The Sikh Revolution by Jagjit Singh

[dalsingh101]

This Is one of the best books out there when it comes to describing the revolutionary achievements of Sikhi in relation to caste during the early days of the Khalsa. It's essential reading in my opinion. Hope some people learn from it:

 

https://ia802508.us.archive.org/17/items/TheSikhRevolutionAPerspectiveView/TheSikhRevolutionAPerspectiveView.pdf

 

 

[dalsingh101]

Just changed the link above to a much better copy of the book.

[chatanga1]

Will take a look soon. Just for everyones info, the contents page is at the end of PDF on page 361. I think this is just an error made when putting the PDF together.

Anything from it you want to share with us @dalsingh101 ?

[dalsingh101]

[dalsingh101]

27 minutes ago, chatanga1 said:

Will take a look soon. Just for everyones info, the contents page is at the end of PDF on page 361. I think this is just an error made when putting the PDF together.

Anything from it you want to share with us @dalsingh101 ?

Thanks for the heads up. If people can't be bothered to go through all the wider contextual stuff in the work, they might want to start at chapter 7/8 onwards to get a direct view of the author's arguments from an independent Sikh perspective that encompasses a juxtaposition with the bhakti movement too. Might try and  start a debate on some of the stuff within soon. 

[dalsingh101]

Just found out the author was a university level chemistry lecturer. 

[dalsingh101]

 

Some background on author. I notice the link to the book is gone now. Will try and find new source. 

 

In the Sikh Revolution, Jagjit Singh gloriously places the mission of the Sikh Gurus on the world stage. Drawing from Weberian analysis, Jagjit Singh, for the first time in the English language, masterfully accesses the Sikh oral and textual traditions in a broad defining thesis. His approach and interpretations provide a lucid and well-structured argument that sheds light on many of the Sikhs’ practices and beliefs and provides the historical and social backdrop that gave rise to the Sikh revolution.

Jagjit Singh (1904 - 1997) was a prominent Sikh scholar of the twentieth century. After graduation, Singh began his teaching career as a Lecturer at Sikh National College, Lahore. With the advent of the Indian struggle for freedom, he aligned himself with the Gaddar movement. His spiritual and political mentors included Wasakha Singh and Sohan Singh Bhakna who encouraged him to write Gadar di Lahir (1956) – one of the most authentic and concise accounts of the American led movement for Indian freedom.

 

Jagjit Singh’s key writings include The Sikh Revolution (1981), Perspectives of Sikh Studies (1985), Zat Pat te Sikh (1986), In the Caravan of Revolutions (1988) and Dynamics of Sikh Revolution (1999).

Jagjit Singh held a B.S. in Chemistry from Khalsa College, Amritsar and a M.S. in Chemistry from Panjab University, Lahore. He co-founded the Institute of Sikh Studies to advocate sovereign Sikh perspectives in academia.

https://www.sikhri.org/the_sikh_revolution_by_jagjit_singh_thursday_thoughts_2020

[dalsingh101]

 

This is one of the author's mentors, the legendary Sohan Singh Bhakna, who exemplified true Sikh independent spirit at a time when hordes of Panjabis were selling their souls to their colonial masters:

 

 

It’s easy to be mistaken by this picture of a gentle, stooped, grandfatherly 95 year-old. He was in fact one of the most feared and dangerous men in British India. So feared was he by the British that, shackled in irons, he was held for 16 years in near solitary confinement 1000kms off the shore of India for fear of the revolution he tried to spark.

This is Sohan Singh Bhakna, founder of the revolutionary Ghadr Party. When India joined WW1, every young Punjabi man was vigorously encouraged to join the Indian Army; British officials, Indian nobility, Indian district bureaucrats, even the Indian National Congress and Mahatma Gandhi joined forces to promote recruitment. Opposing that consensus was a vociferous, violent energetic group, operating from North America called the Ghadrs, or revolutionaries.

Sohan Singh Bhakna became active in the early nationalist movement before he joined the small pioneering stream of men who moved out of Punjab to the Pacific Northwest in the early 1900s where he worked in lumber mills. America wasn’t colonising India but there was no lack of racism and discrimination toward the ‘Hindoo’ labourers and Bhakna rapidly joined the early Indian labour movement.

He founded the Ghadr party with other North American Indians who agitated for the overthrow British colonial authority in India by means of an armed revolution. The Ghadrs viewed the Congress-led Independence movement as soft and unambitious so adopted a harder stance with their principal strategy to entice Indian soldiers into armed revolt against the British taking particular advantage of the vulnerability of the First World War.

Their revolutionary plans included smuggling arms to the passengers of the Komagatu Maru on their return to India, making overtures to the German Embassy in the US, pumping out revolutionary messages to Indian soldiers via their prolific pamphleteering. Their most seditious and dangerous plot was to coordinate violent armed revolutionary activity with Indian soldiers in SE Asia. Alarmed, the British promptly arrested Sohan Singh as he tried to enter India in 1914 and tried for conspiracy.

Found guilty, he was sentenced to death. A sentence later commuted to life imprisonment in The Andaman Islands, 1000kms off the shore of India. There Sohan Singh settled into a period of revolt and activism with repeated hunger strikes to improve the conditions for his fellow prisoners. Both in the Andamans and back in India where he was imprisoned until 1930 he carried out hunger strikes for Sikh prisoner’s religious rights, the rights of lower caste Indian prisoners and in support of Bhagat Singh.

By the outbreak of the Second world war, Sohan Singh had been released 10 years and was an active and fearsome political voice for the Communist Party. War brought new rules, and the Indian Government arrested and interred the now 70-year-old Sohan Singh for 3 more years in an Indian jail lest he revive his violent tendencies during a time of wartime vulnerability.

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.

