The Underground Gurjar Krantikari

Waheeda Bi khan

The Underground Gurjar Krantikari

The grandson of a martyr of the 1857 revolt, Vijay Singh Pathak, led the legacy as valiantly as a soldier. He was a diplomatic warrior who introduced the concept of Satyagraha long before Gandhi adopted it. Referred to as the National Wanderer, this lion-hearted man gave sleepless nights to the British, feudal lords, and princely rulers.

A humble tribute to the krantikari | Source: The Wire

In the late 19th century, the village of Guthawali Kalan in the Bulandshahr district was blessed with the birth of another karantikari who grew up to create havoc in the colonialistic realms of pre-independent India. Born to Hamir Singh Gurjar and Kamal Kumari, he was named Bhoop Singh Gurjar. He not only inherited the revolutionary spirit but also grew up under the legacy of his dadaji (grandfather) who fought in the Malagarh Riyasat army and was martyred in the 1857 revolt. This was also the reason his father was always under the government's radar and was even arrested, and accused of participating in the first anti-British war of colonial India. Bhoop Singh grew up in such a rebellious environment against British rule and became associated with freedom fighters like Sachindra Nath Sanyal and Rash Bihari Bose at a very young age.

Bhoop Singh’s name came to the notice of the British in 1912 when the revolutionaries led by Rash Bihari Bose hatched a plan to attack Lord Hardinge during the ceremonial procession marking the shift of the British Raj capital from Calcutta to Delhi. They executed their plan of throwing bombs at various strategic points, but Lord Hardinge survived, and the krantikari group had to disperse and go into hiding.

Three years later, the freedom fighters regrouped in Lahore and decided to stage a nationwide revolt seeking the support of soldiers under the commands of Indian kings and the Indians employed in the British army, referred to as the Gadar movement. Bhoop Singh was assigned the task of implementing the plan from Rajasthan with the help of Gopal Singh. Both began training a youth army of two thousand members to stage the protest and had collected thirty thousand guns. Unfortunately, the British were informed about the whole plan through a mole among the revolutionary group. Most of the revolutionaries were arrested immediately all over the subcontinent. The others like Bhoop Singh had to go underground while Rash Bihari escaped to Japan.

Though he kept drifting from one place to another, the British finally cornered him at Ajmer and demanded his surrender, which he vehemently refused. Fearing a mass revolt in support of the revolutionary cause, the British proposed a truce and had him under house arrest in Todgarh Fort. However, the British planned to put him on trial in Lahore for his involvement in the Gadar uprising*.* When Bhoop Singh got the news, he immediately escaped, and that is when he changed his name to Vijay Singh Pathak, a name he retained for the rest of his life. As a freedom fighter, he found a new cause when he met the leader of the Bijolia Andolan, Sadhu Sitaram Das.

The new turn in his life not only catalysed a diplomatic leader but also carved out his literary archive of newspapers, poems, and later other books. He pioneered many ventures apart from satyagraha during his stay at Umaji Khera during the long protest of the Bijolia peasants. Some of them are the Kisan Panchayat Board, Seva Samiti, schools to study revenue records, Vidya Pracharni Sabha with a library, and an akhada, etc. One of his most well-known newspapers was Rashtriya Pathik, along with the book on his prison days. Some of his ventures before he reached Bijolia were the paper Naveen Rajasthanand one of the organisations called Rajasthan Seva Sangh*.*

Pathik took charge of the peasant movement in 1916 and worked relentlessly against the innumerable unjust taxes imposed on the poor kisaan (farmers) under the Mewar rulers and imperialistic feudal lords. He brought the movement to the national forefront through his satyagraha, constant petitions, and newspapers. Many surrounding villages also joined the andolan (protest), gaining the ire of the British, who even categorised it as Bolshevik. Finally, in 1921, the Bijolia movement gained victory when the feudal lords and the British government had to succumb to political pressure. But, fearing the rage of freedom spreading more vigorously than ever under revolutionaries like Pathik, they arrested him.

He was released after five years of imprisonment, after which he once again took up the mantle of social service. He soon established the Rajasthan Seva Ashram, and though nearing his fifties, he set another example for his countrymen by marrying a widow in 1930. Unfortunately, he could never escape the tentacles of colonialist paranoia and was once again arrested. The travails of sacrifices and dedication soon caught up, and the nation lost yet another great revolutionary patriot, to death in 1954.

Gandhi once rightly summed up Pathik - "Pathik is a brave and impetuous soldier, others are talkers."

The Indian government paid tribute to the great soul through a postal stamp in his name,, and his village honoured him with a statue in a park named after him, with a public library and gym. Greater Noida also named a stadium to commemorate his legacy forever. Fluent in many Indian languages like Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Urdu, etc., his memories are embalmed in the numerous writings penned by him.

Like a true man who lived a life of selflessness, he departed the world with no property to his name, but his legend was eternalised through the followers in his footsteps. His life will always echo in one of his own poetic words –