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Baba Sohan Singh Bhakna was as Indian revolutionary and the founding president of the Ghadar Party. Born in January 1870 at the village of Khutral Khurd, near Amritsar into a peasant family, Sohan Singh migrated California in 1907 in the wake of political troubles in Punjab. In the United States, Bhakna, along with Lala Hardayal, Pandit Kanshi Ram and a few others were instrumental in the founding of the Pacific Coast Hindi Association, of which Sohan Singh was elected its first President. The association later came to be known as the Ghadar Party.
[edit] First World War
During World War I, the Ghadar Party was one of the key participants in the Hindu German Conspiracy that sought to trigger rebellion in the British Indian Army. Sohan Singh, as one of the top Ghadar leadership, returned to India at the outbreak of the war, in the wake of the Komagata Maru incidence to organise and direct the rebellion from India. However, returning to India in the SS Namsang, Singh was arrested in October 1914 and later tried in the Lahore Conspiracy Case and sentenced to death. The death sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment, of which he served sixteen years before he was released in 1931.
[edit] Post-World War I
In 1929, while still interned, Sohan Singh famously went on a hunger strike in support of Bhagat Singh. After his release, Singh's works are identified closely with the works of the Communist party of India. He also made the release of interened Ghadarites a key part of his political work.
[edit] Post-1947
Following the Indian independence in 1947, Singh worked closely with the Kisan Sabha and the CPI.
[edit] References
- Sohan Singh Bhakna from searchsikhism.com
- Puri, Harish K (1980), Revolutionary Organization: A Study of the Ghadar Movement.Social Scientist, Vol. 9, No. 2/3. (Sep. - Oct., 1980), pp. 53-66, Social Scientist, ISSN: 09700293.
- Sarkar, Sumit (1984), The Communists and 1942.Social Scientist, Vol. 12, No. 9. (Sep., 1984), pp. 45-53, Social Scientist, ISSN: 09700293.
