The Californian Roots of India's Fight for Independence

Indian Life & Style, News Feature, Ashfaque Swapan, Photos by Kiran Sampat, Posted: Mar 30, 2007

At a time in life when youths are just beginning to contemplate their future, 19-year-old Kartar Singh Sarabha, a former fruit picker in California and a student at the University of California at Berkeley, sat in a jail cell in Lahore in what is now Pakistan, obliged to contemplate death.

He did this not only with equanimity, but pride and dignity, because he was sentenced to death by the British for trying to overthrow the colonial government, and India's freedom was a sacred cause to him.
The year was 1915. The British colonial government had sentenced 24 activists of the Gadar revolutionary movement to death, of whom Sarabha was the youngest.

When he was held in his solitary cell waiting to be hanged, he scribbled on its walls with coal: "The blood of a martyr is never shed in vain."

The story of Sarabha's short life is a poignant story of how a spirited youth, faced with constant reminders of the indignities of belonging to a colonized nation, decided to join a movement to fight back, regardless of the enormity of the challenge. The tragic part of the story is that the Gadar revolutionaries were betrayed, and the top leaders, Sarabha included, were hanged. But was their sacrifice in vain?

Early Influences
Sarabha was born in the village of Sarabha in the district of Ludhiana in Punjab in 1896. He was the only son of his parents. When he was very young his father died, and his grandfather brought him up with great care. After finishing ninth grade, he went to Orissa to live with his uncle, where he completed high school and began college. It was the year 1910-1911, when the young boy had the opportunity to read a lot of books outside of his textbooks. It was also the time of India's freedom movement, and he began to get influenced. It was then that he decided that he must travel to America.

When his ship landed at San Francisco in January 1912, Sarabha discovered that U.S. immigration officers put Indians through far more rigorous questioning while people of other countries were allowed to pass easily. He asked one of the passengers why this was so and was told, Indians are the citizens of a slave country. As such, they are treated badly.

According to Gadar scholar and folklorist Ved Prakash Vatuk, Indians in the U.S. in those days would "work in factories or in fields for wages lower than other workers. By doing so they became the enemy of the working class, who thought they were bringing the standard of living for other workers down. The rest of society despised them for what they were - Indians. They could not own land, they could not buy any property, they could not get married to a white woman and could not bring their wives or other female relatives to America. Many riots took place against them. Sometimes they were chased out of their houses at midnight by rioters.

"They were needed to build Americaís railroads, bridges, to work in its lumber mills, to work in its farms, but they were not worthy of any privilege or respect. Laws were passed against their countrymen's entry into Canada and the U.S. If they went back to India, they would not be allowed to return. It was these conditions that forced a writer to exclaim: 'We foreigners have no home. We are just the coolies of the world.'"

Indian laborers, encouraged by educated activists, began to organize in Oregon and Washington states, and founded the Gadar Party in March 1913 in Astoria, Wash. "Gadar" is an Urdu word meaning revolution. Sarabha was delighted at the news and he joined the party immediately. He began to organize Indian laborers in California as the passion for freedom began to grow in them. He would sit with a worker for hours and explain to him how death is a thousand times preferable to a life of slavery filled with humiliation.

Sarabha played a key role in launching the Gadar newspaper on Nov. 1, 1913, which was published in Punjabi, Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Gujarati and Pashto. The party offices had now moved to San Francisco.
The newspaper was printed on a hand-operated machine and Sarabha not only wrote the Punjabi text but also operated the machine. Whenever he was tired after running the press, he would sing: "Serving one's country is very difficult/ It is so easy to talk/ Anyone who walked on that path/ Must endure millions of calamities."

The Gadar Party
The Gadar Party was initially formed by representatives of Oregon and Washington, and Sarabha was instrumental in bringing the Californian Indians into its fold. A conference of representatives of Oregon, Washington and California was held at Stockton, Calif., in February 1914 which resulted in the formal representation of California in the Gadar Party. The Indian freedom flag was unfurled, and oaths for freedom and equality were taken. Sarabha was one of the main speakers in the meeting, at which all present declared that they would donate their hard-earned money for the struggle for the country's freedom.

