Voyage of the damned: Remembering Komagata Maru and Ghadar Party braves

Introduction

Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, has recently announced in Ottawa that he will offer an apology in the House of Commons on May 18, 2016, for the Canadian  government turning away more than 300 Indians seeking a better life in Canada about 100 years back [4].

Trudeau has proclaimed: “As a nation, we should never forget the prejudice suffered by the Sikh community at the hands of the Canadian government of the day. We should not and we will not”. He continued, “That is why, next month, on May 18th, I will stand in the House of Commons and offer a full apology for the Komagata Maru incident.” [4]

What then is the Komagata Maru incident about? It is but the voyage of the damned, the tale that we tell today.

***

By the late 19th and early 20th century, Canada and the United States were rapidly expanding their economies. They needed labour for their economic expansion and some of the labour was being sourced from India, particularly Punjab.  At the end of the 19th century, the immigration into British Columbia in Canada and the western coast of US was barely a trickle. However, attracted by the opportunities in Canada, poor monsoons in Punjab and a better standard of living in these new lands, Indians began migrating into these regions. Most of them were Sikhs and many of them came from families that traditionally served in the army and many were indeed ex-army personnel (pp. 43-44 [2]).  By 1908, 3,500 Sikhs had immigrated into British Columbia and a similar number had arrived in the western coast of the US. Many of them bought farmlands by their thrift and labour and began to prosper, often returning to India to collect even their families for emigration to Canada and US.

The influx of these cheap labourers from Punjab was greatly resented in both the US and in Canada.  There were many demands to halt the immigration and they found many supporters, both among the white supremacists and other labourers whose wages were often driven down by these immigrants.  Further, the employers used the Indians as blackleg strike breakers, which was greatly resented by the labourers.

On the other hand, the employers, despite using these cheap labourers willingly, deeply disliked and distrusted them. The Indians were often seen to be in league with the anarchists and the syndicalists, which cost them much support from the better classes of the US.

Quite apart from internal pressure, the British Indian government was also worried about the emigrants because they often brought home dangerous ideas about freedom, since they lived in much more open societies than the British Indian empire was at the time.  Beset from all sides, the sentiment of the Punjabis has been well captured in the quotation: “Harassed in our own land and with no support available abroad, we aliens have no land that we can call our own.”

In order to curb the influx of these Punjabis, the Canadian government issued several laws that made immigration into Canada extremely hard for the Indians. In January 1908, the Canadian government promulgated the Continuous Journey Act. The law made it mandatory for anyone entering Canada from Asia to come from their homes without breaking their journey anywhere on the way; the ostensible reason for the act was safeguarding Canadian public health (pp. 45-46, [2]).   At the time, there were no direct shipping lines between India and Canada (but there were direct China-Canada and Japan-Canada lines), so this particular law was directly aimed at restricting the entry of the Indians and the law was deeply resented by the Indians. 

In order to further discourage the entry of Indian immigrants into Canada, the government of Canada announced a law that every Asian must, on entry into Canada, possess two hundred dollars on him. William Lyon Mackenzie King was sent to London to discuss a 'solution to the Indian question' (p. 46, [2]). He wrote, “That Canada should desire to restrict immigration from the Orient is regarded as natural, that Canada should remain a white man's country is believed to be not only desirable for economic and social reasons, but highly necessary on political and national grounds” (p. 47, [3]). Further, as HH Stevens, the MP of Vancouver put it in the House of Commons in 1914, “his government knew that there was no steamship line direct from India to Canada, and therefore, this regulation would keep the Hindus out, and at the same time, render the government immune from attack on the ground that they were passing laws against the interests of the Hindus, who were British subjects” ( p. 46, [2]).

At the same time, students from India started enrolling in US and Canadian universities in some numbers, bringing in an educated class from India. The peasants and the scholars benefited from each other. The students were able to communicate more effectively with the authorities and were able to capably assist the peasants and labourers in the matters of their interests. They helped the labourers and the peasants create their own societies, principal ones of which were the Hindustani Society and the Khalsa Diwan. The first appeals, via these societies, were made to the British Indian government, but the latter remained unmoved, since it was in tacit collaboration between British Indian and Canadian authorities that the laws had been made. Lord Minto wrote to Sir Wilfred Laurier on March 1, 1909, “We hold the view that continuous passage and the two hundred dollar regulations are likely to prove effective in putting a stop to immigration of Indian labour.  We have published the conditions imposed by Canada widely ... We raised no objections to the methods adopted by Canada, and we have not any intention of raising questions regarding them” (p. 46, [2]).

