Book Extract| The Ghadar Movement: A Forgotten Struggle by Rana Preet Gill

‘The main purpose of every Sikh was to fight for independence because Guru Gobind Singh died for his country.’ Gurdit Singh’s voice resonated, making a deep impression on his audience. The man from Sirhali in Amritsar was not a meek person. An entrepreneur, he had lived and worked in different parts of the world—Malaya, Singapore, Taiping, and here he was in Hong Kong addressing the men in the gurdwara on the occasion of Gurpurab, spreading the spirit of Ghadar.6 Gurdit was not only a man of words; he also had a clear plan.
While in Hong Kong, Gurdit Singh noticed Indians waiting for a ship to take them to Canada, the land of their dreams. The government was changing the laws, the rules were being made inflexible but they had seen in the recent judgments that the Canadian courts had the power to overrule the government. They saw hope in the judgments. And Gurdit Singh thought the same. He was a born fighter. He chartered the Komagata Maru with the idea of sailing it to Canada.
These were the terms and condition for chartering the ship:
• HK$11,000 per month rent
• First term of rental to be paid on signing
• The second within a week
• The third and fourth within two weeks
• Remainder within two months of commencement
• Captain and crew would be provided but no wireless telegraphy would be affixed

Tickets were sold at HK$210 by one of Singh’s confidants.8 Out of 500 hopefuls, only 165 chipped in as the rest of them were too scared to undertake this journey. The ship would have sailed with more people if the Hong Kong police had not played spoilsport. They scared and shooed people away with the declaration that they would not be taken in by the Canadian government. The ship started its journey from Hong Kong on 28 March 1914. Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims were packed together on 533 wooden benches with no backs. The lower deck looked more or less like a third-class railway coach.

‘If we are admitted, we will know that the Canadian government is just. If we are deported, we will sue the government and if we cannot obtain redress, we will go back and take up the matter with the Indian government,’ said Gurdit Singh in Shanghai,10 the first stop of the journey from where boarded another seventy- three hopefuls. There, Gurdit Singh spoke to a press reporter with a certain nonchalance. Though the second instalment of the ship had still not been paid, the third was about to come and the count of passengers was still not to the ship’s capacity, it did not deter him. He had brought Ghadar literature on board and raised the spirits of his men by readings from Ghadar Dian Goonjan.

The second stop of the ship came at Moji, a port 210 kilometres from Nagasaki in Japan. Refuelling of coal was undertaken at Moji as the men on the ship explored Japan. Eighty-five passengers had arrived from Manila at Nagasaki and boarded a train to Moji. Thirty-eight were waiting at Moji itself. By now, Gurdit Singh was making exaggerated claims of starting a revolution by the Indian troops if the government opposed the sailing of the Komagata Maru.

In Moji came a high-profile visitor who lectured the men on board. This was Balwant Singh Khurdpur, the priest of the gurdwara of Vancouver, who, along with Bhag Singh Bhikhiwind, had secured his family’s entry to Canada after a fierce court battle. His rousing speech revived their sagging spirits.

The last and the final stop before the ship reached the North Pacific was Yokohama, a port city to the south of Tokyo. There, Bhagwan Singh, the man who had been bundled up forcibly and removed from Canada, spoke to the passengers. ‘You will not get permission to land, the Canadian government will make sure of that,’ said Bhagwan Singh to the passengers of the Komagata Maru.

Bhagwan Singh had jumped out of the ship at Yokohama and was staying put with Barakatullah, devising his own plans to enter Canadian territory once again.
The curious case of Bhagwan Singh being deported deserves a mention. A man of passionate speeches, he commanded attention when he spoke. He was into anti-government activities when he left Punjab in 1907 to escape arrest.

He landed in Hong Kong and became the granthi of the Hong Kong gurdwara where he carried on with his seditious activities. He finally made his way to Canada on a ship called Empress of Russia and was able to land with a forged identity. His activities came to the fore very soon as he was extremely vocal in his criticism of the British regime. He was shunted out of Canada and ended up becoming a living martyr for the local community. After this last stop, the Komagata Maru was not going to permit entry to new passengers. For now, there was no land in sight.

The number of passengers stood at 376 now. Most of them (340) were Sikhs from Central Punjab (Amritsar, Patiala, Ferozepur, Ludhiana, Jalandhar and Lahore).17 The majority of these Sikhs belonged to Gurdit Singh’s district, Amritsar. The twenty-four Muslims were from Shahpur in west Punjab and the rest were Hindus.

