Indian Revolutionaries in the U.S., 1913-1930: the Ghadar Movement and Young India
Indian Revolutionaries in the U.S., 1913-1930: the Ghadar Movement and Young India
There were two energetic hubs for revolutionary activity among Indian expatriates in the early part of the 20th century, the Ghadar Movement, based in California, and the Young India movement, based initially in New York.
Introducing the Ghadar Movement
The Ghadar movement was based in San Francisco, though it also had extensive followers in the logging camps in Oregon and Washington State. (It would also find followers throughout the colonial world, including in places like the Philippines and Fiji.) The word itself means “mutiny” or “uprising” in Punjabi, and some scholars see the use of the word as an indirect allusion to the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857.
The movement took a much stronger line with respect to the critique of British colonialism than did mainstream leaders in the Congress movement in India at the time. One reason for the dissatisfaction might have to do with the military backgrounds of many of the Ghadar party. Many of them had served in the British military, only to be disappointed by lackluster pay and benefits that led many to leave India for better opportunities.
The other reason the Ghadarites could be so explicit in their condemnation of the exploitative and oppressive aspects of British rule might simply be that the intense censorship of print media occurring in British India did not apply to the publications of the Ghadar party in the U.S.
The Ghadar party had a number of important ideologues and leaders – Har Dayal was an important early figure – but it was essentially a decentralized political movement. Writings in the Ghadar newspaper printed in the San Francisco ashram remained unsigned, and historians are not clear who wrote many of them. In her book, Haj to Utopia, Maia Ramnath mentions several other important figures who helped lay the foundation for the radical approach of the Ghadar movement:
- Ram Nath Puri started the Circular-i-Azadi, one of the first anti-colonial publications on the West Coast, which sought to organize a national party among laborers.
- Guru Dutt Kumar established the Swadesh Sevak Home in Vancouver, providing English classes and a space for political talk while advocating for mutiny among Sikh troops.
- Taraknath Das published Free Hindustan, using it to educate the masses for revolution and criticize Britain’s "murderous commercial policy".
- Pandurang Khankhoje focused on military training and founded the Indian Independence League in Portland, eventually earning the trust of skeptical workers like Sohan Singh Bhakna.
The formal start of Ghadar movement might be the meeting of Punjabi lumber industry workers in Astoria, Oregon, in fall 1913. That meeting led to the creation of the Pacific Coast Hindustan Association (PCHA), which would have its headquarters based in San Francisco. The first issue of the Ghadar newspaper was published on November 1, 1913. The movement also put out a collection of poetry called Ghadar Di Gunj (Echoes of Mutiny). While the majority of the followers of the Ghadar movement were Punjabi, the newspaper was printed in several Indian languages, including Urdu, Hindi, and Gujarati.
Two major historical events had an impact on the direction of the Ghadar party, the Komagatu Maru incident in Vancouver in the spring of 1914, and the outbreak of World War I in the fall of that same year.
The Komagatu Maru incident involved 376 Indian passengers arriving on a steamer in Vancouver harbor were turned back by the British-Canadian military and forced to return to India. The immigrants were forced to wait for months in the harbor before finally being turned away – a reflection of deep hostility to Asian immigrants among working class white residents in the Pacific Northwest at the time (both in Canada and the northwest US). While in the harbor, there was a confrontation with police, where passengers fought off officers attempting to board the vessel with bricks and scrap metal. Upon their forced return to India, a confrontation with police at Budge Budge resulted in the deaths of eighteen passengers and the arrest of many more.
One of the passengers on board the ship was the younger brother of Bhagat Singh Thind, an early migrant who was initially involved with the Ghadar movement before stepping away from radical political activities. Today, Thind is best known as the person whose U.S. citizenship was revoked in 1918 -- a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court.
For Indian immigrants in California, the event further galvanized and radicalized a growing movement, and became a kind of rallying cry – revealing the racism underlying immigration policy, and making the push for armed struggle seem all the more urgent.
