Ghadar Movement- Achievements And Weaknesses


THE GOVERNMENT’S RESPONSE TO THE GHADAR MOVEMENT

The Indian government, having been fully informed of the Ghadar plans, which were hardly a secret in the first place, armed itself with the Ingress into India Ordinance and awaited the emigrants' return. The emigrants were inspected upon arrival, with the "safe" ones being allowed to return home, the "dangerous" ones being arrested, and the "less dangerous" ones being ordered not to leave their home villages. Of course, some of the "dangerous" ones eluded capture and fled to Punjab, where they incited rebellion. 
 
Ghadar Movement-

Status of Ghadarites after the movement:

•    However, Punjab in 1914 was not at all what the Ghadarites had been led to believe; they discovered that the Punjabis were not in the mood to join the Ghadar's romantic adventure. The foreign militants gave it their all, touring the villages and speaking to crowds at melas and festivals, but to no avail.
 
•    Declaring them to be "fallen" Sikhs and criminals, the Chief Khalsa Diwan declared them to be "fallen" Sikhs and criminals, and assisted the government in tracking them down. 
 
•    Frustrated and disillusioned by the civilian population's attitude, the Ghadarites turned their attention to the army and attempted a series of naive mutiny attempts in November 1914. All of the Ghadar's efforts were thwarted by the lack of a well-organized leadership and central command.
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•    The Ghadar tried desperately to find a leader; Bengali revolutionaries were contacted, and, thanks to Sachindranath Sanyal and Vishnu Ganesh Pingley's efforts, Rash Behari Bose, the Bengali revolutionary who had become famous for his daring attack on Viceroy Hardinge, arrived in Punjab in mid-January 1915 to take command of the revolt.
 
•    Bose formed a semblance of an organisation and dispatched men to make contact with army units in various locations and report back by February 11, 1915. The emissaries returned with positive news, and the mutiny was scheduled for February 21 and then February 19. 
 
•    However, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) had penetrated the organisation from the top down, and the government had been able to take effective preventative measures. The majority of the leaders were apprehended, but Bose escaped. 
 
•    The Ghadar Movement was, for all intents and purposes, crushed. 
 
•    Conspiracy trials were held in Punjab and Mandalay, and forty-five revolutionaries were sentenced to death and over 200 to long terms of imprisonment, in what was perhaps the most repressive action experienced by the national movement thus far.
 
•    As a result, an entire generation of Punjab's nationalist leadership was politically decapitated. With German assistance, some Indian revolutionaries operating out of Berlin and with ties to Ghadar leader Ram Chandra in America continued to attempt to organise a mutiny among Indian troops stationed abroad. 
 
•    Raja Mahendra Pratap and Barkatullah attempted to enlist the help of the Amir of Afghanistan and even set up a Provisional Government in Kabul, but their efforts, like those of others, were in vain. Violent resistance to British rule appeared to be doomed to fail.
 

ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE GHADAR MOVEMENT

•    Success and failure are measured in terms of nationalist consciousness, the development and testing of new strategies and methods of struggle, the establishment of a tradition of resistance, secularism, democracy, and egalitarianism, the Ghadarites undoubtedly contributed to India's freedom struggle. 
 
•    Ghadar's greatest success, however ironic it may seem, was in the realm of ideology. The entire nationalist critique of colonialism, which was the most solid and abiding contribution of the moderate nationalists, was carried, in a powerful and simple form, to the mass of Indian immigrants, many of whom were poor workers and agricultural labourers, through the earlier papers, but especially through The Ghadar itself. This massive propaganda campaign inspired and educated a generation. 
 
•    Despite the fact that the majority of the Ghadar Movement's leaders and participants were Sikhs, the ideology created and spread through The Ghadar and Ghadar di Goonj, as well as other publications, was strongly secular in tone. 
 
