With the “Gadar Movement”, one of the chapters in the Indian national movement well-known for its association with the revolutionary Bhagat Singh, in its 100 year, a convention was held in the Capital on Sunday to celebrate it with the descendants of the original revolutionaries in attendance.
The convention, organised by the All-India Left Coordination, started with a recounting of the movement’s history by Jawaharlal Nehru University professor Chamal Lal who has also authored several books on Bhagat Singh. His talk was accompanied by several video slides which explained the genesis of the Gadar Party and the highlights of the movement.
“About a 100 years ago, a ship filled with Indian immigrants was turned back from Canada. As the ship returned to India several of its passengers were killed or arrested in a clash with the British police. This incident made the Gadar Party proclaim war and inspired thousands of Indian immigrants to come back and organise an armed rebellion against British imperialism. However, this movement was crushed,” said Prof. Lal, adding that in Singapore around 37 Gadar supporters were executed and 41 transported for life and in the conspiracy trials around 45 Gadar leaders were sentenced to death and around 200 imprisoned.
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The Gadar Party had its beginnings when peasants from Punjab went to North America and Canada looking for work and were racially discriminated and were physically attacked with the British government refusing to intervene. The movement started in North America and moved on to India to liberate the country. Among those on stage were Marxist scholar and political scientist Randhir Singh, Justice (Retd.) Rajinder Sachar and many others.