The other major turn was the advent of World War I, which seemed to give Indian revolutionaries a sense that the British Empire was in a fragile position – giving revolutionary nationalists an opening.
A small group of Ghadarites attempted to return to India to incite an armed revolution against British rule in February 1915 (an event sometimes referred to as the Ghadar Mutiny). The goal was to incite Indian troops to rebel against their British superiors. However, the movement was betrayed from within by an informer, Kirpal Singh, who had infiltrated the inner circle and alerted the police. This led to a series of raids on the movement’s headquarters, the capture of key organizers, and the preemptive replacement of Indian guards with British troops at military bases. Despite attempts to move the date forward to February 19, the rebellion crumbled as leaders were rounded up across northern India.
In the aftermath, the British government launched the Lahore Conspiracy Cases, tried under the Defense of India Act without the possibility of appeal. The trials resulted in 42 death sentences and dozens of transportations for life. Figures like Vishnu Ganesh Pingle and Kartar Singh Sarabha were executed, while others were imprisoned or fled into exile. Back in San Francisco, the movement fractured into bitter factional strife between Ram Chandra, who was accused of financial nontransparency and embezzlement, and Bhagwan Singh, who sought to maintain the original revolutionary spirit of the movement.
After the break-up of the original Ghadar party in 1915, the movement was reformulated. A new newspaper began to be printed in English starting in 1920 and continuing for more than a decade: The United States of India. This was a newspaper printed in English, which took a more measured line regarding nationalist organizing, and which took a decidedly more cosmopolitan approach to questions of identity and solidarity.
Lajpat Rai and the Young India Movement
A starting point for learning more about the thinking of the Young India movement might be Lalal Lajpat Rai’s 1916 book, The United States of America: A Hindu’s Impressions and a Study. Rai’s main thesis was that the problems of the United States—particularly race and color—were strikingly similar to those facing India. The book engages in transnational comparison, refracting American racial dynamics through the lens of Indian social forms like caste.
In his book, Rai declares that "The Negro is the PARIAH of America," drawing a direct analogy between the "Negro problem" in the U.S. and the "depressed classes" (Dalits/Untouchables) in India. (The English word “Pariah” comes from a name for a Dalit caste grouping in southern India.) He used the term "caste feeling" to describe American racism, noting that both systems relied on social segregation, such as restrictions on inter-dining and inter-marriage, to maintain hierarchy.
Rai also published a book (this one in New York), called Young India, which tracks the emergence of the Indian nationalist movement and the Indian National Congress. He critiques the moderate stance often taken by the Indian National Congress (which up to that point was not oriented towards independence), and also discusses the emergence of radical and revolutionary movements like the Ghadar movement in San Francisco. We have the full text of Rai's book here.
Rai founded the India Home Rule League of America (IHRLA) and started publishing the journal Young India, which followed a line of thinking that resembles that found in his book of the same title. The journal functioned as a "periodical nation," using print culture to create an image of a unified, ancient, and culturally rich India that was "young again" and ready for self-governance.
Rai’s activities drew the attention of both British and American intelligence agents, who labeled him a "dangerous Hindu conspirator" and monitored his speeches and correspondence. Despite his public tireless work, Rai’s private letters revealed a sense of despair; he often felt like a "wandering beggar" whose appeals for Indian independence excited pity but failed to arouse "earnest sympathy" from the American public.
Lajpat Rai left the U.S. in 1919, and returned to India, where he became a prominent figure within the Congress Party.
Further reading:
Maia Ramnath, Haj to Utopia: How the Ghadar Movement Charted Global Radicalism and Attempted to Overthrow the British Empire (University of California Press, 2011)
Seema Sohi Echoes of Mutiny: Race, Surveillance, and Indian Anticolonialism in North America. Oxford University Press, 2014
Manan Desai United States of India: Anticolonial Literature and Transnational Refraction. Cambridge University Press, 2020.
This page has paths:
- Indian Travel Writers in the West: the Colonial Period (1794-1947) Amardeep Singh
- Emerging Social Movements and Nationalist Politics Amardeep Singh