Ghadar Party 

“What is our name? Mutiny.

What is our work? Mutiny.

Where will this mutiny break out? In India.

When will it break out? In a few years.

Why should it break out? Because the people can no longer bear the oppression and tyranny practised under British rule and are ready to fight and die for freedom.”

Much before the Ghadar Party (whose goal has been stated above) was formed, the grievances of the Indians of Canada and Western US began to coalesce and aided by the students who had come to the US and Canadian universities, the Indians began to form their own societies. The first attempts to build an association of Indians in US and Canada were made by Surendramohan Bose, Taraknath Das, Khagendra Chandra Sen, Gurudutt Kumar and Ramanath Puri. All these efforts often petered out due to lack of funds or the inability of the promoters to focus on the societies, but at any time, there were at least a few Hindustani associations that were fighting for the rights of the Indians in Canada and US. A number of societies were formed (it is beyond the scope of this article to trace the various societies and their effects), and most of them foundered soon after birth, as has been noted earlier, but the increasing hostility of the Canadian (and often, US) governments led to the alienation of the Indians from the British, whom they saw as betrayers and acting against their interests. And slowly and steadily, as the frustration fed into anger of the labourers and peasants, the revolutionary ideals often preached by the students began to percolate into the Indians of the West coast. 

Lala Hardayal, a lecturer at Stanford University, played a huge role in the dissemination of the revolutionary ideals into the Indians in the US and Canada. He arrived in the US in 1911, and obtained a post at the Stanford University as a lecturer.  Hardayal began publishing virulently anti-British propaganda and n the frustrated Indian populace on the labourers of the west coast of the US, he found a receptive audience. With the suppression of the Indian revolutionary journals in England and the growing disenchantment with Shyamji Krishna Verma and the Indian Sociologist, the ground was ripe for a new revolutionary organisation and a newsletter.

Thus, when in tune with the spirit of the times, Lala Hardayal suggested founding of the Ghadar newsletter and an organisation of the same name, it found a readymade audience, not only in the US and Canada, but also in other parts of the world.  The Ghadar grew so popular that it was soon making its way back to India, despite being banned by the British authorities. This revolutionary organisation was to play a vital role in the coming revolt against the British, with the beginning of the First World War.  By the time the Komagata Maru episode occurred, the revolutionary fervour had already acquired a solid following among the Indians of US and Canada. 

Komagata Maru episode

“For sixty days in 1914, a shipload of would be Indian immigrants was held just off shore by an angry province determined to stay white. The passengers fought off police, struggled in the courts, gave up when menaced by the navy, but left behind a legacy of death” (p. 120, [3]). This statement about the Komagata Maru was made by the promoter, Baba Gurdit Singh, in this book, The Voyage of the Komagata Maru.

Originally, there was nothing political about this ship, Komagata Maru, at all. In order to circumvent the “direct voyage” rule, a Sikh contractor named Gurdit Singh chartered the ship, Komagata Maru to carry Indian workers from East Asia to Canada. About his motivation, Gurdit Singh wrote in the ship's log, “The reason which led me to this work is that when I came to Hong Kong in January of 1914, I could not bear the trouble of those who were in the Gurudwara waiting to go to Vancouver. They were waiting there for years ... How tyrannical and hard was this on our brothers! ...This affected my mind and I resolved to take them to Vancouver under any circumstance”( p. 122, [3]).   

Gurdit Singh and his fellow passengers had been encouraged by the judgement of the Supreme Court of Canada in the case of the Panama Maru in 1913. However, the organisers of the voyage were unaware of the new restrictions of possession of USD200 and the “continuous journey” clauses that made it impossible for the passengers to disembark at Vancouver as in the case of the passengers of the Panama Maru. 

