Haj to Utopia. Maia Ramnath

of other nations to learn how to govern” and to root out spies and traitors, all in order to hasten the coming mutiny. He made sure to associate the present movement in the minds of readers, allies and foes, with all the revolutionists that had come before, in 1857 and 1905, and in a subsequent issue yet again compared the work of the Bengali militants to the Russians who had been enforcing justice against “bad officers” since 1881. He invoked the names of Ajit Singh, Lajpat Rai, Tilak, Hemchandra Das Kanungo, Aurobindo, Sufi Amba Parishad, Krishnavarma, and Cama, of whose august company now “a band of the same army has arrived in America.” California offered to them “a second free Punjab where they can talk openly to their brothers.”²⁶ Har Dayal seamlessly and cumulatively melded the casts of both revolutionary streams.²⁷

      A typical weekly issue might contain accounts of past and present revolutionary actions, oft en featuring appeals or references to the other nationalist groups within the British Empire, namely, those in Ireland and Egypt; or other groups recently and currently involved in struggles against autocratic or imperial rule, such as those in Russia, China, and Mexico. One might also find biographical sketches of independence fighters of India, Ireland, Italy, Poland, or even colonial America, such as that renowned anti-British guerrilla fighter George Washington. Other edifying historical examples ranged from episodes of the French Revolution to services rendered by the likes of William Tell or Lafayette against foreign domination and for the principle of freedom, to even the unification of Germany.²⁸ There was a special edition of Rusi Bagion ke Dastaanen (Stories of Russian Revolutionaries),²⁹ praising the faithful toils, daring exploits, stirring statements, abscondments from oppressive marriages, prison stints, prison breaks, and martyrdoms of radicals such as Vera Figner, Leo Deutsch, and Vera Zasulich.

      There was much praise of the Bengali movement for keeping the government in a state of anxiety, and of course frequent invocation of the Mutiny of 1857 (“the old Gadar”), including serialized installments from Vinayak Damodar Savarkar’s book on the Mutiny of 1857. Following the practice of the London India House group, these were read out at public meetings, and a special anniversary issue came out annually on 10 May, featuring the Rani of Jhansi’s image on the cover.³⁰ Special issues commemorating such landmarks as 1857 or the Hardinge bomb of 1912 were printed on red or yellow paper, making visual the text’s exhortations to don the saffron of the patriot, martyr, and warrior.³¹

      The Ghadar also printed meeting notices and accounts of proceedings, such as an important gathering described in the 6 January 1914 issue, held in Sacramento on 31 December 1913. Here, according to quite another sort of description, courtesy of the ubiquitous intelligence agents, “poems were read and violent seditious speeches delivered, the point of which was emphasized by lantern slides. Portraits of famous seditionists and murderers and revolutionary mottoes were displayed on the screen.”³² The now-familiar gallery included Mazzini, William Tell, Lenin, and Sun Yat-sen; 1857 heroes Nanasahib Peshwa, Tatya Tope, and Lakshmi Bai; and Swadeshi-era revolutionists Khudiram Bose, Kanailal Dutta, and the Maharashtrian Chapekar.³³ This pantheon was always expanding: there was a notice in the 13 December 1916 issue kindly requesting “from 1857 to date, photos of all the martyrs … from those brethren having them,” and noting: “Some of the Punjab martyrs’ photos have reached the Gadar. Photos of the Bengal and Madras martyrs are wanting.” The Ghadar office planned to reproduce and distribute thousands of copies and asked: “Those brethren who wish to hang them in their houses, will please let the Gadar know by postcard. This is most necessary.”³⁴ After an announcement that Har Dayal and Ram Chandra were to preach in upcoming issues on the nature of patriotism,³⁵ Kartar Singh led them all in song: the chorus was, more or less, “Come, let’s go, join us in the battle for freedom.”

