The Boy General who was Bhagat Singh’s hero

Prof Chaman Lal, who has penned a book on Sarabha, says Bhagat Singh’s Naujawan Bharat Sabha would never start a meeting without first garlanding Sarabha’s photo.

Dr Gurbhajan Singh Gill, a poet-historian, recounts how Bhagat Singh’s mother Vidyawati told him he always carried Sarabha’s picture in his wallet. “He used to tell her that Sarabha was his ustad.”

Bhagat Singh was seven when he first saw Sarabha. Newly returned from the US, with a fire in him against the British empire, the 18-year-old would visit Bhagat Singh’s father Kishan Singh. The court ruling convicting Sarabha mentioned that Kishan Singh had given Sarabha Rs 1,000 for his movement. “It was a very princely sum for those days,” Prof Lal points out.

Dr Gurdev Singh Sidhu, an authority on the Ghadar movement, says Sarabha was born into a highly educated family — one of his uncles was a doctor in the British army while another was a senior officer in the forestry department. Sarabha, who lost his father at three and mother at 12, was brought up by his grandfather Badan Singh Grewal, who moved him from Malwa Khalsa high school to Arya High School, Ludhiana, before packing him off to Cuttack where his uncle was posted.

At Ravenshaw Collegiate School in Cuttack, his teachers included the famous nationalist Beni Madhab Das, who inspired Subhas Chandra Bose, a year his junior. “A sharp and gregarious youngster, he must have been influenced by the two,” says Prof Jagmohan Singh, Bhagat Singh’s nephew, who has been doing research on him.

From Cuttack, Sarabha headed to Berkeley, to pursue Electrical Engineering in 1912. Soon he came into contact with Lala Hardayal, an acclaimed Sanskrit scholar, Sohan Singh Bhakna, a farmer, and Pandurang Sadashiv Khankhoje, an agricultural scientist who formed the Pacific Coast Hindustan Association in 1913. It was a precursor to the Ghadar Party, that was formed on July 15, 1913, with the express aim of overthrowing the British government in India. Sarabha, who had by then left studies, was its youngest founding member.

The party set up a printing press in San Francisco, and brought out its first issue of The Ghadar in Urdu on November 1, 1913, followed by the Punjabi edition on December 13. Susan McMahon’s book Echoes of Freedom: South Asia Pioneers in California mentions how besides his role in bringing out the paper, “Sarabha was one of the most active fundraisers in the organisation, holding meetings in the rural areas where the farmers donated generously.”

Sarabha worked shoulder to shoulder with the much older Ghadri “babas”, who began to call him ‘Bala Jarnail (Boy general)’.

With World War-I breaking out in July 1914, the Ghadris decided to return to India, with the plan of stoking mutiny among Indian soldiers. Sarabha sailed back in October 1914, and began to crisscross the country. “He went anywhere where there was a cantonment with Punjabi soldiers. He was absolutely fearless, people called him a dynamo. He could cycle for 100 km a day,” says Prof Chaman Lal.

He was often accompanied by fellow Ghadar party member Vishnu Ganesh Pingle from Pune. The two had met in California.

By February 1915, the British authorities had got a whiff of the conspiracy, and began to arrest Ghadar party members, ahead of their plan to stage an uprising on February 21 after capturing Mian Mir and Ferozepur Cantts.

Sarabha managed to hoodwink the cops and headed out to Russia. Lore has it that Sarabha and his friends were close to Peshawar near Afghanistan when they began to hum the song “Singh naam sher da jo chade gaj ke, bani sir sheran de ki jaana bhaj ke (Men who are brave like a lion, don’t run).” It resonated so much with Sarabha that he decided to return and was arrested early March.

The trial into what came to be called the Lahore conspiracy case resulted in the execution of 24 Ghadris.
The first FIR filed against Sarabha by the British police says he had two books, one was Indian Sociologist published by Shyamji Krishna Varma, who had set up India House in London, and the second, Speeches from the Dock, featuring Irish freedom fighters who were executed.

Prof Chaman Lal says the judges, seeing his young age, asked him to think over his statement. “Sarabha made a much stronger statement the next day, leaving no one in doubt about his intention. When asked about the three colours of the Ghadri flag, he said they represented liberty, equality and fraternity.”

Subsequently, he was awarded the death penalty. When his grandfather visited him, he made light of the sentence, telling him how everyone has to die but he would be immortalised in death.

Sarabha was hanged with six others, including his friend Pingle, on November 16, 1915.