Gurpreet Singh writes from Vancouver

A new book on Gadarites by Sohan Singh Pooni suggests that the movement had its roots in Canada. Authored in Punjabi, Canada De Gadri Yodhay (The Gadar combatants of Canada) is the biographies of 41 freedom fighters of India, who were mostly associated with the Gadar Party, a revolutionary group that believed in armed struggle against the British occupation of India.

Though the group was formally established in America in 1913, the Gadar movement had its roots in Canada where the Indian immigrants had to endure racism. It was the discriminatory attitude of the Canadian establishment that partially made these men politically aware of the need to fight against the foreign rule back home.
 
Most of these men came to Canada in the beginning of the twentieth century as British subjects. Their dreams for better living were shattered as the Canadian government systematically discriminated against them by restricting their immigration, family reunions and disfranchising them. As a result a need for struggle for both social justice and freedom arose. Gadar Party was therefore a byproduct of this abusive environment that motivated about 300 people in Canada alone to become members of this militant group, according to Pooni, who took nine years to complete his work. However, he could only write about 41 participants of the freedom struggle.
 
His research took him to India and across the border, where he visited the archives and other places to lay hands on rare documents and pictures apart from interviewing the descendants of these men. Most biographies are accompanied by authentic pictures while some with portraits by Sheetal Anmol. Each chapter begins with verses from the revolutionary poetry written by the Gadarites. Niranjan Singh Pandori, Bhagwan Singh Preetam and Munsha Singh Dukhi were among those who had written the radical poems. The book includes their biographies.    
 
Published by the Singh Brothers, Amritsar, India the book explains what shaped the ideology of the Gadar heroes. The common thread between these men was that they were mostly the rural Sikhs from Punjab some of whom had served in the British army. Most of them came to Canada as British subjects and were disillusioned by the fact that the British Empire was not treating all its subjects fairly. They had to pay heavily to travel to the British Canada. Initially, they tried to challenge the continuous journey law, the bar on bringing their families and the institutional racism through petitions and appeals but they realized soon that their slavery was the root of these problems and to end that an armed resistance was necessary. Subsequently, these men became the members of the Gadar Party that was officially launched in Astoria , USA . Most of them returned in a hope to initiate rebellion that was supposed to be the sequel of the Gadar (mutiny) of 1857 only to face gallows or life imprisonments.
   
Among them were prominent ideologues like Bhag Singh, Tarak Nath Dass, Hussein Rahim, Harnam Singh Sahri, Balwant Singh Khurdpur, Karam Singh Daulatpur, Bhagwan Singh Dosanjh and Munsha Singh Dukhi. The book reveals their connection with Canada. Apart from leading the Gadar movement to set India free from the British rule these men participated in the community services in British Columbia. They not only established Sikh temples but also joint businesses of their own.
 
Realizing that the misery of their compatriots in India was to be blamed on lack of education, they had helped in building schools in Punjab . Despite challenges from the orthodox and conservative social environment of India they had resolved to encourage female education. Some of them later turned into Babbar Akalis or communists while others were hanged or got killed otherwise.
 
Bhag Singh was the first Indo Canadian martyr, who was shot at by Bela Singh, the agent of an infamous immigration officer William Hopkison in 1914. He was the leader of the Khalsa Deewan Society that governed the oldest Sikh temple of Vancouver.  He was instrumental in encouraging the former Sikh soldiers to burn their medals and certificates to break loyalties with the British Empire in 1909. This wasn’t an easy task as the Sikh preachers in India were pro British and prayed for the long life of their English masters back then. The book begins with his biography, which is followed by the profile of Badan Singh, who had also died with him after being hurt in the shootout. These killings were avenged by Mewa Singh, who assassinated Hopkinson and was hanged for the murder. His profile suggests that he may have done this at the instructions of the Gadar leaders.
The biography of Hari Singh Soond is also a part of the book. Soond had killed Bela Singh in India.
 
