Advertise on NYTimes.com
Log InRegister NowHome PageToday's PaperVideoMost PopularTimes TopicsSearch All NYTimes.comThursday, August 16, 2012
India
WorldU.S.N.Y. / RegionBusinessTechnologyScienceHealthSportsOpinionArtsStyleTravelJobsReal EstateAutosAfricaAmericasAsia PacificEuropeMiddle East
American Roots of the Indian Independence Movement - NYTimes.comhttp://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/14/american-roots-of-the-indian-i...1 of 188/16/2012 8:54 AM
August 14, 2012,
8:58 am
12 Comments
American Roots of the Indian IndependenceMovement
By NARESH FERNANDES
Courtesy of S.P. SinghBhagwanSingh Gyanee, extreme right, who was the president of the Gadar Party from 1914 to 1920,delivering a lecture in the United States in the 1930s.
In June 1916, an Indian living in California wrote a letter to The New York Times emphasizinghow profoundly Indians in the United States had been influenced by the political values of their adoptive country.“Residence in the U.S. has not made [Indians]…who returned home ‘imbued with revolutionaryideas’ but it has made them republicans.” He added, “The whole country has been stirred bytheir vision of a United States of India.”The writer of the letter was Ram Chandra, the editor of Hindustan Gadar, the newspaper of theSan Francisco-based Gadar Party. The party took its name from the Urdu word for “mutiny” or “revolt.” (The word is sometimes transliterated as “Ghadar.”) In its inaugural issue in November 1913, the newspaper had stated the party’s intentions clearly: “To bring about arising…because the people can no longer bear the oppression and tyranny practiced under English rule.”
American Roots of the Indian Independence Movement - NYTimes.comhttp://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/14/american-roots-of-the-indian-i...2 of 188/16/2012 8:54 AM
Most of the members of the Gadar Party were Punjabi, though their sympathizers were drawn from across India. Many of them had served in the British army or police services in places like Hong Kong and Shanghai and had moved to the United States to work as farm laborers or onbuilding the railroads. A few were students at U.S. universities. As India celebrates the 65th anniversary of its independence from Britain, the role of the Gadar Party and other Indians in the United States in helping the cause is garnering increased attention. Some of the new work is the result of African-American scholars examining theinfluence of the Indian struggle for freedom on the U.S. civil rights movement. Long before Martin Luther King began to study Gandhi’s works, African-American groups had established links with visiting Indian freedom fighters. Among them was Lala Lajpat Rai, who spent five years starting in 1915 as a political exile in the United States. He counted W.E.B. Du Boisamong his friends, and also met with Booker T. Washington.Other research into the subject represents the growing Indian-American community’s attempt to prove that its history in the United States is longer and more nuanced than is commonly known.These include a recent book by the historian Maia Ramnath, “Haj to Utopia: How the Ghadar Movement Charted Global Radicalism and Attempted to Overthrow the British Empire.” Another initiative in this direction is the South Asian American Digital Archive, which was founded in Philadelphia in 2008 “to document and provide access to the diverse and relativelyunknown stories of South Asian Americans.” Its collections chronicle a wide range of community experiences, and include several documents and photographs that throw light on thelinks between Indian-Americans and the Indian independence struggle.“Historians will undoubtedly debate the legacy of the Gadar Party’s contributions to the overall freedom struggle for years to come,” said Samip Mallick, 31, the archive’s executive director, inan e-mail interview with India Ink. “But, symbolically, it is a really unique, extraordinary and inspiring story. The story of the Gadar Party is the story of a new immigrant populationadvocating for their own political enfranchisement, both through their support for decolonization around the world as well as through their fight for civil rights in their new homecountry.” Here are excerpts from that interview:
Q.How did the Gadar Party influence India’s freedom struggle?A.The Hindustan Gadar Party started off as a San Francisco-based anti-colonial political organization,which advocated the complete independence of India from British rule. The specifics of itsfounding are slightly murky, but it’s clear that in 1913, a group of activists based on the PacificCoast, including Har Dayal and Sohan Singh Bhakna, were organizing migrant laborers (most of whom were Punjabi Sikhs) and helped found what would later be known as the Gadar Party, itsaim being the overthrow of British colonial rule of India through revolutionary means. The Gadar
American Roots of the Indian Independence Movement - NYTimes.comhttp://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/14/american-roots-of-the-indian-i...3 of 188/16/2012 8:54 AM
Search History:
Result 00 of 00
00 results for result for
p.
American Roots of the Indian Independence Movement - NYTimes
84
Reads
0
Readcasts
0
Embed Views
More From This User
Notes
Load more
