Ghadar Party
President	Sohan Singh Bhakna
Founded	15 July 1913; 112 years ago (1913-07-15)
Dissolved	January 1948; 77 years ago (1948-01)
Ideology	Indian independence Indian nationalism
Colours	Red,saffron, green
Politics of India Political parties Elections

TheGhadar Movement orGhadar Party was an early 20th-century, international political movement founded byexpatriate Indians to overthrowBritish rule in India.^[1] Many of the Ghadar Party founders and leaders, includingSohan Singh Bhakna, went on and join theBabbar Akali Movement and helped 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 Coastof the United States andCanada, and 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 inAstoria, Oregon,^[3] and the group splintered 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 remained in theStockton Gurdwara inStockton, California, and the Hindustan Ghadar Party’s headquarters andHindustan Ghadar newspaper relocated to nearbyOakland, California.^[4]

DuringWorld War I in 1914, the Ghadar Movement, a group of Indian revolutionaries, allied with Germany, finding common ground in their opposition to British imperial rule in India. 1 Germany strategically considered these revolutionaries vital allies against the British Empire. Their collaborative goal was to destabilize British control through a multifaceted strategy, encompassing a synchronized effort to invade British India via Afghanistan, provide resources to bolster the Indian independence movement, and disseminate propaganda to incite mutiny within the British Indian Army.^[5] Consequently, some Ghadar party members returned to Punjab to instigate an armed revolution for Indian Independence. TheGhadar Mutiny, as this uprising became known, involved Ghadarites smuggling arms into India and encouraging Indian troops to revolt against the British. This attempt was ultimately unsuccessful, leading to the execution of 42 mutineers after theLahore Conspiracy Case trial. Undeterred, Ghadarites continued underground anti-colonial actions from 1914 to 1917 with support from Germany and Ottoman Turkey, a period known as theHindu–German Conspiracy, which culminated in asensational trial in San Francisco in 1917.

Following the war's conclusion, the party in the United States fractured into aCommunist and an Indian Socialist faction. The party was formally dissolved in 1948.^[1] Key participants in the Ghadar Movement includedK. B. Menon,Sohan Singh Bhakna,Mewa Singh Lopoke,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,Rashbehari Bose,Ishar Singh Gill andGulab Kaur. The insurrectionary ideals of the Ghadar Party influenced members of theIndian Independence Movement opposed to Gandhiannonviolence. To carry out other revolutionary activities, "Swadesh Sevak Home" at Vancouver and United India House at Seattle was set-up.^[6]

In 1914, Kasi Ram Joshi a member of the party from Haryana, returned to India from America. On 15 March 1915 he was hanged by the colonial government.^[7] Founding memberHar Dayal severed all connections in an open letter published in March 1919 in Indian newspapers and wrote to the British Government asking for amnesty.^[8]

In 1918, the party split into the Kirti Kisan Party, which had communist and socialist leanings and later aligned with Congress, and the Babbar Akali faction, which was Sikhism-centric.^[9]

Between 1903 and 1913 approximately 10,000 South Asians emigres entered North America, mostly from the rural regions of central Punjab.^[10][11] About half the Punjabis had served in the British military. TheCanadian 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.^[12] Many migrants came to work in the fields, factories, and logging camps of Northern California and the Pacific Northwest, where they were exposed tolabor unions and the ideas of the radicalIndustrial Workers of the World or IWW. The migrants of the Pacific Northwest banded together in Sikhgurdwaras 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 inBritish 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 likeHar Dayal andTaraknath Das attempted to organize students and educate them in anarchist and nationalist ideas.

RasBihari Bose on request fromVishnu 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][13] in the United States and Canada with the aim to liberate India fromBritish rule. The movement began with a group of immigrants known as the Hindustani Workers of the Pacific Coast.^[1]

[The Ghadar Party, initially thePacific Coast Hindustan Association, was formed on 15 July 1913 in the United States.^[14] as its president. The members of the party wereIndian immigrants, largely fromPunjab.^[12] Many of its Members who were students atUniversity of California at Berkeley included Dayal,Tarak Nath Das,Maulavi Barkatullah,Kartar Singh Sarabha andV.G. Pingle.

The party's weekly paper wasThe Ghadar.

• Communist Ghadar Party of India
• Ghadar Mutiny
• Hindu–German Conspiracy

• Ramnath, Maia (2011).Haj to Utopia: How the Ghadar Movement Charted Global Radicalism and Attempted to Overthrow the British Empire. University of California Press.ISBN 978-0-520-95039-9.Project MUSE book 26045.
• Strachan, Hew (2001).The First World War. Vol. I:To Arms. Oxford University Press USA.ISBN 0-19-926191-1.

• Gill, M. S. (2007).Trials that Changed History: From Socrates to Saddam Hussei. New Delhi: Sarup & Sons. pp. 92–99.ISBN 978-81-7625-797-8.
• Singh, Ajmer.Gadari Babe Kaun San
• Singh, Gajendra (November 2019). "Jodh Singh, The Ghadar Movement and the Anti-Colonial Deviant in the Anglo-American Imagination".Past & Present (245):187–219.doi:10.1093/pastj/gtz023.hdl:10871/37620.

Wikimedia Commons has media related toGhadar Party.

• A Gallery on Gadar Party
• Ghadar Party materials in the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA)
• Ghadar: The Indian Immigrant Outrage Against Canadian Injustices 1900–1918 by Sukhdeep Bhoi
• The Hindustan Ghadar Collection.The Bancroft Library,University of California, Berkeley
• Communist Ghadar Party of India

• Ghadar Party
• 1913 establishments in the United States
• Defunct political parties in the United States
• Hindu–German Conspiracy
• Indian nationalist political parties
• Indian-American history
• Political parties disestablished in 1919
• Political parties established in 1913
• Revolutionary movement for Indian independence
• Sikhism in the United States
• South Asian American organizations

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