The book gives a detailed account of the activities of Hussein Rahim who was in the forefront of the fight for the right to vote besides the struggle to let the passengers of the Komagata Maru ship set foot on the Canadian soil. The ship was turned back on July 23, 1914 under the racist immigration law. This incident had added fuel to the fire and strengthened the foundation of the Gadar movement.
 
Harnam Singh Sahri was the cofounder of the Swadesh Sewak, the first Punjabi newspaper to be launched in Canada in 1910. While Pooni has done a good research on his activities, he failed to give the profile of the other   cofounder of the publication, Guran Ditta Kumar. Kumar was another important ideologue. Though the book has some passing references about Kumar, but Pooni could have written more about him.
 
Despite being Sikhs, some devoutly religious the Gadar heroes mentioned in the book were liberal and secular. After all, one of the objectives of the Gadar Party was to keep the politics and the religion apart and promote unity. Some of these men who had returned to India had saved the Muslims from the Hindu and Sikh fundamentalists during the partition of India and Pakistan on religious lines in 1947. Among them were Chanchal Singh Jandiala, Bhagwan Singh Dosanjh and Sher Singh Vein Poin. These men did not buckle under pressure from the religious zealots and had helped the Muslims in reaching safe destinations. These details in the book will help in understanding the secular indoctrination of the Gadarites. The book ends with the biography of Darshan Singh Canadian, a communist leader of Punjab, who was murdered by the Sikh separatists in 1986. He had spent several years in Canada before India’s independence and had participated in the struggle for right to vote and different labour movements.
 
Very little is written about the Gadar movement and its participants by the mainstream historians, who had virtually ignored the contributions of the Gadarites. Perhaps, the perception about America being the breeding ground of the Gadar movement is also an outcome of this ignorance. Whatever little is available is based on oral history and interviews. More needs to be done to dig out credible evidence and documents. Pooni has tried to meet those challenges and his book has a potential to become an accepted document on the Gadar history.

BACK

Rafi, the prolific singer and that nondescript village

Harjap Singh Aujla

PUNJAB must be truly proud of its great son Mohammad Rafi, who was born in a non-descript hamlet in a remote rural area of Amritsar district. Starting from a humble and modest beginning, he rose to become the most prolific film playback singer of the movie industry, not only in India, but in the whole world.

The Punjabis should be doubly proud that two of their sons have ruled over film singing for more than half a century. K.L. Saigal was the first Punjabi singing star, who dominated the Indian film industry for a decade and a half from 1933 to 1947. The Indian film industry switched over from silent movies to talkies in 1931, when film “Alam Ara” was made. But ever since actor singer Kundan Lal Saigal started his film career in the eastern metropolis of Calcutta in 1933, he did not look back and went from strength to strength, until death put a sudden end to his brilliant career as a singing leading actor in the dark year of 1947.

When Saigal’s health was deteriorating, Mohammad Rafi was warming up to step into Saigal’s spikes. Mohammad Rafi’s success story is indeed a story of rags to riches. He was born in a village called “Kotla Sultan Singh” near the town of Majitha in the then Punjab’s second largest district of Amritsar. Most of the land in his village was owned by Sikh farmers and the Muslim families were assisting them. The relations between the two communities were mostly  cordial and the village was a happy community, unaffected by what was happening in Lahore and Amritsar. Most of the inhabitants had very few desires and aspirations and that precisely led to their contented lifestyle. The children of the village used to play “Chhattapoo”, “Pithoo”, “Kokla Chhapaki” “Gulel and target” as well as hide and seek. Mohammad Rafi’s childhood was not much different from other kids. In addition Mohammad Rafi liked to copy the folk singers in his amateur way.

Mohammad Rafi was always falling in line with most of his villager folks. His education was confined basically to reading and writing in Urdu in Persian script. Cramming up of a little bit of multiplication tables was his other education. In his moments of leisure, he used to carry his family’s and friends’ cattle for grazing in  the fields. Intensive cultivation was alien to most of the villagers then and a lot of grassy fields were left untilled for the cattle to graze. As a child Mohammad Rafi always loved to graze cattle. He had heard some local “Mirasis” (Muslims, who’s profession was singing and acting as folk comedians) singing folk songs in semi-classical and other country tunes. He liked this art and his voice was suitable for it. He used to copy the “Mirasis” of his surrounding villages. While grazing cattle he used to sing popular Punjabi folk songs to all and sundry in the village.