The Komagata Maru voyaged from Hong Kong, on April 4, 1914 with 106 passengers.  Another 111 passengers joined them at Shanghai, 80 at Moji and 14 at Yokohama.  On May 23, 1914, it reached Vancouver with 376 passengers. Of them, 25 were Muslims and the rest were almost exclusively Sikhs and the immigrants arrived in the port of Vancouver.  They tried to disembark, but were prevented by the port authorities, saying that the passengers did not possess health certificates or the required USD200. Further, the cable of the British envoy, Green, in Tokyo, that the ship contained malcontents and subversives, biased the Canadian authorities against the passengers.  None except the ship’s doctor and those already domiciled in Canada were allowed to disembark from the ship. The ship, however, remained anchored off the coast of Vancouver.

The Indians already in Vancouver formed a “Shore Committee” to help the passengers on the ship disembark, by raising the necessary funds, raising public opinion for their cause and if needed, by moving a court of law for the purpose. Two major protest meetings were organised, the first on may 31, 1914 and the second on June 21, 1914, against the heartless attitude of the authorities, and many non-Indians, especially the Canadian socialists, participated in it. 

But the authorities remained firm in their determination to prevent the passengers from disembarking and the legal petition of the Shore Committee was heard in the Canadian Supreme Court. With the enforced captivity of the passengers aboard the ship, the sanitation facilities and the condition of the passengers grew steadily worse. Fleas, rats and other pests began to harass the passengers steadily. 

The Shore Committee and Gurdit Singh hired Mr Bird, a famous advocate, as their lawyer.  Addressing the meeting on June 21, 1914, Bird spoke of their tale of woe, and a formal petition was sent by the Hindustani association to the Secretary of State, India and the Premier Borden, stating, “Whereas the Hindustanee passengers on board of the Komagata Maru are unlawfully prevented by the Immigration authorities from consulting with their legal advisors and from procuring provisions and water from their Hindu friends, making their lot on board, a lot to which cattle would not be subjected, and whereas such brutal and unlawful treatment be tolerated in India, we urge the Dominion authorities under the principle – do unto others as they would do unto you; see that the Hindus are saved from the high-handed actions of immigrations officials. We further protest that the action of the immigration officers in Vancouver is as unlawful as anarchists and one so provoking that the Hindus shall never forget or forgive the powers that be if they do not remedy the League and the Khalsa Diwan Society” (p. 128, [3]).

On July 7, 1914, the Supreme Court gave its judgement saying that the new Orders-in-Council prevented it from intervening with the work of the immigration department. 

Justice JA MacDonald stated, “The Immigration Act is not unconstitutional, and the Order-in-Council.....is not ultra vires, and as the Board was legally seized of the subject of the inquiry, 1 think the court cannot review a decision upon a question which the Board was authorised to decide”. 

Thus, with the legal route for the redressal of their grievances closed, the next move came from the Immigration Department of Canada.  The port authorities ordered the Komagata Maru to leave the Canadian waters.  However, the harassed passengers, who were by this time in no mood to relent, seized control of the ship and refused to move it out of the Canadian waters.  The port authorities retaliated by blockading the supply of food and fresh water, taken to the Komagata Maru in a boat.  Then, they sent a tugboat named Sea Lion with one hundred and twenty policemen, to storm the ship. However, the passengers flung hatchets, iron bars, pieces of machinery, coal, firebricks and other objects, and drove the Sea Lion back and the Canadian policemen had to beat an ignominious retreat. 

The Canadians, then, on the night of July 21, 1914, brought a ship named the Rainbow alongside the Komagata Maru to fire on the latter, if necessary (p. 60, [2]). The members of the Shore Committee, alarmed at the possible bloodshed of their compatriots, decided to send out a delegation on the tugboat Sea Lion to the passengers of the Komagata Maru to persuade them to comply with the instructions of the authorities. The delegation was successful, and the passengers relinquished control of the ship to the ship crew. 

The businessmen, whose cargo had not been unloaded from the Komagata Maru, had also been supporting the demands of the passengers who wanted to disembark, as the cargo could not be unloaded otherwise. The Canadian government bought their compliance with the Minister of Agriculture, Martin Burrell, promising to reimburse the businessmen who had suffered loss due to the inability to unload their cargo. Further, the Canadian government also offered generous provisions worth USD40,000 for the ship to sail back to Hong Kong (p. 131, [3]).  With the last resistance gone, the Komagata Maru sailed back to Yokohama on July 23, 1914 (p. 61, [2]). 

