Baba Sohan Singh Bhakna

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Baba Sohan Singh Bhakna was an Indian revolutionary and the founding president of the Ghadar Party. He was born in January 1870 at the village of Khutral Khurd, near Amritsar, into a peasant family. Sohan Singh migrated to California in 1907 in the wake of political troubles in Punjab. In the United States, Bhakna, along with Lala Hardayal, Pandit Kanshi Ram and a few others were instrumental in the founding of the Pacific Coast Hindi Association, of which Sohan Singh was elected its first President. The association later came to be known as the Ghadar Party.

First World War

During World War I, the Ghadar Party was one of the key participants in the Hindu German Conspiracy that sought to trigger rebellion in the British Indian Army. Sohan Singh, as one of the top Ghadar leaders, returned to India at the outbreak of the war, in the wake of the Komagata Maru incidence, to organise and direct the rebellion inside India. However, returning to India on the SS Namsang, Singh was arrested in October 1914 and later tried in the Lahore Conspiracy Case and sentenced to death. The death sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment. He served sixteen years before he was released in 1931.

Post-World War I

In 1929, while still interned, Sohan Singh began a, well publicized, hunger strike in support of Bhagat Singh. Afer his release, Singh's works are identified closely with the works of the Communist party of India. He also made the release of interened Ghadarites a key part of his pollitical work.

Post-1947

Following Indian's independence in 1947, Singh worked closely with the Kisan Sabha and the CPI.