I have mixed feelings each time I visit here. On the one hand, it’s a celebration of heritage and struggle – of revolution. On the other, the gallery is a collection of people deemed subversive – of rebellion. The British sentenced many of the faces staring back at me to death.
The Ghadar Party was founded in California in 1913. It was active in Indian politics, nationalist and socialist, until 1919. Its members were Indian immigrants, largely from the Punjab with the aim of liberating India from British rule. Many were associated with UC Berkeley and brought out a weekly pamphlet, The Ghadar. Editions were available in the scripts of Nashtaliq, Gurmukhi, and Gujarati scripts, highlighting targeted readers.
Activities of the Ghadar Party accompanied and influenced the swell of the revolutionary tide gripping India and its emerging leaders. Indian soldiers in the British Army were successfully enticed to revolt, leading to a number court-martialed in Hong Kong, Singapore, Iran, and Iraq. The British deemed Ghadar literature seditious and set about persecuting Party members. Many were charged for sedition and hung or sentenced to many years of hard labor at Kala Pani, the notorious British prison.
As a side note, the prison building, also known as the Cellular Jail, had seven wings that forked out of a watchtower at its center. All inmates were housed in cells that prevented communication with others. The architectural design was influenced by the idea of the Panopticon, developed by Bentham, and discussed at length by Foucault in his text Discipline and Punish. I think it’s a cool design, functioning through the power of thinking you are being watched.
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