The Komagata Maru sailed to Yokohama, but the passengers could not alight there, as the Japanese authorities did not allow all the Indians to land there, as they had no permits. After a long delay there, the British Consul of Kobe offered generous provisions for the ship to sail to Calcutta.  The ship was forbidden from sailing to either Hong Kong or Singapore. 

However, the British had got wind of the Ghadar preparations in the Canada and the US and had decided to intern them. The intelligence reports sent about the Komagata Maru from Japan also biased the British authorities in India. On September 5, 1914, the British Indian government passed the Ingress into India Ordinance (p. 227, [6]). The ordinance allowed the British to restrict the liberty of any person returning to India after September 5, 1914. When the Komagata Maru returned, it was the first ship to which the ordinance was applied. 

There is a bit of speculation that the British, knowing the sorely tested temper of the Komagata Maru passengers, decided to rush the Ingress into India Ordinance so that they could be prepared to deal with the passengers. While it is undoubted that they wanted to prevent the entry of radicalised Indians from US and Canada once the war began, the timing of the ordinance, especially once the Kobe Consul sponsored the Komagata Maru’s voyage to Calcutta, leaves one wondering whether the generous sponsorship was intended to herd the victims into a trap in Calcutta. The other interesting sidelight is that, both the Ingress into India Ordinance and its successor Defence of India Act were welcomed by the Moderate Congress Legislature party, with the Moderate leader GK Gokhale assuring the Viceroy that the Congress would never stand in the way of any law that the Viceroy genuinely wished to pass in the Legislative Assembly (pp. 189-190, [6]).

The Komagata Maru finally sailed into Calcutta and dropped anchor at Budge Budge on September 27, 1914. From the moment the Komagata Maru docked, the people on board were looked on as self confessed criminals and political agitators, who had attacked law enforcement officers.  When the ship docked at Budge Budge, the police went to arrest Baba Gurdit Singh and twenty of his principal followers. According to official sources, the attempt was resisted, shots were fired and nineteen people were killed in the violence. Most of the rest were either arrested and kept in prison or forcibly interned in their villages for the duration of the First World War. A few, such as Dr Mathura Singh, however escaped and managed to hide or make their way around without being detected.   However, according to Gurdit Singh, the Sikhs on the ship were not armed with firearms and the killing of nineteen Sikhs was a coldblooded massacre. The eminent historian RC Majumdar gives credence to the latter version, and disdains the government's claim, which was based on ex parte evidence (pp. 227-228, [6]).  The main promoter, Gurdit Singh, remained in hiding till 1922, but was persuaded by Gandhi to surrender and was imprisoned for five years. He would go on to write the story of the Komagata Maru after his release.

Lord Rowlatt wrote about the “Budge Budge Riot” (as the resistance of the passengers of the Komagata Maru became famously known), after the War, stating, “On the 19^th of the month (September) occurred the disastrous Budge Budge riot. The circumstances which led up to and produced this affair exercised some influence on after-events and must therefore be clearly understood.  ... On July 23, they started on their return journey with an ample stock of provisions allowed them by the Canadian Government. They were by this time in a very bad temper as many had staked all their possessions on this venture, and had started in the full belief that the British Government would assure and guarantee their admission to a land of plenty. This temper had been greatly aggravated by direct revolutionary influences. The revolutionary party too had endeavoured to smuggle arms on board at Vancouver.  During the return voyage the War broke out. On hearing at Yokohama that his ship's company would not be allowed to land at Hong Kong, Gurdit Singh replied that they were perfectly willing to go to any port in India if provisions were supplied. The British Consul at Yokohama declined to meet his demands, which were exorbitant but the Consul at Kobe was more compliant, and after telegraphic communication between Japan and India, the Komagata Maru started for Calcutta.  At neither Hong Kong nor Singapore were the passengers allowed to land. This added to their annoyance, as, according to the findings of the Committee, many had not wished to return to India at all.