•    Concern for religion was dismissed as petty and narrow-minded, and revolutionaries were deemed unworthy of it. The ease with which leaders from various religions and regions were accepted by the movement shows that this was not just brave talk.
 
•    Lala Har Dayal, like Ram Chandra and many others, was a Hindu, while Barkatullah was a Muslim and Rash Behari Bose was both a Hindu and a Bengali! But, perhaps more importantly, the Ghadarites set out to instil a secular consciousness in the Punjabi people. 
 
•    The nationalist salute Bande Mataram (rather than any Sikh religious greeting such as Sag Sri Akal) was also urged and adopted as the Ghadar Movement's rallying cry. The Ghadarites wanted to give religion a new meaning as well. They argued that religion consisted of adhering to the model of good behaviour enjoined by all religious teachings, rather than adhering to outward forms such as long hair and the Kirpan (sword).
 
•    The ambiguities that remained in the Ghadar ideological discourse, such as Har Dayal's advocacy of Khilafat as a religious cause for Muslims, or when the British policy of not allowing Sikhs to carry arms was criticised, etc., were a result of the Ghadar Movement's and its leaders' transitional stage in the evolution of a sectarian nationalist ideology. 
 
•    Furthermore, religious interests must be seen as part of the overall cultural defence against colonialism, rather than as a component of communalism or communal ideology and consciousness. 
 
•    The Ghadarites also didn't show any narrow regional loyalties. The Ghadars' heroes included Lokamanya Tilak, Aurobindo Ghose, Khudi Ram Bose, Kanhia Lal Dutt, and Savarkar. In 1915, Rash Behari Bose was enlisted and accepted as the leader of the failed Ghadar revolt. Rather than extolling the virtues of the Sikhs or the Punjabis, the Ghadars repeatedly criticised the Punjabis' loyalist role in 1857.
 
Ghadar Movement-

WEAKNESSES OF THE GHADAR MOVEMENT

•    The Ghadar leaders' major flaw was that they completely underestimated the scope and amount of preparation that was required at every level — organisational, ideological, strategic, tactical, and financial — before an armed revolt could be organised. They sounded the war bugles without examining the state of their army, caught off guard by the outbreak of the war and roused to a fever pitch by the Komagata Maru episode. 
 
•    They forgot that mobilising a few thousand disgruntled immigrant Indians, who were already in a highly charged emotional state as a result of racial discrimination at the hands of white foreigners, was a far cry from mobilising and motivating lakhs of peasants and soldiers in India. 
 
•    They misjudged the British in India, both in terms of their military and organisational might, as well as the ideological foundations of their rule, and convinced themselves that all the masses of India needed was a call to revolt, which, once issued, would strike a fatal blow to the shaky British rule structure.
 
•    The Ghadar Movement also lacked an effective and long-lasting leadership capable of bringing the various aspects of the movement together. Har Dayal's temperament was completely unsuitable for organising; he was a propagandist, an inspirer, and an ideologue. Even his ideas were not a cohesive whole, but rather a shifting amalgam of various theories that drew him in from time to time. Furthermore, his abrupt departure from the United States at a critical juncture left his compatriots befuddled.
 
•    Another major flaw is its non-existent organisational structure; the Ghadar Movement was sustained more by the militants' enthusiasm than by their ability to organise themselves.
These flaws in understanding, leadership, and organisation resulted in what can only be described as a massive waste of valuable human resources. When we consider that forty Ghadarities were hanged and over 200 were sentenced to long prison terms, we can see how the romantic adventure of 1914-15 resulted in the beheading of an entire generation of secular nationalist leadership, who could have given Punjab in the 1920s an entirely different political complexion if they had remained politically effective. 
 
They would almost certainly have acted as a bulwark against the rise of communal tendencies in later years, owing to their strong secular moorings. The fact that the few surviving Ghadarites helped lay the foundations of a secular national and peasant movement in Punjab in the late 1920s and 1930s shows that this is not just wild speculation.

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