Haj to Utopia. Maia Ramnath

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СКАЧАТЬ not let the white men know what I have written. Remember, lest you get into trouble; but understand and inform your friends.” ⁶¹

      It is easy to forget in the homosocial environment of work, study, and political organizing abroad, that some of these men still had wives and children in India—the restriction on whose immigration to North America had been a sharp goad to early discontent. Among the intercepted messages was one from a husband to a valiant wife: “Times are hard, very hard; there is no certainty of life. Here I hope the war with Englishmen is beginning and that in a short time there will be a great mutiny. The tyrants are ruling over us. We are justified in killing. We shall see the sword and gun in our hands and pressing forward we shall kill and die…. We shall meet if we survive. Is there any disturbance about the Government in India? Write about this. Receive Fateh like a brave woman. Pain comes first, but is followed by comfort. Do not despair, for the days of your comfort are drawing near.” ⁶²

       The Action Committee

      Next to the propaganda corps helmed by Har Dayal, the second-most important committee among the Yugantar Ashram inner circle was focused on militant action and directed by Pandurang Khankhoje, in collaboration with Vishnu Ganesh Pingle and Harnam Singh Tundilat.⁶³ While Har Dayal’s pracharak (propaganda) project depended by definition on broadcasting its message as loud and far as possible, the praharak (action) branch depended upon secrecy. Khankhoje was adamant on this point, wary of the danger of infiltration from British intelligence, and not without good reason, as it happened. So although he recalled in his memoir that there was no lack of “young freedom lovers” willing to “fight and die for the revolution,” he still maintained strict screening procedures. Even once enrolled, the workers oft en did not know what was going on beyond their own tasks. (Sadly, it would seem that as the mutiny preparations got under way, not everyone was up to Khankhoje’s disciplined security standards.)

      The action committee derived a great deal of tactical inspiration not only from the previous Indian extremists but from Sun Yat-sen’s republican nationalists, who had recently effected a successful Chinese revolution from abroad in 1911, just as the Indians wanted to do. This had even included an “assault force” of Chinese militants launched from San Francisco.⁶⁴ Har Dayal had already been in communication with Sun when he was in Hawaii, and Sun’s son, as it happened, was a contemporary of Chenchiah’s at the University of California. Chenchiah met with his classmate’s illustrious parent in Tokyo in 1912; Dr. Sun encouraged the Ghadarites’ enterprise of overthrowing British rule and offered them the benefits of his party’s experience. Though the leader of the San Francisco expedition, renegade American Homer Lea, had recently died, Emily Brown speculates that some of his veterans or confederates may have been available in San Francisco to speak with Khankhoje and his Ghadar action squad.⁶⁵ Khankhoje had been in the habit of visiting Chinatown during his period at Tamalpais, with a Chinese classmate who was one of Sun’s veterans. There, says Savitri Sawhney, “he had many discussions with the Chinese about India’s independence and his own aspirations…. The idea that Chinese and Indians could join in their quest for freedom and help each other fulfill their mutual goals was never far from his mind. He had developed a tremendous rapport with the Chinese whom he admired for their tenacity and grit. Some years later, after the inception of the Ghadar, this was to translate into a more meaningful exchange of ideas.” Sawhney comments further: “It was only natural that the cadets in the academy—particularly the Chinese, the Mexicans and the Irish—with insurrection on their minds would meet and discuss problems common to their countries.” Khankhoje also drew inspiration from the Mexican revolutionaries, who were never far from his awareness; he had friends among the Zapatista patriots who joined the Yaqui rebellion in southern California, and hoped they might help train the (Asian) Indians in “practical warfare.” ⁶⁶

      The plan the Chinese recommended was to start by cutting communications and telegraph lines, disrupting railways, and then destroying police outposts and military camps. When all of that was under way, they should proceed to establish revolutionary bases in the jungles, hills, valleys, and border regions, from which to harass British administrative and military functioning. They should get weapons and ammunition by raiding armories and military encampments; they couldn’t buy them. This, recalled Khankhoje, was exactly how they began to mobilize. (It seems the basic blueprint of guerrilla insurrection has remained unchanged for a hundred years!)⁶⁷ But once in motion, events quickly got away from such a neat, efficient plan.

      Har Dayal’s arrest came only a few months after the launch of the paper, on 25 March 1914. He fled the country not long afterward. Although he continued sending incendiary articles back for publication—notably, “Do Cheezon ke zarurat hai … Ghadar aur banduqen” (Two Things Are Necessary: Ghadar and Guns) and “O Soldiers of the Ghadr! O Stars of the Eyes of India!” (which appeared 14 July 1914)—and played a role in the Berlin India Committee’s work in Europe and the Ottoman realm, this was the end of his functional involvement in the North American organization. Yet belying the notion that the movement’s radicalism went no deeper than Har Dayal’s idiosyncrasies, Isemonger and Slattery took note that far from dampening the Yugantar Ashram’s work, his departure actually seemed to give “fresh incentive to the revolutionary movement.” ⁶⁸ The “Big Three” triumvirate of Ram Chandra, Bhagwan Singh, and Mohammed Barakatullah stepped into the momentary leadership gap, taking on the duties of the endless round of motivational tours, editing the paper, and handling finances and ashram affairs. One matter that shortly required their urgent attention was the Komagata Maru.

      The Komagata Maru Incident

      The Komagata Maru incident is one of the most amply documented episodes in the history of South Asian immigration to North America.⁶⁹ The facts in brief are these: in May 1908 the government of India had discreetly authorized the Canadian government to take the necessary steps to defend the whiteness of its shores without being too obvious in “express discrimination against British Indians.”⁷⁰ The governor-general announced the continuous journey stipulation (that only those who had sailed directly from their port of departure would be allowed to enter, which disqualified every voyage originating in India) and a prohibitive entry fee of $200 a head. British authorities (including then viceroy Lord Minto) expressed their appreciation for the subtle elegance of this solution, keeping out Indians without needing to be clumsily direct in acknowledging the awkward two-tiered status of the dominions separating the white-settler colonies of Canada and Australia from His Majesty’s Asian and African possessions.

      In April 1914, Gurdit Singh, a prosperous Singapore-based labor-transport contractor, chartered a ship to take a load of passengers to Canada from among the hundreds of his compatriots then awaiting passage in Hong Kong and other East Asian ports. Besides being a deliberate challenge to the statutes, it was also an act of altruistic self-interest, serving the community while also benefiting his own future shipping interest. After stops in Shanghai, Kobe, and Yokohama, the total manifest included 376 passengers, the majority adult male Sikhs, except for twenty-one Muslims.

      When they reached Vancouver on 23 May 1914, however, they were refused entry. As they waited at anchor for weeks, provisions on the ship ran low and tempers ran high. A shore committee was formed consisting of Balwant Singh, Husain Rahim, and Sohan Lal Pathak; a support meeting in Vancouver in July was attended by “some 400 Indians and 150 white men. The latter were mainly socialists.”⁷¹ This was attributed to the fact that Husain Rahim, then editor of the Hindustani,⁷² was also the secretary of the local Socialist organization, one of whose more “rabid” members now “advised the Indians to return to India, raise the standard of revolution and become masters of their own country.”⁷³

      Despite the efforts of the shore committee, the climax of the standoff was an attempt to forcibly transfer the passengers to another liner to be sent back. While a militia guarded the food stores on the wharf, which were to be loaded onto the new ship, a tugboat approached, bearing 120 police along with the chief and four inspectors, plus forty special СКАЧАТЬ