The Komagata Maru arrived at the mouth of the Hooghly on September 27, 1914 and was moored at Budge-Budge at 11am on the 29th. There a special train was waiting to convey the passengers free of charge to the Punjab. The Government was acting under the provisions of the recently enacted Ingress into India Ordinance, which empowered it to restrict the liberty of any person entering India after September 5, 1914, if such action were necessary for the protection of the State.  Information had been received regarding the temper and attitude of Gurdit Singh and his followers. It was justified by events. The Sikhs refused to enter the train and tried to march on Calcutta in a body. They were forcibly turned back and a riot ensued with loss of life on both sides. Many of the Sikhs were armed with American revolvers. Only 60 passengers in all, including the 17 Muhammadans on board, were got off the train that evening. 18 Sikhs were killed in the riot many were arrested either then and 29, including Gurdit Singh, disappeared. Many were arrested either then, or subsequently.  Of those who were arrested, the majority were allowed to go to their homes in the following January.  31 were interned in jail” (pp. 146-148, [1]). 

***

Impact of Komagata Maru episode

For two months, the Indians of the West Coast of Canada and US had been living in tension and excitement. The injustice perpetrated on the passengers of the Komagata Maru had engendered in them a desire for revenge. Wild and exaggerated reports about the revolutionary situation back home in India were received by those on the shore from the passengers on the ship.  The first sparks of the conflict between Germany and Britain were already in the air by the time the Komagata Maru left the waters of Vancouver. The belief gained ground that it was only necessary to send back a few thousand volunteers from US and Canada to force the British to quit India for good. 

This mistake was to cost the Ghadar Party heavily in the attempted revolution.  

Late in July 1914, at a gathering of the Ghadar Party members in Oxnard, it was decided that the Ghadar Party members should return to India and fuel the coming revolution. Similar meetings were held at Upland, Fresno, Los Angeles, and Clairmont, with similar resolutions taken by the Ghadar Party members. On August 3, 1914, the Ghadar newsletter, in a special publication, explained to its readers, that they all had a duty to return to India in the event of a war between Britain and Germany and spread the revolution against the British. Once the war began, the Indians in US and Canada began to swarm onto ships leaving for Asia to raise the standard of revolt in India.

Writing on the effect of the Komagata Maru episode to persuade the Sikhs of US and Canada to enlist in the Ghadar Party revolt against the British, Lord Rowlatt stated, “The Committee found that most of the passengers were disposed blame the Government of India for all their misfortunes.  ‘It is well known,’ states the report, ‘that the average Indian makes no distinction between the Government of the United Kingdom, that of Canada, that of British India, or that of any colony. To him these authorities are all one and the same.’ And this view of the whole Komagata Maru business was by no means confined to the passengers on the ship. It inspired some Sikhs of the Punjab with the idea that the government was biased against them; and it strengthened the hands of the Ghadar revolutionaries who were urging Sikhs abroad to return to India, and join the mutiny which, they asserted, was about to begin. Numbers of emigrants listened to such calls and hastened back to India from Canada, the United States, the Philippines, Hong Kong and China” (pp. 148-149, [1]).

Revolutionary Sachindranath Sanyal has written about the Komagata Maru incident as follows: “When the fire that was ignited in the hearts of the Sikh passengers of the ship called Komagata Maru due to the denial of the permission to them to alight on the soil of Canada was spreading all around, then waiting in one corner of India we were getting restless with the pain of anticipation. We had instructed our group in Punjab to recruit the passengers of Komagata Maru as soon as they return to India. But an accident happened as soon as the passengers of the Komagata Maru set their foot in the Indian soil. But from this our optimism strengthened further. Very soon group after group of Sikhs from California and Canada started returning to India. While returning to India, alighting at different places, they started spreading the fire of revolution among Sikhs already in the police and the military” (p. 31, [7]). 

Thus, the Komagata Maru, besides being a tragic episode in the history of the Indians in Canada, constituted a vital plank of support for the Ghadar Party cadre, as the outraged people flocked to these Revolutionaries for aid. Among the revolutionaries who flocked to the Ghadar standard included some of the closest aides of Rash Behari Bose, including Vishnu Ganesh Pingle, Nidhan Singh, Kartar Singh Sarabha and Dr Mathura Singh – all of whom Rash Behari Bose would mourn on a tablet in his private garden in Japan.  We will conclude our article with a brief introduction of some of the best revolutionaries who participated in the Ghadar revolt, to which the Komagata Maru episode added more zest.