Gurdit Singh was the man in command and remained so till the end. Apart from the passengers, there was a doctor on board, Raghunath Singh, who was travelling with his wife and child. He was an employee of the 8th Rajput Battalion in Hong Kong and was currently on leave.19 A granthi with the Guru Granth Sahib was accorded a special place on the ship where the passengers would recite hymns and pay obeisance regularly.

Even as the Komagata Maru sailed to Canada, on the Vancouver shore, hectic activities had begun to stall the entry of the ship into Canadian territory. When it arrived on 23 May 1915, it was anchored at Burrad inlet, the harbour that was a shallow cleft of the sea that separated the city of Vancouver from the mountainous region.

Local politicians were virulent in their opposition to the landing of the ship and this was dutifully carried by the British and Canadian press.

The arrival of the Komagata Maru was described as a second oriental invasion of Canada by The Times, London. Similar emotions were expressed by the Vancouver Sun on 1 June 1914, when it wrote that Asia was knocking and knocking persistently at the door of Western America. The Times, London also spoke disparagingly of the incident.

The Canadian press was also waiting to get a glimpse of the passengers and report about their uncouth demeanour. As soon as the gangway was lowered, they hopped on to the ship. But they were pleasantly surprised to find the passengers nice and well turned out. This was something they had not expected. Indians were, perhaps, not savages, who amused them as they wrote in their columns.

The Vancouver Daily News Advertiser reported thus after interviewing the passengers on their arrival: ‘They all seemed in good health and were certainly clean, well set-up and handsome men. Some of the old men in particular were magnificent specimens of humanity.’

The Victoria Times reported:

The majority of men had served in the British army, and they are a tall handsome lot. They seem superior to the class of Hindus which have already come to this province. They stand very erect and move with an alert action. All their suits are well pressed, and their turbans spotlessly clean. Most of them know a little English and some of them converse in it remarkably well.

The men happily posed for pictures, feeling elated at this reception. The kind words of the Vancouver Daily News Advertiser and The Victoria Times were not taken to, too kindly by the immigration people, who shooed the press away and did not allow anyone to embark on the ship. The men on the ship were bamboozled at this development. They had enjoyed the limelight even if only for a little while. They were unaware of the frenzy they had generated on the shores, the reverberations of which were soon to be felt in Ottawa and back home. For them, the second home was open and welcoming and it was going to be nowhere else but here in Canada.

By now, a firm opposition had begun to take shape amongst the local anti-immigration lobby and politicians of British Columbia. They would not tolerate another ship full of immigrants to land as it had happened in the past. The decision by Justice Hunter in the Panama Maru case and the liberties extended to the families of Bhikhiwind and Khurdpur had angered them.

Immigration officer Malcolm R.J. Reid, a Vancouver immigration agent, was the main face of the opposition. He was a man who made decisions on his own with the backing of the local MP, H.H. Stevens. He was the face of rabid nationalism and the strongest opponent of the Indian cause. A political appointee, he was an elementary school teacher until 1911 when the Conservative Party came to power. Reid forbade anyone from going near the ship, which was put on watch and surrounded by government boats. He did not let the ship unload its cargo of coal and the request to reload the ship with Canadian lumber was outrightly rejected.

H.H. Stevens, the local conservative MP, Reid and Hopkinson formed a strong trio who, with all their might, would try to keep the passengers of Komagata Maru on the ship itself, providing them no leverage or outlet to express their grievances and, most importantly, keeping them away from the courts.

The Indians on the shore had no illusions. They knew verywell that this time it would not be an easy task to get their brothers down from the ship. They had in the past gone to the courts and won, but this time, the level of resentment had reached gargantuan proportions. Though they were ready to fight for the rights of their own people, Canada would not give them success on a platter.

The Indians in Canada were well prepared with a lawyer,J. Edward Bird, and had formed a Shore Committee of fifteen members who would represent the rights of all 376 men on board. The important members of this Shore Committee were Hussain Rahim, Bhag Singh Bhikhiwind, Balwant Singh Khurdpur, Sohan Lal Pathak and Bhagwan Singh Jakh.

Chagan Kairaj Verma, a Hindu from Porbandar, Gujarat came to Canada with an assumed Muslim name and identity, Hussain Rahim, took charge of the Shore Committee’s affairs and managed them impeccably, becoming a connection between the people aboard and the authorities.

Before coming to Canada as a tourist in 1910, he had lived in Japan for a number of years. He had been deported from Canada nine months earlier after a search on his person led to the discovery of a formula depicting the making of nitroglycerine that was used in bomb-making.29 But he had gone to court against this decision and had managed to gain entry back. Now, donning the role of an activist, he was ready to fight for his own people.

