A Guide to Sources- Ghadar Movement (An Old and Rare Book)

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

Punjab has played a major part in India's struggle of independence with the Ghadar Movement as its prime example. The formation of the Ghadar rebellion was a unique phenomenon; it was by and large a Sikh diasporic mobilisation inspired by a mix of expatriate Hindu and Muslim elite. Faced with racial hostility and harsh immigration restrictions, Punjabi immigrant labourers in the Pacific States decided to return en masse to wage a revolutionary war to overthrow the British empire from the Indian subcontinent.

Within a short span of time, leaders of Ghadar party were able to create a network of support and mobilisation among the Punjabi Diaspora in the Southeast Asian countries, Europe and North America. In 1915, the movement posed a most serious threat to the British rule in India since the mutiny of 1857. Although the movement was suppressed through unprecedented harsh measures by imperial administrators, exemplary sacrifices made by Ghadar activists radically altered the political culture of the Punjab. The Ghadarites' vision and ideal of an independent India as a just society ruled by a secular and socialist regime has continued to inspire many Punjabis.

I hope with the publication of this guide to scattered sources of the Ghadar movement across the globe, it will generate fresh research and debate on the movement which became with the 'heroic tradition' of the Punjab.

During the compilation of this guide I have incurred several debts. In my college days in Ludhiana, with Surjit and Bakhshish to name only two of my close friends, we made frequent rounds of the statue of Kartar Singh Sarabha while walking to the Chaura Bazaar shops. This sight must have influenced us in some ways. Years later, when I first visited Berkeley in 1988, a question suddenly haunted, how a young Kartar Singh would have felt out here in 1913? The curiosity was relieved a bit when I was introduced to the Ghadar collection of Berkeley's South and Southeast Asia Library by Dr. Kenneth Logan -a scholar and expert on library's valuable collection. I also met Jane Singh who had published South Asians in North America: an annotated and selected bibliography [Jane Singh, Emily Hodges, Bruce La Brack, and Kenneth Logan, University of California, Berkeley: Centre for South and Southeast Asia Studies, 1988]. Her book listed several less-known studies on the Ghadar movement, which was, as editors noted, primarily a Sikh political awakening inspired by other Indians. Professor Juergensmeyer in an introductory essay discussed the nature of Ghadar materials, while Gerald Barrier furnished essential information on contemporary newspapers and on the banned periodicals. As a result of that visit I published a guide to the literature on Sikhs in North America [Greenwood, 1991]. Gradually. as my research interests on the Sikh Diaspora widened in scope so did my collection of materials relating to the Ghadar movement. A meeting with Bhagat Singh Bilga in Birmingham proved to be a major catalyst towards completing this guide. Besides putting me in touch with Desh Bhagat Yadgar Library at Jalandhar, Bhagat Singh Bilga was surprisingly familiar with primary and secondary literature while emphasising the paucity of available research on the movement.

Despite the popular image and appeal of the Ghadar movement, a student embarking on its study is beset with three major problems. The first relates to the nature of available sources: a substantial portion of original publications by the Ghadar party have been lost. The second issue relates to their location. Materials which are still extant remain scattered around the globe from the Far East countries to the Pacific States of North America. The third and more serious issue, partly arising from its scattered sources, is the paucity of fundamental research, especially in the universities of Punjab, a province that is heir to its legacy. It is hoped this publication should encourage more students to undertake research not only in yet unexplored themes of its history and politics of the movement, but also philosophical and social anthropological studies in 'Punjabi heroic tradition' to which the movement added significantly. In the following pages besides indicating a variety of sources, some avenues for further research are suggested.

This book offers a preliminary guide to various sources relating to the Ghadar movement. Although many of the original sources of the Ghadar movement consisting mainly of newspapers and pamphlets have now disappeared due to the passage of time, sheer neglect, or such chance effects as fire which gutted a house containing many of these documents in California. The remaining documents lie scattered as far as the geographical spread of the movement; from China to California. Thus a scholar will need to re-trace the steps of Ghadar networks from Japan to Pacific Coast to make a good sense of a particular theme and collect evidence.

**Contents and Sample Pages**