Which of the following statements about the Ghadar Movement is/are correct? 1. The Ghadar Movement began in 1913 in San Francisco. 2. The movement was founded by Sohan Singh Bhakna. 3. The Ghadar Movement took its name from the weekly Ghadar brought out in several Indian languages. Select the answer using the code given below:

Correct — D, 1, 2 and 3. All three statements survive. The movement dates from 1913 and is identified with San Francisco, where the Yugantar Ashram at 436 Hill Street served as headquarters, press and hostel for the Punjabi migrants of the American west coast; the party grew out of the Hindustani Association of the Pacific Coast formed at Portland the previous year, and its founding conference in July 1913 was held at Astoria in Oregon, but San Francisco is where it lived and is what both the UPSC and CDS official keys name. Sohan Singh Bhakna, a Punjabi who had reached Seattle in 1909 and worked in the timber mills, was its president from the beginning, with Har Dayal as general secretary — so the second statement holds on the standard reading that the president of the founding body founded the movement. The third is the neatest fact of the three: the organisation took its name from its newspaper and not the other way round. The weekly Ghadar — the word means revolt or mutiny, deliberately recalling 1857 — first appeared in Urdu on 1 November 1913 and in Punjabi on 9 December, and later in other Indian languages, and it was posted to Indian communities and Indian soldiers across the Pacific rim. Since no statement fails, the all-of-them option is right.

• (a)1 only — Rejects both the founder and the newspaper, and each is well attested — Sohan Singh Bhakna as the first president of the body constituted in 1913, and the weekly Ghadar as the source of the movement's name.
• (b)2 only — Keeps only the founder. It would have to deny the 1913 date and the San Francisco base, which two separate official answer keys affirm, and deny that the movement was named after its paper.
• (c)2 and 3 only — The most tempting wrong answer, because a candidate who has read that the founding conference met at Astoria in Oregon may reject San Francisco. But the Yugantar Ashram headquarters, the press and the party's whole public identity were in San Francisco, and that is the city the official keys of both UPSC 2014 and CDS 2022 name.

The Ghadar movement was built by Indian migrants on the Pacific coast of North America — overwhelmingly Punjabi, many of them Sikh, and a large share of them veterans of the British Indian Army — who found that the empire they had served treated them as unwanted aliens in Canada and the United States. Out of that grievance came a frankly revolutionary programme: not petitions but an armed rising in India. When the First World War broke out the party urged its members to sail home and raise the Punjab, and several thousand did. The plan was betrayed, the risings of February 1915 were crushed, and the Lahore Conspiracy trials followed.

Every statement in this item is the kind that can be half-remembered into a wrong answer, so it is worth fixing the anchors. The year is 1913 and the city is San Francisco; the Astoria conference and the earlier Portland association are refinements that explain the founding rather than displace it. The first president is Sohan Singh Bhakna and the first general secretary is Har Dayal, and questions alternate between the two. The paper gave the party its name, not the reverse. Two further details recur in papers of this family: the Yugantar Ashram address, and the Komagata Maru voyage of 1914, which was not a Ghadar operation but fed the same anger and drove many passengers into the movement after the Budge Budge firing. On present-day standing, the Ghadar Memorial in San Francisco is maintained by the Indian Consulate at 5 Wood Street.

• The party was formally constituted on 15 July 1913, growing out of the Hindustani Association of the Pacific Coast formed at Portland in 1912.
• Sohan Singh Bhakna was its founding president and Har Dayal its first general secretary; Bhakna served sixteen years of a life sentence after the Lahore Conspiracy trial and was released in 1930.
• Headquarters was the Yugantar Ashram at 436 Hill Street, San Francisco, which housed the party's press.
• The weekly Ghadar first appeared in Urdu on 1 November 1913 and in Punjabi on 9 December 1913, and gave the movement its name — the word means revolt, and deliberately recalls 1857.
• About ninety per cent of the membership was Punjabi, and roughly half were veterans of the British Indian Army; the wartime plan to raise the Punjab was betrayed and collapsed in February 1915.

• Rejecting San Francisco because the founding meeting was held at Astoria in Oregon; the headquarters, the press and the party's identity were Californian.
• Crediting Har Dayal with founding the party. He was its first general secretary and its most visible writer, but Bhakna was president.
• Assuming the paper was named after the party; the party was named after the paper.

As a statements item like this one, as a single-line question on the headquarters, or as a chronology placing the Ghadar Party against the Berlin Committee, the Delhi Conspiracy and the Chittagong raid.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The headquarters of the Ghadar Party, known as the Yugantar Ashram, was located in which city?

  • (a)Portland
  • (b)San Francisco
  • (c)Vancouver
  • (d)New York

  Answer(b) San Francisco — the Yugantar Ashram on Hill Street housed the party's office and its press, from which the weekly Ghadar was issued.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The first issue of the weekly Ghadar, from which the movement took its name, appeared in which language?

  • (a)English
  • (b)Urdu
  • (c)Bengali
  • (d)Gujarati

  Answer(b) Urdu — the Urdu edition came out on 1 November 1913 and the Punjabi edition followed on 9 December 1913, with other Indian languages afterwards.