-Amandeep Madra

https://barusahib.org/general/sohan-singh-bhakna-the-man-who-shook-the-britishers-with-fear/

 

[Guest Roop Dhillon]

Hi 22g 

I know you have an interest in punjabi. 10 years ago you posted my Sci Fi kahani Kaldaar. I am a UK raised Sikh if you recall. Since then this is where I have got to, you might find interesting for Gurmukhi readers on SIkhawareness

 

 

http://punjabijanta.com/lok-virsa/t90144/

and this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OoBPjTxDzk

Rab Rakka

[dalsingh101]

5 minutes ago, Guest Roop Dhillon said:

Hi 22g 

I know you have an interest in punjabi. 10 years ago you posted my Sci Fi kahani Kaldaar. I am a UK raised Sikh if you recall. Since then this is where I have got to, you might find interesting for Gurmukhi readers on SIkhawareness

 

 

http://punjabijanta.com/lok-virsa/t90144/

and this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OoBPjTxDzk

Rab Rakka

Excellent, I'll make a new thread about this so all can view. You do great work Roop. I read a short poetry collection by yourself too (years ago) and that was great as well. Look forward to reading/viewing the above. 

[dalsingh101]

[Premi]

On 3/14/2020 at 4:58 PM, dalsingh101 said:

 

This is one of the author's mentors, the legendary Sohan Singh Bhakna, who exemplified true Sikh independent spirit at a time when hordes of Panjabis were selling their souls to their colonial masters:

 

 

It’s easy to be mistaken by this picture of a gentle, stooped, grandfatherly 95 year-old. He was in fact one of the most feared and dangerous men in British India. So feared was he by the British that, shackled in irons, he was held for 16 years in near solitary confinement 1000kms off the shore of India for fear of the revolution he tried to spark.

This is Sohan Singh Bhakna, founder of the revolutionary Ghadr Party. When India joined WW1, every young Punjabi man was vigorously encouraged to join the Indian Army; British officials, Indian nobility, Indian district bureaucrats, even the Indian National Congress and Mahatma Gandhi joined forces to promote recruitment. Opposing that consensus was a vociferous, violent energetic group, operating from North America called the Ghadrs, or revolutionaries.

Sohan Singh Bhakna became active in the early nationalist movement before he joined the small pioneering stream of men who moved out of Punjab to the Pacific Northwest in the early 1900s where he worked in lumber mills. America wasn’t colonising India but there was no lack of racism and discrimination toward the ‘Hindoo’ labourers and Bhakna rapidly joined the early Indian labour movement.

He founded the Ghadr party with other North American Indians who agitated for the overthrow British colonial authority in India by means of an armed revolution. The Ghadrs viewed the Congress-led Independence movement as soft and unambitious so adopted a harder stance with their principal strategy to entice Indian soldiers into armed revolt against the British taking particular advantage of the vulnerability of the First World War.

Their revolutionary plans included smuggling arms to the passengers of the Komagatu Maru on their return to India, making overtures to the German Embassy in the US, pumping out revolutionary messages to Indian soldiers via their prolific pamphleteering. Their most seditious and dangerous plot was to coordinate violent armed revolutionary activity with Indian soldiers in SE Asia. Alarmed, the British promptly arrested Sohan Singh as he tried to enter India in 1914 and tried for conspiracy.

Found guilty, he was sentenced to death. A sentence later commuted to life imprisonment in The Andaman Islands, 1000kms off the shore of India. There Sohan Singh settled into a period of revolt and activism with repeated hunger strikes to improve the conditions for his fellow prisoners. Both in the Andamans and back in India where he was imprisoned until 1930 he carried out hunger strikes for Sikh prisoner’s religious rights, the rights of lower caste Indian prisoners and in support of Bhagat Singh.

By the outbreak of the Second world war, Sohan Singh had been released 10 years and was an active and fearsome political voice for the Communist Party. War brought new rules, and the Indian Government arrested and interred the now 70-year-old Sohan Singh for 3 more years in an Indian jail lest he revive his violent tendencies during a time of wartime vulnerability.

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.

-Amandeep Madra

https://barusahib.org/general/sohan-singh-bhakna-the-man-who-shook-the-britishers-with-fear/

 

@dalsingh101

Wonder why we don't hear more of this great Soul ?!

[dalsingh101]

16 hours ago, Premi said:

@dalsingh101

Wonder why we don't hear more of this great Soul ?!

There are a lot of occluded figures from Sikh ithihaas going way back (look at palit puttar Zorowar SIngh for example). I think various political agendas might have dictated who got highlighted and who not?

Here's another picture of Sohan Singh (he is the 2nd from the right if I'm not mistaken?):

Kartar Singh Sarabha was from the same movement. And the movement went on to later inspire Bhagat Singh.

I'm hoping that the fact that Netflix has recently created a movie about Udham Singh is indicative of a wider interest in such souls. I definitely think the life of Sohan Singh (and his brothers in arms) are interesting enough to base quality movies upon - note I say quality here, so I don't mean the usual hor5eshyte created by apnay where he'd be played by some fudhoo bhangra singer, and the film would have faggy songs and dance routines every 20 minute.........

 

  

 

[Premi]

8 hours ago, dalsingh101 said:

 note I say quality here, so I don't mean the usual hor5eshyte created by apnay where he'd be played by some fudhoo bhangra singer, and the film would have faggy songs and dance routines every 20 minute.........

 

  

 

Gurdeep Pandher, Bhangra brothers and  Bhangra man like this post

 

 

[dalsingh101]

Real men. 

[dalsingh101]

[dalsingh101]

[dalsingh101]

[dalsingh101]

Kartar Singh Sarabha

[dalsingh101]

[dalsingh101]

[dalsingh101]

[dalsingh101]

[dalsingh101]

[dalsingh101]