According to Vatuk, "The Gadar Party and Gadar both declared that the aim of the movement was to attain 'complete freedom for India' and 'establish a democratic rule based on equality, economic and social justice.'" It was a party of people who practiced what they preached. Its members lived together and all paid $2 a month. Intellectuals like Lala Hardyal, Maulana Barkatullah, activist young students like Kartar Singh Sarabha, Dalit worker (later founder of the Adi Dharma in Punjab) Mangoo Ram, workers, poets like Hari Singh Usman and party president Sohan Singh Bhakna, all sat and ate together. "The job of the party was to prepare people for total dedication to fight for the independence of India. Gadar carried extensive exposes of the criminal deeds of the British empire, it carried poetry to inspire young and old. The first issue declared: 'The time will soon come when rifles and blood will take the place of pen and ink'."

As World War I started, the Gadar activists decided it was an opportune time to return to India and fight for freedom, which Sarabha forcefully advocated. He himself sailed for Colombo. After reaching Punjab, he dedicated himself to the party, helping in creating infrastructure and organization. Maharashtrian revolutionary Vishnu Ganesh Pingle reached India to join him, and Sachindranath Sanyal and Rash Behari Bose also came to Punjab.

"Kartar Singh was everywhere - if there was a secret meeting in Moga, he was there, next day, (if a) message was to be spread among the students in Lahore, he would be the first to be there. Next, the efforts were being made to have an alliance with Ferozepur Cantonmentís soldiers or there was a need to go to Calcutta for acquiring the arms. He would go everywhere," wrote Bhagat Singh, an admirer of Sarabha who would himself become a celebrated martyr later.

Revolt Launched
Plans were made to launch a revolt in February 1915. In the first week of February, Sarabha, Pingle and other associates went to Agra, Kanpur, Allahabad, Lucknow, Meerut and other places to meet people and consult them about the coming revolt. Finally, the day for which they waited so long was drawing near. Feb. 21, 1915, was the day fixed for launching the revolt all over India. All preparations were made accordingly.

Sarabha reached Ferozepur with over 50 of his colleagues, and met with his soldier friend Havaldar and talked to him about the revolt. But a traitor, Kirpal Singh, had already betrayed the movement to the British. Indian soldiers were disarmed. Arrests were made on a mass scale. Havaldar refused to help. Sarabha was unsuccessful, and later, he and Rash Behari Bose were caught.

The British tried the arrested Gadar activists. The judgment in respect to 63 arrested Gadarites was pronounced on Sept. 13, 1915 at the Central Jail, Lahore. In this first conspiracy case, 24 Gadarites were sentenced to death. Sarabha was one of them.

The government decided to commute the death sentences of 17 other Gadar activists, but Sarabha and six of his comrades were still condemned to be hanged. He was asked to make a mercy petition but declined, as he had done before.

His old grandfather, who had brought him up, came for the last meeting and started weeping, to which Sarabha said: "Dadaji, why do you weep? I am not leaving after causing any disgrace to the family. I am being hanged for the crime of working for the liberation of 30 crore suppressed and enslaved people. You should not weep over such a glorious death but celebrate it."

Kartar Singh Sarabha was hanged in Lahore on Nov. 15, 1915.

Were Sarabha's efforts in vain?

Vatuk writes: "After all, not many British were killed in all those movements and so many martyrs sacrificed their lives. But martyr after martyr, they all joyfully said that their sacrifice is like watering the orchard of freedom, where a crop of patriots would flourish. . . All these so-called failed movements brought freedom a step closer. A battle was lost each time, so it would seem, but the war was about to be won. Each failed movement gave birth to a more dedicated movement."

After Sarabha came Ram Prasad Bismil, Ashfaqullah Khan and Thakur Roshan Singh (hanged on Dec. 19, 1927), and Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev (hanged on March 23, 1931).

As Vatuk says: "The Gadar heroes never looked back in regret. They survived all the atrocities that a cruel government could mete out and came out with deeper dedication. Their spirit was never down. And that is their victory and ours."

Nowhere is this spirit enshrined more eloquently then in the death-defying song that Bismil, Khan and Roshan Singh sang to the gallows: "Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamare dil mein hai/ Dekhna hai zor kitna baju-e-qatil mein hai." (Now that we have a longing in our hearts for freedom/ Let's see how much strength the executioner has in his arms.)



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