Ghadar Party Martyrs Memorial Museum

 On 8th 2024 November we had had our field to Gadar Party Martyrs Memorial Museum in Jalandhar. We the B.A 2nd Year & M.A 2nd Year students had visited to the field visit. One of our respected faculty member Dr. Azamat Ali Sir joined with us in the field visit. We went to Gadar Party Martyrs Memorial Museum from LPU Main Gate by bus. On that day there was running a fair in front of the museum. Now I will describe about Gadar Movement. The Ghadar Movement or Ghadar Party was an early 20th-century, international political movement founded by expatriate Indians to overthrow British rule in India.^[1] Many of the Ghadar Party founders and leaders, including Sohan Singh Bhakna, would go on and join the Babbar Akali Movement and would help it in logistics as a party and publishing its own newspaper in the post-World War I era.^[2] The early movement was created by revolutionaries who lived and worked on the West Coast of the United States and Canada, but the movement later spread to India and Indian diasporic communities around the world. The official founding has been dated to a meeting on 15 July 1913 in Astoria, Oregon,^[3] and the group would splinter into two factions the first time in 1914, with the Sikh-majority faction known as the “Azad Punjab Ghadar” and the Hindu-majority faction known as the “Hindustan Ghadar.”^[4] The Azad Punjab Ghadar Party’s headquarters and anti-colonial newspaper publications headquarters would remain in the Stockton Gurdwara located in Stockton, California, whereas the Hindustan Ghadar Party’s headquarters and Hindustan Ghadar newspaper would relocate to be based in nearby Oakland, a suburb of San Francisco, California.^[4]Following the outbreak of World War I in 1914, some Ghadar party members returned to Punjab to incite armed revolution for Indian Independence. Ghadarites smuggled arms into India and incited Indian troops to mutiny against the British. This uprising, known as the Ghadar Mutiny, was unsuccessful, and 42 mutineers were executed following the Lahore Conspiracy Case trial. From 1914 to 1917 Ghadarites continued underground anti-colonial actions with the support of Germany and Ottoman Turkey, known as the Hindu–German Conspiracy, which led to a sensational trial in San Francisco in 1917.Following the war's conclusion, the party in the United States fractured into a Communist and an Indian Socialist faction. The party was formally dissolved in 1948.^[1] Key participants in the Ghadar Movement included K. B. Menon, Sohan Singh Bhakna, Mewa Singh Lopoke, Kesar Singh(Vice-President), Baba Jawala Singh(Vice-chair), Balwant Singh, Santokh Singh, Bhai Parmanand, Vishnu Ganesh Pingle, Bhagwan Singh Gyanee, Har Dayal, Tarak Nath Das, Bhagat Singh Thind, Kartar Singh Sarabha, Udham Singh, Abdul Hafiz Mohamed Barakatullah, Rai Nawab Khan, Rashbehari Bose, and Gulab Kaur. Although its attempts at overthrowing the British Raj were unsuccessful, the insurrectionary ideals of the Ghadar Party influenced members of the Indian Independence Movement opposed to Gandhian nonviolence. To carry out other revolutionary activities, "Swadesh Sevak Home" at Vancouver and United India House at Seattle was set-up.^[5]Between 1903 and 1913 approximately 10,000 South Asians emigres entered North America, mostly from the rural regions of central Punjab.^[7][8] About half the Punjabis had served in the British military. The Canadian government decided to curtail this influx with a series of laws, which were aimed at limiting the entry of South Asians into the country and restricting the political rights of those already in the country.^[9] Many migrants came to work in the fields, factories, and logging camps of Northern California and the Pacific Northwest, where they were exposed to labor unions and the ideas of the radical Industrial Workers of the World or IWW. The migrants of the Pacific Northwest banded together in Sikh gurdwaras and formed political Hindustani Associations for mutual aid.Nationalist sentiments were also building around the world among South Asian emigres and students, where they could organize more freely than in British India. Several dozen students came to study at the University of Berkeley, some spurred by a scholarship offered by a wealthy Punjabi farmer. Revolutionary intellectuals like Har Dayal and Taraknath Das attempted to organize students and educate them in anarchist and nationalist ideas.RasBihari Bose on request from Vishnu Ganesh Pingle, an American trained Ghadar, who met Bose at Benares and requested him to take up the leadership of the coming revolution. But before accepting the responsibility, he sent Sachin Sanyal to the Punjab to assess the situation. Sachin returned very optimistic,^[1][10] in the United States and Canada with the aim to liberate India from British rule. The movement began with a group of immigrants known as the Hindustani Workers of the Pacific Coast.^[1]The Ghadar Party, initially the Pacific Coast Hindustan Association, was formed on 15 July 1913 in the United States but before a decision to create headquarter at Yugantar Ashram in San Francisco was taken at a meeting in the town of Astoria in the state of Oregon in USA under the leadership of Har Dayal, Sant Baba Wasakha Singh Dadehar, Baba Jawala Singh, Santokh Singh and Sohan Singh Bhakna^[11] as its president. The members of the party were Indian immigrants, largely from Punjab.^[9] Many of its members were students at University of California at Berkeley including Dayal, Tarak Nath Das, Maulavi Barkatullah, Harnam Singh Tundilat, Kartar Singh Sarabha and V.G. Pingle. The party quickly gained support from Indian expatriates, especially in the United States, Canada, East Africa, and Asia. Now I will describe about Desh Bhagat Yadgar Hall. Desh Bhagat Yadgar Hall situated in the Jalandhar district of Punjab is a Martyr’s memorial hall built in memory of freedom fighters of the Ghadar movement.  The idea for the Desh Bhagat Yadgar Hall began in the 1950s to preserve the work and memory of the Ghadar Movement leaders. Huge support and collections were received to construct the building. I saw many books about the socialism & communism in the fair which was running in front of the Desh Bhagat Yadgar Hall. This field visit will be very educative for we journalism & mass communication students. It is totally enchanting.