admissions in the American universities. However,
upon graduation, they were not able to get jobs commensurate with their
qualifications. The discriminatory practices were against the very ideals of liberty and freedom they had seen in their
University environment. The Indian students attributed the racial prejudice and
discrimination to their being nationals of a subjugated country. They were motivated to get rid of the foreign rule in India and were determined to fight for freedom for their motherland. They also started fostering
feelings of patriotism and nationalism among their fellow Indian Immigrants.
Many Indians and particularly
Indian students in the USA, Canada, England,
Germany, and France, started advocating freedom for their
motherland, India
from British serfdom. They formed organizations or groups for India’s freedom. Taraknath Das, a
student, started publishing a magazine Free
Hindustan in 1907 in Seattle, advocating armed rebellion against the
British rule in India and also formed “East India Association" in 1911; G.
D. Kumar started a Punjabi paper Swadesh
Sewak in Vancouver while Shymji Krishna Varma founded Indian Home Rule
Society in London.
In the United
States, Har Dyal who had come from England after relinquishing his scholarship and
studies at Oxford
University was identified
with nationalist activities. He inspired many students studying at the University of California
at Berkeley.
Two of his many student followers, Katar
Singh Sarabha and Vishnu Govind Pingle later on played very prominent role in the Gadar movement. Dyal’s
fervor for India’s
freedom spread beyond the university campuses. A meeting of some patriotic and
enlightened Indians was called on April 23, 1913, in Astoria,
Oregon, where Har Dyal, Bhai Parmanand and
others passionately spoke for throwing the British out of India. It was at this meeting that Hindustan Association of
the Pacific Coast
was formed with a major objective to liberate India
with the force of arms from British colonialism, just
as Americans had done more than a century ago, and help establish a free and
independent India
with equal rights for all. Sohan Singh Bhakna was elected President,
Hardayal, General Secretary, and Pandit Kanshi Ram Mardauli, Treasurer. Lala
Har Dayal who had been a faculty member at Stanford University
for about two years, was the central figure and the force behind the newly
formed organization.
The headquarters of Hindustan
Association of the Pacific Coast was
established in San Francisco,
which served as a base for coordination of all the activities of the
association. A building was purchased with funds raised from the community,
primarily Punjabi farmers and farm and lumber mill workers and was named Yugantar
Ashram. The association
began publishing a magazine, Gadar, for
free distribution to promote the aims, objectives and activities of the
organization. Gadar, literally
means revolt or mutiny, was published in Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi, among
other languages. “The first issue of the journal Gadar was in Urdu and was published on November 1, 1913. An edition of the journal was
brought out next month in Gurmukhi and in May 1914 a Gujrati edition of the
journal was also published.” Says Anil Ganguly in his book “Ghadar Revolution
in America.”
The Gadar publication exposed the British imperialism and called upon
the Indian people to unite and rise up against British rule and throw the
British out of India.
It carried articles on the conditions of the people of India under British Rule and also on problems of
racial attacks and discrimination against Indians in the USA and Canada. The
publication Gadar, over a period of
time, became well known among Indians and the Hindustan Association of the Pacific Coast itself became known as the Gadar
party. Besides Gadar, the group brought out various publications
to raise the consciousness of the Indian people to revolt against the British.
Special issues of Gadar were also
printed in Nepali, Bengali, Pashto, Gujrati, as well as in many other
languages.
Gadar literature was sent to Indian revolutionaries in India, Europe, Canada,
Singapore, The Philippines, Hong Kong, China,
Malysia, Singapore,
Burma, Egypt, Turkey,
and Afghanistan.
In a short period of time, publications from the Yugantar Asram, particularly the Gadar magazine became very popular.
The British government got alarmed and used every means to stop the
circulation of Gadar and other such publications, particularly in India.
The magazine, being the principal patriotic literature, reached many people;
even if one copy reached India
or to a fellow revolutionary elsewhere, multiple copies were made for
circulation.
Hindustan Association was barely a few months old when under pressure
from the British Indian Government, Har Dyal was arrested by the U.S.
Government. He was released on bail on March 24, 1914 but soon left for Switzerland and then to Germany. The sudden departure of Har Dyal did create
some vacuum in the organizational structure of the association but it did not
cause the death of the organization. The seed of revolt that Har Dyal sowed,
had developed into a formidable organization. Many committed and dynamic
volunteers continued to work tirelessly and pursued the planned activities of
the association.
In Germany,
Har Dyal continued to promote his mission, independence for India. He knew that Germans had
great sympathy with the Gadar movement because they and Gadarites had common
enemy, the British. Har Dyal, along with Virendra Nath Chattopadhyay, younger
brother of politician-poetess Sarojani Naidu, Barkatullah, Bhupendra Nath
Datta, brother of Swami Vivekananda, Ajit Singh, Champak Raman Pillai, Tarak
Nath Das, and Bhai Bhagwan Singh formed Berlin Indian Committee in September 1914,
also known as the Indian Revolutionary Society. The objectives of the society
were to arrange financial assistance from German Government for revolutionary activities and propaganda work in different
countries of the world, plan training of volunteer force of Indian fighters and
arrange transportation of arms and ammunitions to reach the Gadarites for a
revolt against the British Government in India.