      Then there were news articles on current and relevant legal, political, or economic matters, especially regarding immigration or nationalism. Updates were requested from all towns, villages, districts, and departments, on recent dacoities and political killings, as well as on any acts of British government tyranny or police abuses.³⁶ One much-circulated item was titled “Angrezi Raj ka Kacha Chittha” (Balance Sheet of British Rule),³⁷ which, with “Ankon ki Gawahi” (Evidence of Statistics),³⁸ collated damning numbers that more or less echoed Dadabhai Naoroji’s economic drain theory: how much money was removed by British taxation, how much was spent on the army, how much on education, how much grain produced, how many lost to famine or treatable disease, and so forth. In this, in Behari Lal’s words, “For the first time the readers received the kind of information which they had never before been given—a revelation that shook them to their very depths”;³⁹ and at the same time they were provided a stock of facts and figures in which to frame grievances credibly to those who might previously have dismissed them. Among the damning legacies of colonial rule were the following: land tax over 65 percent of net produce; army expenditure (29.5 crore) over four times the amount dedicated to the education of 240 million people; 20 million dead of famine in the last ten years; 8 million dead of plague in the last thirty years, and rising; intercommunal strife instigated; arts and craft s industries destroyed; money and lives sacrificed to the conquest of China, Afghanistan, Burma, Egypt, and Persia.⁴⁰

      The Ghadar Press also put out various individual pamphlets and leaflets both in English and in Indian languages. Some of these reprinted previous articles, such as “Zulm! Zulm! Gore Shahi Zulm!” (Tyranny! Tyranny! The Tyranny of White Rule),⁴¹ which was first printed on the occasion of Bhagwan Singh’s deportation in 1913; William Jennings Bryan’s scathing indictment entitled “British Rule in India”;⁴² and Har Dayal’s “Nayen Zamane ke Nayen Adarsh” (New Ideals for a New Age), which decried benighted social and religious causes that distracted tracted from the struggle for freedom and equality,⁴³ “Social Conquest of the Hindu Race,” which pointed toward what we now might call hegemony as well as domination, and “Barabari da Arth” (The Meaning of Equality).⁴⁴

      Overall the movement revealed in the Yugantar Ashram publications with a romanticist emotional intensity was militant, insurrectionist, patriotic, internationalist, modernist, secularist and antisectarian, and egalitarian, favoring politically federated democratic-republicanism, while leaning ever more toward socialist redistributive economics—two factors that can be seen as the strongest expressions of their two beloved guiding principles, liberty and equality. But at this point tyranny and exploitation were still being framed in primarily moral terms, awaiting a more scientific restatement in the 1920s.

      The Ghadar Press also produced a different and very popular (and populist) literary corpus: a series of poetry collections called Ghadar-di-Gunj (Echoes of Revolt).⁴⁵ The first edition came out in booklet form in April 1914. Unlike the editorials, essays, and reportage that appeared in the weekly, the poetry was primarily the work of the farm laborers. These Punjabi couplets were equally explicit in their indictments of British rule and their exhortations to prepare rebellion (and explanations of how to do it) and plainly well aware of the implications of colonial economics.⁴⁶

      It may seem remarkable, commented Vatuk, that a print medium should become the glue and fuel of a massive movement of which only a small minority of the initial membership was literate. This was possible because of a thriving oral culture in which it could be read aloud and shared, and the songs and poems of Ghadar-di-Gunj were memorized and sung at gatherings.⁴⁷ Inder Singh, granthi at the Stockton gurdwara, formerly of Hong Kong, even “learnt by heart most of the poems … and prepared a cypher system into which he transcribed [them].” ⁴⁸

      Darisi Chenchiah recalled that as “intellectuals arose” from among “the Punjabee labourers,” they began to contribute articles and poems to the newspaper and to address public meetings. “They were sincere and brave,” though until quite recently “ignorant and illiterate.” But now they had “suddenly become politically conscious, highly patriotic and intensely revolutionary. As a result, the Ghadar movement passed rapidly into the hands of these masses.” ⁴⁹ As a leader Har Dayal evinced great confidence in their potential as revolutionary fighters; this may be why they liked him as well. Moreover, while he may have been a professional intellectual, he was a Punjabi nonetheless. Har Dayal happily supported and encouraged their vernacular contributions,