Having knowledge of history allows us to understand the past, which in turn enables us to understand our present and helps us create a better future.
Our newest section, History Revisited, reveals the many untold stories of people and events from history. Told by experts, historians and renowned figures from around the world, it gives us a different perspective on certain narratives or even shed light on those that have been misrepresented.
In this issue of History Revisited, we unearth the history of Kartar Singh Sarabha, a lion among men who fought relentlessly for India’s freedom
A UC Berkeley teenage student proudly marched to the gallows on November 16, 1915 in Lahore with a broad smile while singing songs of patriotism that he himself wrote. He was only 19 when he died and 16 when he started his journey of patriotism. His name was Kartar Singh Sarbha.
His story is contributed by Dr. Tarlochan Singh Nahal, a historian and a principal technical writer in the high tech industry in the San Francisco Bay Area, so that a legendary name can be carved on the annals of a history that forgot him.
KARTAR SINGH SARABHA
WW1’S INDOMITABLE TEENAGE FREEDOM FIGHTER
“Kartar Singh Sarabha is one of the most notable names among Punjabis who fought for the freedom of India from the British rule and laid down their lives. Many of them had their lands and properties confiscated and they suffered untold miseries and life in prisons. Even after 115 years of his hanging, he is hugely revered as a freedom fighting hero. He was the role model of Shahid Bhagat Singh, another legendary freedom fighter and a Punjabi hero who himself was hanged at the age of 22 in Lahore.
In 1912, when he was barely 16 years old he enrolled for a degree in chemistry at University of California at Berkeley, sponsored by his grandfather who owned 300 acres of land in India. Though from a well to do family, he felt agitated about the treatment immigrants from India, especially manual workers, received in the United States.
The fire of freedom for his country was lit when he observed the racist attitude of the locals towards Indians first-hand. He was convinced that it was because of the slavery of India by the British who held sway over the U.S. government and its policies towards Indians. In fact, the Angel Island Detention Barracks, where immigrants were processed, had become the nerve centre of British Intelligence gathering akin to Interpol today. Officials on Angel Island became central players in an international government surveillance network. Commissioner-General of Immigration Anthony Caminetti agreed to collect information on Indian nationalists beginning in 1914. He instructed immigrant inspectors to record detailed information on South Asian immigrants and their families, including their fathers’ last name, their religion, address in India, and address of their nearest relative in India. He sent those records to both U.S. politicians trying to pass exclusion measures on South Asians and secretly to the British.
His first revolutionary act was running the newspaper Ghadr (Revolt) for the Ghadar Party, run by Har Dyal, Professor of Sanskrit and Philosophy at Stanford University.
Ghadr was published weekly in Urdu and Punjabi. The reading audience of Ghadr was not limited to one or two countries in the Americas, but was spread in all the countries in the world where the Indians were involved in labor or some other type of work. Ghadar was shipped to Malaya, Hong Kong, Penang, Singapore, Shanghai, Siam, Panama, Philippines, Argentina, South Africa, and other countries in bundles. People read it individually or in groups and where ever it reached and was read, small organisations automatically sprang up which started to work for the freedom of India.”
Kartar Singh worked for the Ghadr day and night and did everything to make that newspaper successful and soon was organising all the revolutionary activities in the US and India. He was the chief planner of the Ghadar Party when he was arrested.
The Gadhar Party decided that Indians should learn how to fly an airplane and had plans to buy one in the future. Kartar Singh Sarabha was selected for that job and he took the necessary training from the east coast of the US.
When World War I broke out in 1914, the Ghadar Party gave an open call for a rebellion against the oppressive British rule. It urged its members to go to India and take the fight to their motherland against the British. Thousands of Ghadar Party members left for India in different waves on different ships. Most of them did not reach India due to British surveillance and many who did were arrested. Kartar Singh slipped through and once in India, he met with the top revolutionaries in Punjab and other states and travelled to Agra, Kanpur, Allahabad, Lucknow, Meerut, and other places to plan the rebellion.
To support WWI efforts, a large number Punjabi soldiers (mostly Sikhs and Muslims) were being prepared to be deployed to foreign lands by the British to be used as fodder for the British war against other nations. Kartar Singh’s plan was to cause a rebellion in the army barracks at Lahore, Ferozepur, Jalandhar, Naushehra, Rawalpindi, Kohat, Peshawar, and Hoti Mardan and other barracks in India. They had created many teams who had made contacts with soldiers in various military barracks and they were ready to rebel. Their primary targets for initiating the rebellion were the military barracks of Mianmir (Lahore) and Ferozepur.
February 21, 1915 was decided to be the day of mutiny in the army barracks in Punjab, but it was moved to an earlier date of February 19, 1915 because there was a suspicion of a leak. Unfortunately, three infiltrators – Mula Singh, Kirpal Singh, and Liaqat Hyat Khan – had already betrayed the patriots and leaked the secret to the British. As a result, the top leadership of the Ghadar Party was arrested at Lahore and Ferozepur and the plan to cause a rebellion failed.
Kartar Singh Sarabha and at least 24 other men were sentenced to death in the Lahore Conspiracy case. The primary charges against them were murder, dacoity (gang Robbery) and waging war against the Crown. Due to the direct intervention of the Viceroy of India Lord Hardinge, most were spared. Lord Hardinge wrote. “The Lahore conspiracy gave me much trouble at this time. No less than twenty-four men were condemned to death by a Special Tribunal. I went to Lahore to see the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir Michael O’Dwyer, and told categorically that I absolutely decline to allow a holocaust of victims in a case where only six men had been proved to be actually guilty of murder and dacoity.”
Sohan Singh Bhakna sums up the utmost bravery of those who were given death and life sentences.
“When Bhai Jawala Singh was given a life sentence, he told the court, I do not want life sentence; I want death by hanging. The official replied, You need to file an appeal for it.
When Kartar Singh [Sarabha] was given a death sentence by hanging, he said, “Thank you”, And when Bhai Nidhan Singh was given a death sentence, he said, “Is this all the power that you have?”
There are lions and there are sheep. And then there were these men, that even lions tremble before.