Rahim was bold in his comments whenever he addressed public meetings. He had been opposing the unjust rules and regulations of the Canadian government and vehemently castigated the press, which had been meek, lacking a voice of its own.

Meanwhile, back at the ship, ninety passengers of the total were declared medically unfit by the immigration department. Then began the Board of Inquiry hearings, one passenger at a time being ferried to and from the boat to the office of Malcolm Reid. The head of the inquiry being Reid himself.

He was making inordinate delays, examining each passenger, leisurely withholding his decision. He was not only delaying the normally brisk procedure, he was also putting pressure on the agents of the ship to get it removed from Vancouver harbour.32 The owner of the ship sent a cable to the agents to pay ¥8000 as charter expenses and coal hire, and if unpaid, send the ship back to Hong Kong. The people on the ship were in a deplorable state. The wait seemed never-ending for them. Soon they were plagued with food and water shortages. Malcolm Reid dusted his hands off this responsibility, yet he indicated that it could be done if he was paid some money.

Meetings were regularly being conducted by the Shore Committee and donations were being accumulated. In one such meeting, the lawyer, Edward Bird, spoke up against the thinly veiled motives of the immigration department, who were hell- bent upon delaying things. The physical examination of every passenger was being prolonged and no decision was being made, so they could not go to the courts and gain advantage or laxity. A few provisions had been supplied. The people on board were surviving from meal to meal. The Shore Committee tried to take proprietorship of the vessel by presenting a cheque of $11,000.

Gurdit Singh was relieved of one big task of arranging the money. Meanwhile, a few of the passengers on the Komagata Maru who had been in Canada on earlier visits were given permission to disembark. Out of the 376 passengers, 355 were still on board, their future undecided. Finally, the Shore Committee gave in and agreed to the test cases, which would be representative of the rest of the passengers. Two people were chosen: Munshi Singh of Hoshiarpur and Narain Singh of Lahore and cases were filed on their behalf. They were questioned and their replies were found unsatisfactory.

This decision was a big blow for the passengers, who retaliated by proclaiming that they would not let the ship move and were ready to fight. Indeed, they were not afraid. The gloominess of arriving and yet not being allowed to disembark, and not being allowed to set foot in the land of their dreams was unfathomable. The wait had humiliated them. Some of them had removed their three-piece suits and folded them neatly to be put in their trunks.

And now they were back in their traditional clothing. There was no joy to be celebrated and soon the pain of rejection intensified into anger. The Komagata Maru had to be driven out of Canadian waters now. The Sea Lion, a tug boat, was brought to take control of the ship but the passengers aboard retaliated by attacking the 120 policemen with coal, bricks and scrap iron. Next, the warship Rainbow was brought, which was armed with war guns to threaten the ship. Finally, the men on the Komagata Maru accepted the offer of provisions by the Canadian government along with help from the Shore Committee and sailed back with their hopes dashed and dreams of a rosy future made redundant.

A full bench of the Supreme Court sat to decide on these cases. Their unanimous decision was to refuse admission to the passengers of the Komagata Maru and as a result, deportation orders were issued for the 355 passengers on board.

Rana Preet Gill The Ghadar Movement: A Forgotten Struggle | Unveiling the Heroes and Betrayals of India’s Revolutionary Fight Against British Rule Penguin Viking, India, 2025. Hb. Pp.288

The Ghadar Movement was conceived in 1913 in the United States of America by Lala Har Dayal, Kartar Singh Sarabha, Sohan Singh Bhakna, Harnam Singh Tundilat and others, all of them Indian immigrants in the US. Inspired by Tilak, Savarkar, Madam Cama, Shyamaji Krishnavarma and others, the Ghadar plan was to smuggle arms to India and incite Indians in the British-Indian Army to mutiny. Many Ghadarites, most of them from Punjab, came back to India from the US in order to participate in the struggle. In India, revolutionaries like Rash Behari Bose and Vishnu Ganesh Pingle joined them.

Owing to lapses in planning and the presence of informers in their midst, the plan ultimately failed and the British came down very heavily on the conspirators.

Some like Kartar Singh Sarabha (who inspired a young Bhagat Singh) were sentenced to death for their part in the struggle. Many others suffered long and cruel jail sentences in the Andamans.

Rana Preet Gill is a Veterinary Officer with the Animal Husbandry Department of Punjab Government. She has authored four books―three novels―Those College Years, The Misadventures of a Vet, Maya and a collection of middles titled Finding Julia. Her articles and short stories have been published in The Tribune, Hindustan Times, The Hindu, The Statesman, The New Indian Express, Deccan Herald, The Hitavada, Daily Post, Women’s Era, Commonwealth Writers Journal, Himal and others.