Sohan Singh Bhakna

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Sohan Singh Bhakna
Ghadar Conspiracy
.

Baba Sohan Singh Bhakna (22 January 1870 – 21 December 1968)

Lahore Conspiracy trial, Sohan Singh served sixteen years of a life sentence for his part in the conspiracy before he was released in 1930. He later worked closely with the Indian labour movement, devoting considerable time to the Kisan Sabha
.

Early life

Sohan Singh was born on 22 January 1870 at the village of Khutrai Khurd, north of

Gurudwara and by the Arya Samaj. He learnt to read and write in the Punjabi language at an early age, and was also instructed on the rudiments of Sikh traditions. Sohan Singh was married at the age of ten to Bishan Kaur, daughter of a landlord near Lahore by the name of Khushal Singh. Sohan Singh finished primary school at the age of sixteen in 1896, which he started at age eleven when primary school was first opened in his village, by which time he was also proficient in Urdu and Persian
.

Sohan Singh became involved in the nationalist movement and the agrarian unrest that emerged in Punjab in the 1900s. He participated in the protests against the anti-Colonization Bill in 1906-07. Two years later, in February 1909, he left home to sail for the United States. After a two-month journey, Singh reached Seattle on 4 April 1909.

United States

Sohan Singh soon found work as a labourer in a timber mill being constructed near the city. In this first decade of the 1900s, the Pacific coast of

Bhai Bhagwan Singh were working towards and for a political movement. Khankhoje himself founded the Indian Independence League in Portland, Oregon
. Sohan Singh at this time came to be strongly associated with this political movement taking shape among Indian immigrants. His works also brought him close to other Indian nationalists in United States at the time.

Meanwhile,

Punjab.[2] Many of its members were also from the University of California at Berkeley including Dayal, Tarak Nath Das, Kartar Singh Sarabha and V.G. Pingle. The party quickly gained support from Indian expatriates, especially in the United States, Canada and Asia. Ghadar meetings were held in Los Angeles, Oxford, Vienna, Washington, D.C., and Shanghai.[4]

Ghadar Movement

The Ghadar Party evolved from the Pacific Coast Hindustan Association. The Ghadar's ultimate goal was to overthrow

dominion status modest and the latter's constitutional methods as soft. Ghadar's foremost strategy was to entice Indian soldiers to revolt.[2] To that end, in November 1913 Ghadar established the Yugantar Ashram press in San Francisco. The press produced the Hindustan Ghadar newspaper and other nationalist literature.[4]
The Ghadar leadership, under Sohan Singh Bhakna, began at this time their first plans for mutiny. The inflammatory passions surrounding the
Taraknath Das used it as a rallying point and successfully brought many disaffected Indians in North America into the party's fold.[5] Sohan Singh himself had contacted the returning Komagata Maru at Yokohama and delivered to Baba Gurdit Singh
a consignment of arms when he learnt of hostilities breaking out in July 1914. The war in Europe hastened Ghadar's plans. It was already in touch with Indian revolutionaries
Komagata Maru incidence to organise and direct the rebellion from India. However, British intelligence was already picking up traces of the revolutionary conspiracy. Returning to India, Singh was arrested in Calcutta on 13 October 1914 and sent to Ludhiana for interrogation. He was subsequently sent to the Central Jail in Multan and later tried in the Lahore Conspiracy Case and sentenced to death, with forfeiture of property. The death sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment in the Andamans, where he reached on 10 December 1915 and where he undertook several hunger strikes successively to secure the detainees better treatment.[6]

Later life

In 1921, Sohan Singh was transferred to

Mazhabi
Sikhs from other 'high-caste' Sikhs during meals. In 1929, while still interned, he went on a hunger strike in support of Bhagat Singh. He ultimately served sixteen years before he was released early in July 1930.

After his release, he continued working in the nationalist movement and labour politics. His works were identified closely with the works of the

Communist party of India, devoting most of his time to organizing the Kisan Sabhas
. He also made the release of interned Ghadarites a key part of his political work.

He was interned a second time during World War II, when he was jailed at the Deoli Camp in what is today Rajasthan. He remained incarcerated for nearly three years. After Independence he veered decisively towards the Communist Party of India. He was arrested on 31 March 1948, but released on 8 May 1948. However, he was seized again, but jail-going ended for him finally at the intervention of Independent India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. Bent with age and ravaged by pneumonia, Baba Sohan Singh Bhakna died, at Amritsar, on 21 December 1968.

Notes

  1. ^ Josh, Sohan Singh (1970). Baba Sohan Singh Bhakna :life of founder of Ghadar party. People Publishing House. pp. ii.
  2. ^ a b c Strachan 2001, p. 795
  3. ^ Fischer-Tinē 2007, p. 335
  4. ^ a b Deepak 1999, p. 441
  5. ^ Strachan 2001, p. 796
  6. .

References

Further reading