Kartar Singh Sarabha hailed originally from Sarabha village in Ludhiana district.  He obtained his matriculation in Orissa and was enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley for a degree in Chemistry.  He came under the influence of Lala Hardayal in University of California in December 1912 and later, joined the Ghadar organisation.  He set up his own litho press, and frequently edited the Ghadar newspaper (pp. 55-56, [5]). 

Vishnu Ganesh Pingle was born in 1888 to a Brahmin family in Talegaon Dhamdhere, near Pune.  He was the youngest of nine siblings and was educated in a primary school in Talegaon. In 1905, he enrolled in the Maharashtra Vidyalaya of Pune and came under the influence of Veer Savarkar, which left a lasting imprint on him. Later on, he worked for the Potdar's Pioneer Alkali Works, where he learnt the art of handling explosives. He then enrolled as a student of mechanical engineering in University of Washington. 

Dr Mathura Singh was born in 1883 in Dhudhichal in Jhelim district to Sardar Hari Singh.  He ran a dispensary in Rawalpindi after school, but left for Canada for further studies, and joined the Ghadar party there.  He returned to India on the Komagata Maru in Hooghly, and was promptly arrested by the British, who put him on a train to Punjab.  However, he escaped from the train on which he was being sent to Punjab at one of the intermediate stations and reached Punjab on his own, joining other Ghadar cadre.

Nidhan Singh Chuggha was one of the Ghadar Party members who boarded the Princess Korea from the US to return to India to participate in the Ghadar Revolt.  At Shanghai, he managed to purchase arms and changed ships to the Mashimamaru arriving safely in the Punjab via Colombo and Calcutta. 

Ghadar conspiracy

Ghadar conspiracy was an attempt to free India by engineering armed revolt and large-scale defection of soldiers in the British Indian army. The Ghadar conspiracy and the parts played by Rashbehari Bose and his close associates has been convered in some detail in [8]. Here we only have briefly described the roles played by the Ghadar revolutionaries who returned from US or Canada.

Nidhan Singh was one of the earliest leaders in the Ghadar rebellion and attempted a revolt in Punjab on November 15, 1914. The plan failed as the arms failed to arrive. Another plan was hatched to plunder the armoury of Mian Mir. The plan was also foiled by the British and some members of Nidhan Singh’s group and some policemen were killed in a firefight.  A few of Nidhan Singh's group were also arrested.

With the outbreak of First World War, others like Kartar Singh came to India alongside Satyen Sen and Vishnu Ganesh Pingle. With an introduction letter from Jatin Mukherjee (of the Jugantar group), Kartar Singh, Jagat Singh and Vishnu Ganesh Pingle met Rashbehari in Benares and went on to Punjab at his urging to collect resources there. Kartar Singh, Jagat Singh and their groups robbed the homes of the rich to obtain the necessary funds. Pingle, after introducing Rash Behari to the Punjabis, as a bomb and explosive expert, collected materials for bomb making and placed orders in Lahore foundries for the bomb cases.  But, in order to avoid suspicion, they decided to use ink containers. Dr Mathura Singh was one of the principal bomb makers of the Ghadar party and his bombs were used on at least two occasions successfully by the Ghadarites. Nidhan Singh, after his initial failures, joined forces with Rashbehari Bose and they decided on a plan to incite the garrisons to revolt.  Nidhan Singh and Mathura Singh were sent to rouse the Frontier garrisons. They received promises from these garrisons to revolt on being given the signal.

The revolutionaries decided on an uprising on February 21, 1915, after the arrival of Rashbehari in Amritsar on January 25, 1915, by capturing the cantonments of Mian Mir and Ferozepur. Kartar Singh was in charge of attacking the Ferozepur cantonment. However, the British intelligence picked up their scent and was able to snuff out the revolt before it even occurred.  Kartar Singh and his group went to Ferozepur, but found that the Indian soldiers had been disarmed and replaced by British soldiers guarding the armouries.  Before the British could capture him, he escaped back with his friends to Lahore. Similarly, Mathura Singh, Jagat Singh and Vishnu Pingle who had escaped arrest, were asked to flee to safety. 

