An exclusive excerpt from The Ghadar Movement: A Forgotten Struggle by Rana Preet Gill (Penguin India, 2025).
Chapter 6
The Face of Ghadar: Lala Har Dayal
Born in an educated Kayastha family in October 1884, Har Dayal was the youngest of four sons of Lala Gauri Lal.1 His father, a government employee, worked as a reader and the sons, by default, were expected to follow in the footsteps of the father.2 His elder brothers ended up becoming lawyers. The eldest, Manohar Lal, practised at Meerut while the two youngest, Bhairo Dayal and Kishan Lal, practised in Muzaffarnagar and Delhi, respectively.3 Har Dayal was the ideal type for a government job—hardworking, studious, sensitive and receptive to changes around him, with a family that was flourishing under the shadow of British rule. Nothing less was expected of him but loyalty to the sarkar.
Har Dayal was a prodigy and he proved his mettle very early in childhood. He not only read extensively but he could commit the words to memory with ease, reproducing each and everything that had passed in front of his eyes precisely, in a neatly defined order.4 His memory was phenomenal and left people speechless. He attended Christian mission schools in Delhi and was awarded the bachelor of arts degree by St Stephen’s College.5 He stood first in every examination he ever took in his life until his graduation. His English was so good that his papers were retained in schools and colleges as model test papers, the paragons of perfection.6 He won numerous awards and scholarships during his school and college years.
It was only in his graduation that he came second overall, his marks dragging him down from the pedestal to which he was so used to. The man who surpassed him was from Lahore and this influenced Har Dayal to go to Lahore for his master’s degree.7
Lahore was the place that gave shape to new beliefs and ideologies that were hitherto unknown to Har Dayal. It was burgeoning with new voices and ideas that were subdued in Delhi. Lahore would turn him conscientious and invoke in him a keen eye to understand his troubled nation better. He enrolled himself as a member of the Rational Society of the city and gained prominence with his involvement in their various activities.
The first and foremost person to influence him was the ‘Lion of Punjab’, Lala Lajpat Rai. The leader, who was associated with the Pagri Sambhal Jatta movement with Ajit Singh, had been imprisoned in Mandalay but was now back on the scene. He was connected with the Dayanand Anglo-Vedic (DAV) College, an Arya Samajist, a leader of national importance, an influencer of a new creed of extremist revolutionaries and had served as a lecturer in history at DAV College.8 Later, he took on the occupation of a full-time leader, leaving his teaching post.
Bhai Parmanand became a close confidant of Har Dayal during his Lahore days. Their paths would intersect many times in their lifetime. Born in 1875, a native of Jhelum, raised in Chakwal in the Punjab province, Bhai Parmanand started practising the tenets of the Arya Samaj from a young age.9 While Har Dayal was studying, Bhai Parmanand, after receiving his Master of Arts degree at the Punjab University had started teaching history and political science at DAV College.10 He would later on become a preacher of the Arya Samaj.
Both the Arya Samaj and Brahmo Samaj movements had their influence on Har Dayal. While the Arya Samaj led by Swami Dayananda Saraswati advocated the slogan, ‘Back to the Vedas’, the Brahmo Samaj founded by Raja Ram Mohan Roy was a reformist movement with westernized ideals. It advocated against the regressive practices of sati, child marriage and the dowry system.
The British government had instituted scholarships for promising Indian scholars and till that date, scholars from the coastal universities of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras had won them. Krishnavarma too had been the recipient of one such scholarship. But no one from North India had ever won this honour. Har Dayal became the first north Indian ever to achieve this feat.11 Despite the fact that Har Dayal was indulging in anti- government activities and a criminal report was filed against him by the British Criminal Investigation department while he was still a student at Lahore Government College in 1904, he sailed to England in 1905. ‘A firebrand in politics’ was what he was called by James Campbell Ker of the British Police before he left India at the impressionable age of twenty-one.12
Excerpted with permission from the author and the publishers of The Ghadar Movement: A Forgotten Struggle by Rana Preet Gill (Penguin India, 2025).
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About the Book
The Ghadar Movement was conceived in 1913 in the United States of America by Lala Har Dayal, Kartar Singh Sarabha, Sohan Singh Bhakna, Harnam Singh Tundilat and others, all of them Indian immigrants in the US. Inspired by Tilak, Savarkar, Madam Cama, Shyamaji Krishnavarma and others, the Ghadar plan was to smuggle arms to India and incite Indians in the British-Indian Army to mutiny. Many Ghadarites, most of them from Punjab, came back to India from the US in order to participate in the struggle. In India, revolutionaries like Rash Behari Bose and Vishnu Ganesh Pingle joined them.
Owing to lapses in planning and the presence of informers in their midst, the plan ultimately failed and the British came down very heavily on the conspirators.
Some like Kartar Singh Sarabha (who inspired a young Bhagat Singh) were sentenced to death for their part in the struggle. Many others suffered long and cruel jail sentences in the Andamans.
Carefully researched and breezily narrated, Rana Preet Gill’s The Ghadar Movement is an accurate portrait of the struggle.
About the Author
Rana Preet Gill is a Veterinary Officer with the Animal Husbandry Department of Punjab Government. She has authored four books―three novels―Those College Years, The Misadventures of a Vet, Maya and a collection of middles titled Finding Julia. Her articles and short stories have been published in The Tribune, Hindustan Times, The Hindu, The Statesman, The New Indian Express, Deccan Herald, The Hitavada, Daily Post, Women’s Era, Commonwealth Writers Journal, Himal and others.