The war between Germany and England
broke out in August, 1914 and created a golden opportunity for gadarites to
expel the English from India
while British troops would be busy fighting war at the front. The gadarites
started forceful campaign to mobilize overseas Indians in Singapore, Burma,
Egypt, Turkey and Afghanistan
and particularly Punjabis in Canada
and the USA to go to India
and launch revolution. They drew plans to infiltrate the Indian army and excite
the soldiers to fight not for but against the British Empire and free India
from the shackles of British imperialism. The Indian Revolutionary Society in Berlin had arranged for substantial financial aid from Germany.
The German Embassy in Washington had engaged a
German National in the United States
to liaison with the Gadar leadership in San
Francisco . Several ships were commissioned or chartered
to carry arms and ammunitions and batches of Indian revolutionaries, about
6000, to India.
Besides Germany, the gadarites also sought
help from anti-British governments. In December 1915, they established a Free
Hindustan government-in-exile in Kabul,
Afghanistan,
with Raja Mohinder Pratap as President, Maulavi Barkatullah as Prime Minister and
Champakaran Pillai as Foreign Minister. The government-in-exile tried to
establish diplomatic relationships with countries opposed to the British in
World war l such as Turkey, Germany, Japan, etc. The gadarites also
established contact with the Indian troops at Hong Kong, Singapore,
and in some other countries and hoped for their participation in the uprising
against the British.
The British Government tried to
suppress the Gadar Movement and had hired agents to penetrate the Gadar party
almost from the beginning. Har Dyal used the columns of Gadar to caution his compatriots against British spies. The
traitors of the Gadar movement leaked out the secret plan to the British spies.
As a result, the ships carrying arms and ammunitions never reached India.
Germany was originally
planning to send more ships carrying arms and ammunition to India, lost interest in the venture
after seeing the fate of original vessels. Many gadarites and volunteer
fighters were taken captives upon reaching India. Some of the active gadarites
who escaped arrests, including Kartar Singh Sarabha and Vishnu Govind Pingle,
made alliance with Ras Behari Bose and other known revolutionaries in India.
They had come to India to
overthrow the British rule and wanted to unite and work with all those forces
that were working to liberate India.
They tried hard to mobilize the people and infiltrate into various units of the
armed forces. But the British spies out maneuvered them. They also could not
get the support of Mahatma Gandhi and other leaders of India’s Freedom movement, who had
already committed full co-operation with the British Indian Government.
Before leaving for India, the Gadarites were given the impression
that India
was ready for a revolution. So, when the World War l provided a golden
opportunity for them to attain their goal, they hurried homeward for
revolution. What an irony; while the gadarites had gone to India to fight willingly
for the freedom of their motherland, the Indian leadership openly and willingly
co-operated with the British prolonging India’s serfdom; while the overseas
Indians prayed in Gurudwaras and temples for the success of Gadarites’ mission,
the people in India flocked to Gurudwaras and temples to pray for the victory
of the British.
The Gadarites had a flame of
liberty lit in their hearts, and did not hesitate to make any sacrifice for the
cause of freedom, dignity and prosperity of their motherland. They fought
valiantly for their cause; several Gadarites in India were imprisoned, many for
life, and some were hanged. In the United States too, many Gadarites
and Germans who supported Gadar
activities, were prosecuted and some were incarcerated for varying terms of
imprisonment. Although the movement did not achieve its stated objective, but
it awakened the sleeping India
and left a major impact on India’s
struggle for freedom. The heroism, courage and sacrifices of the Gadarites
inspired many freedom fighters to continue their mission.
A prominent Indian writer,
Khushwant Singh, wrote in Illustrated Weekly, on February 26, 1961, “In the early months of World war I, an
ambitious attempt to free their country was made by Indians living overseas,
particularly in the United States
and Canada.
Although the overwhelming majority of the Gadrites were Sikhs and the centers
of revolutionary activity were the Sikh temples in Canada, the United States,
Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore, many of the leaders were of other parties
and from different parts of India, Hardyal, Ras Bihari Bose, Barkutullah, Seth
Husain Rahim, Tarak Nath Das and Vishnu Ganesh Pingley. …… The Gadar was the
first organized violent bid for freedom after the rising of 1857. Many hundreds
paid the price with their lives.”
Inder Singh is President of Global Organization of
People of Indian Origin(GOPIO) and
chairman of Indian American Heritage Foundation. He was NFIA president from
1988-92 and chairman from 1992-96. He was founding president of FIA, Southern
California.
He can be reached at indersinghusa@hotmail.com
.