Mohammad Rafi was born in 1924 in his ancestral village Kotla Sultan Singh. Radio during those days was in its infancy in Europe and America. India did get some experimental radio in the four metros of Calcutta, Bombay, Madras and New Delhi in 1927. Lahore had a brief stint with amateur radio in 1928. But organized broadcasting came to Punjab in 1936 in the public sector. The newly constructed studio complex opened in Lahore in 1937. Thus up to the age of thirteen, Mohammad Rafi had practically no exposure to radio.

Gramophone (in America phonograph) was already in great demand in the high-end “Bazaars” in the commercial city of Amritsar. Most of the wealthy people had already bought gramophones for their homes. Mohammad Rafi had also heard some music in the “Havelis” (imposing houses of the rich in Punjab) of Majitha and the Bazaars of Amritsar. Born in Amritsar Indu Bala, was  the then leading most “Thumri” singer of India and Kamla Jharia was fast becoming the most prolific “Thumri” and “Ghazal” singer of India. These voices could be heard during those days in the music stores of “Hall Bazaar” in Amritsar. Mohammad Rafi certainly had some exposure to this music. His once in a blue moon visits to the historic “Hall Bazaar” always left behind sweet memories. Bhai Chhaila of Patiala was the most popular Punjabi folk singer of that time and Dina Qawwal of Jalandhar was becoming popular. Both these artists had some impact on Rafi. Agha Faiz of Amritsar was a great gramophone singer. Rafi had heard all these voices. Nevertheless he was happy and blissful in the dusty fields of his village. Every one in the village was his friend and none was his foe. What a life he had?

There was no one in his village to initiate Mohammad Rafi into the intricacies of classical music, which was and still is the mother of all music in India. Unaware of his handicap of not learning classical music, Mohammad Rafi kept singing to himself and to his simple village folks. His father wanted to create better living conditions for his family. One fine morning his father decided to leave for Lahore the capital of Punjab about fifty miles away from their village. Like several other Amritsaris, he was a very good cook and Amritsar cooks were in great demand not only in Lahore, but all over Northern India. His father opened a “Dhaba” (a no frills country style eating house) in Lahore. His food was invariably delicious and the customers both locals and outsiders started thronging to it. Well begun is half done, he sent a massage to his son Mohammad Rafi to come over to Lahore. Mohammad Rafi reached Lahore round about in 1941, at the age of seventeen.

His father got Mohammad Rafi a job at a hair-dresser’s saloon. He used to shave the customers’ beards quite slowly but carefully. In order to keep his customers in good humour, while doing cuttings and shavings he used to keep singing some folk and country songs of Punjab. Rafi’s customers seldom took notice of his slowness, rather they enjoyed his music. One day Jiwan Lal Mattoo, the program executive of music at All India Radio Lahore passed by the hair cutting saloon and he faintly heard young Mohammad Rafi’s enchanting voice and he instantly liked its sweetness, range and tonal quality. He stopped and paused for a while and then entered the shop. He asked Mohammad Rafi if he was interested in becoming a radio singer. On hearing this unsolicited offer, Mohammad Rafi jumped in the air in happiness. In the month of March in 1943, Mohammad Rafi appeared in the audition test at the studios of All India Radio Lahore and to his utter surprise he passed the test. Thus from March 1943, Mohammad Rafi became a radio artist. This happened six months prior to the Nightingale of Punjab Surinder Kaur becoming a radio singer. At about the same time in 1943, after hearing his voice on the radio, a newly emerging film music director Shyam Sunder requested Mohammad Rafi to sing a song for his Punjabi film “Gul Baloch”. Mohammad Rafi did full justice to this film song and it opened the gates for his future entry into the field of Bombay’s playback singing.

harjapaujla@gmail.com

BACK