After the failure of the Ghadar revolt, Nidhan Singh escaped arrest and attempted to get arms via Jawahar Singh, the police superintendent of Mandi Suket, who was supposedly sympathetic to the revolutionaries.  After meeting the superintendent, Nidhan Singh was arrested in Mandi Suket.

Kartar Singh and his two companions (Jagat Singh and Harnam Singh) escaped to Afghanistan via Peshawar, but decided to return and not abandon their quest.  Kartar Singh, Jagat Singh and Harnam Singh turned their attention to Sargodha cantonment, but with little chance of success. Similarly, unwilling to give up the plot totally, Vishnu Pingle returned, with the permission of Rashbehari and Sachindranath Sanyal, with bombs to Meerut cantonment with a Muslim dafadar (who turned out to be a traitor) to bomb it. Consequently, he was captured. 

The sole significant escapee among the foreign-returned revolutionaries was Dr Mathura Singh, who escaped and fled to Afghanistan. He was arrested at Wazirabad station, but succeeded in escaping after bribing the police.  A police party awaited him in Kohat, but he slipped past them and managed to reach Afghanistan. He was appointed as the Chief Medical Officer in Raja Mahendra Pratap’s army, which was planning to invade India and he served in that capacity in Kabul.  Alongside Khushi Mohammad, he was sent on a two man delegation to the Tsar of Russia on behalf of the Indian revolutionaries with a letter engraved in gold, but was arrested near Tashkent by the Russian police and deported back to India, via Iran, where he was recognised. He was tried, convicted for his revolutionary activities and hanged on March 27, 1917.

The bravery and devotion of the Ghadarites is best described in the words of the British themselves.  One of the judges wrote about Kartar Singh: “Among the sixty one accused, he is the most important and most well known.  The conspiracy may have been planned in the USA or on the ship or in India, there is not a single place where he has not demonstrated his skill” ( p. 64, [5]). 

Lord Rowlatt writes about Pingley, “It was moreover proved that in December 1914 a young Maratha Brahmin named Vishnu Ganesh Pingley had arrived in the Punjab promising Bengali co-operation with the malcontent emigrants. Pingley, a native of the Poona district, had emigrated young, and had returned from America with various Sikh Ghadar proselytes. After his arrival in the Punjab a meeting was held at which revolution, the plundering of Government treasuries, the seduction of Indian troops, the collection of arms, the preparation of  bombs and the commission of dacoities were all discussed.  Pingley’s ofier to introduce a Bengali bomb expert was accepted, and emissaries were despatched to collect materials for making bombs. The assistance of some Ludhiana students was enlisted in this collection work and Rash Behari Basu, of Delhi conspiracy notoriety, arrived from Benares, where he had been living in retirement”(p. 153, [1]). 

Nidhan Singh, Kartar Singh and Vishnu Pingley were hanged on 16/11/1915, and are scarcely remembered in independent India. 

References:

[1] – Lord Rowlatt, “Seditions Report” 

[2] – Arun Coomer Bose, “Indian Revolutionaries Abroad: 1905-1922”

[3] – Sukhdeep Bhoi, Masters’ thesis, Queens University, Canada. 

[4] http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/komagata-maru-justin-trudeau-to-apologize-for-1914-incident-1.3530362

[5] - Srikrishan Saral, “Indian Revolutionaries”, Vol. 2

[6] – RC Majumdar, “History and Culture of the Indian People – The Freedom Struggle”, Vol. 11

[7] Sachindranath Sanyal, “Bandi Jiban”

[8] – Jeck Joy, Shanmukh, Saswati Sarkar and Dikgaj, “The Legend of Rashbehari Bose and the Forgotten Hindu-German Conspiracy”, in DailyO, 02/01/2016 http://www.dailyo.in/politics/rashbehari-bose-hindu-muslim-riots-partition-1947-mahatma-gandhi-independence-hindu-german-conspiracy-ina/story/1/8230.html