Source:- Amandeep Madra / Twitter.
It’s easy to be mistaken by this picture of a grandfatherly 95 year-old. He was in fact one of the most dangerous men in British India. So feared was he by the British that he was held for 16 years in near solitary confinement for fear of the revolution he tried to spark. contd.. pic.twitter.com/ZHYs3fTCDG
— Amandeep Madra (@amanmadra) 11 January 2018
This is Sohan Singh Bhakna, co-founder of the Ghadr Party. When India joined WW1, Punjabi men were vigorously encouraged to join the Indian Army, even Congress & Mahatma Gandhi supported recruitment.Opposing the consensus were the violent and vociferous Ghadrs, or revolutionaries pic.twitter.com/yuqYbnwsLU
— Amandeep Madra (@amanmadra) 11 January 2018
He was active in the early nationalist movement before becoming a pioneer migrant to the Pacific Northwest of the USA in 1909. In America there was no lack of racism & discrimination toward the ‘Hindoo’ labourers and Bhakna rapidly joined an early Indian labour movement pic.twitter.com/4anbxaVXlx
— Amandeep Madra (@amanmadra) 11 January 2018
By the outbreak of WW2, he had been free 10 years but remained a fearsome political voice. War brought new rules, and the Government interred the now 70-year-old Sohan Singh for 3 years in an Indian jail lest he revive his violent tendencies during their wartime vulnerability pic.twitter.com/7CmR8G1tTP
— Amandeep Madra (@amanmadra) 11 January 2018
He lived another 20 years after Indian Independence and the Partition, a constant and prolific voice in early Indian politics. He died in 1968, ending a phenomenal life of 98 years, in his home district of Amritsar. pic.twitter.com/Q5BtydcpMs
— Amandeep Madra (@amanmadra) 11 January 2018