Ghadri Baba Mangoo Ram Mugowalia
By Mark Juergensmeyer
“Mango chamar, of village Mugowal, police station Mahalpur, district, Hoshiarpur. Information was received in the summer of 1915 he was about to leave Sanfrancisco for India via Shanghai and Manila with Narinjan Das of Pharwala. The last two are emissaries of Ram Chand, Peshwari, and have reached Japan in July 1915. Mangoo Ram is said to be dangerous. He seems to have changed his mind about returning, for he was reported in September 1915 still in U.S.A.
Bhai Nahar Singh himself wrote that Sh. Mangoo Ram was one of the frontline Ghadarites, who along with Baba Hari Singh Usman took the responsibility of sending ARMS to the Ghadrites in India. The story of getting weapons from German counsel and the voyage of MEWAK is described 44 to 55.
“I would suggest you to personally go to the village Mugowal and meet the Bradari of Mongoo and ask them to perpetuate his memory.”
Hereby we are giving some thing more about this eminent personality. These are extracts from “Religious Rebels in the Punjab” written by “Mark Juergensmeyer” He is well known Political scientist.
There are not many Scheduled Caste persons in the Gadar movement, however; Sh. Mangoo Ram recalls only one other Chamar besides himself. Initially Sh. Mangoo Ram played only a minor role in the organization, but in 1915 he volunteered to be one of five Gadarites to participate in a dangerous mission involving smuggled weapons shipped from California to Pujab. He was chosen for the task by the man whom he identified as the "Leader of the Ghadar party at that time," Sohan Singh Bhakna. The secretary of the Ghadar party, whom he remember as "Godha," sent the five to Los Angeles where they boarded an intermediary boad after collecting all their personal identification. For the rest of the saga, Sh. Mangoo Ram would be known by a Muslim Pseudonym, Nizamuddin.
According to Sh. Mangoo Ram, the intermediary boat took them to the Secrorro [sic] islands to rendezvous with the weapons boat, but after thirteen days a military ship from Sydney, the “man of war,” discovered them. Only through the timely intervention of an American warship were they spared. They went to Vera Cruz, Mexico, to receive rations. There they finally connected with their weapons boat, the Maverick; they joined the crew, took on giant turtles for food, and headed for India. They were halted again in Hawaii, where Sh. Mangoo Ram witnesses the eruption of volcanoes. Free again, they advanced a bit further, perhaps to Java or New Caledonia there the Japanese, on behalf of the British, imprisoned them for one yea. Eventually, the British decided to hand them for one year. Eventually, the British decided to hang them, but at midnight the night before they were to be hanged at dawn, fate intervened. The Germans spirited them away in the dark, and the five went their separate direction Harnam das and Charan Das to Bangkok; the others, including Sh. Mangoo Ram, to Manila. But again, according to Sh. Mangoo Ram’s memory, the intervention of fate altered their plans. A typhoon appeared, and the ship went to Singapore instead, where British spies, Bela Singh and Bhag Singh, turned Sh. Mangoo Ram over to British authorities, who promptly ordered him to be placed before a cannon and shot. Again, however, the Germans whisked for Manila. When Sh. Mangoo Ram arrived in the Philippines he read a news report in the Manila Times indicating that he had been executed for treason by the British in Singapore. Sh. Mangoo Ram assumes that one of his captured colleagues had taken on his name to protect him, and that man had been shot in his place. The news of his alleged death proceeded to the Punjab, where his wife heard the report and promptly married his younger brother, as custom dictated. In the meantime, Sh. Mangoo Ram was sequestered in the Philippines in a series of hideouts on various islands. Members of the Ghadar party were his benefactors during this period, and Sh. Mangoo Ram remembers fondly their hospitality and friendship: he was no longer an Untouchable but a comrade in distress. The war ended in 1918, and the Ghadar party was no longer quite the threat it was earlier when it engaged the British by compounding separatism with seditions through its liaison with the Germans. But Sh. Mangoo Ram decided to stay in manila. Nonetheless he met an American, a Mr. Johnson of Marshall field and company (a department store in Chicago), who hired him to work in an embroidery factory making shirts for the American market. After six years of that Sh. Mangoo Ram was ready to return to India.
