The Ghadar Movement: A Forgotten Struggle

The Ghadar Movement was conceived in 1913 in the United States of America by Lala Har Dayal, Kartar Singh Sarabha, Sohan Singh Bhakna, Harnam Singh Tundilat and others, all of them Indian immigrants in the US. Inspired by Tilak, Savarkar, Madam Cama, Shyamaji Krishnavarma and others, the Ghadar plan was to smuggle arms to India and incite Indians in the British-Indian Army to mutiny. Many Ghadarites, most of them from Punjab, came back to India from the US in order to participate in the struggle. In India, revolutionaries like Rash Behari Bose and Vishnu Ganesh Pingle joined them. Owing to lapses in planning and the presence of informers in their midst, the plan ultimately failed and the British came down very heavily on the conspirators. Some like Kartar Singh Sarabha (who inspired a young Bhagat Singh) were sentenced to death for their part in the struggle. Many others suffered long and cruel jail sentences in the Andamans. Carefully researched and breezily narrated, Rana Preet Gill’s The Ghadar Movement is an accurate portrait of the struggle.