Subhas Chandra Pattanayak
While the government of our day is distracting us with documenting our citizenship credentials, the foundation of revolutionary history of our country was pan-Indian that had transcended geographical borders.
Whether Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s internationalism or Shaheed Bhagat Singh’s radicalism or the Gadarites’ love for their motherland regardless of which land they had migrated to or which religion they had embraced – the freedom struggle for Indian identity was multi-faceted and was drawn from a much wider canvas than is being projected today.
Hope all of you watch this and join me in remembering the different revolutionary streams of India’s freedom struggle, whose roots are radical left – whom today’s government would happily dismiss as antinational formations. But as Comrade Hardilal Bains – the Canadian founder of Communist Gadar Party had once said,
“Our hearts throb with the throbbing of the hearts of millions upon millions of workers. It is this which gives us our ideology, which tells us what is truth and what is falsehood, and on this basis, we advance.”
Truest patriotism for India draws from this very notion of international working class solidarity of which a significant share belongs to the Indian working class.
On this Republic Day, I am happy to share this documentary which was co-produced by journalists and activists of the Indian Diaspora from Delhi and New York. It outlines Gadar Party’s 100 Years (1913-2013).
This Centennial Documentary produced by Munish Gupta, directed by my beloved friend and colleague K.N. Gupta, and co-produced by my son Saswat Pattanayak reminds us how our independence had com with the immeasurable suffering and sacrifices our working class.
Lot of motivated, mischievous and proimperialist pamphlets and books ets had been written in English to malign this movement by Canadian and American authors justifying the barbarous and brutal treatment meted out to them (the Gadar heroes) by the British, Canadian and American Governments.
That had prompted Mr. Sohan Singh Josh to take pains to author an authentic account on the great Gadar movement do some justice to the great heroes by bringing true facts with appropriate quotations and relevant passages from the primary source materials in his three volume work on this suppressed chapter of the history of India’s struggle for freedom. In forwarding it, he had noted:
“The role of soldiers in the army in the Gadar Movement has not been given its due place so far in the history of the Gadar Party. Some young experienced professor should take up this subject and after deep study and research write a book on it. There is need to write another book analyzing and apprising all the Gadar conspiracy trial judgments thoroughly exposing the socalled justice of the British Judges. A researcher well-versed in British laws should take it up” (Hindustan Gadar Party-A short History, Sohan Singh Josh, Preface).
The Country should stay indebted to my friend K.N.Gupta as well as to Munish and Saswat for this film, which is an international step in the direction of the dreams of Josh for bringing to light further facts on the Gadar Movement.
Government of India should rise to the occasion and bring out all the Gadar Conspiracy Trial Judgments to fill up the gap in the history of our freedom struggle that has given us our Republic.