Babbar Akali movement

Impetus

The Akālī movement, which aimed to have Sikh shrines released from corrupt management, was nonviolent in character and strategy. During their campaigns, Akālīs would suffer physical injury and violence from mercenaries of priests and from government authorities. The deaths of Akālīs at Tarn Taran in January 1921 and Nankana Sahib in February 1921 would radicalize a faction, Babbar Akalis, that rejected nonviolence and adopted armed means in pursuit of their objectives.^[1][2]

First gatherings (March, May 1921)

The Babbar Akalis, as a breakaway wing, led by Master Mota Singh of Patara and Kishan Singh Gargajj, a retired havildar major of the 35th Sikhs,^[1][4] made its first formal appearance during the Sikh Educational Conference held at Hoshiarpur from 19-21 March, 1921.^[5]

During martial law in the Punjab, Binning had started delivering speeches against British rule while in the army, for which he was court-martialed and sentenced to 28 days confinement, after which he left the military and joined the Akali movement.^[4] It was for his speeches that he would earn the name gaṛgajj, or "thunderer".^[6] In a secret meeting, it was decided that the Nankana Sahib Massacre would be avenged.^[1]

Another meeting on 21 May 1921 was attended by Master Mota Singh, Kishan Singh Gargajj, Amar Singh Dhaliwal, Tota Singh Peshawari, Gurbachan Singh Ambala, Buttan Singh, Bijla Singh Patiala, Amar Singh of Kot Bare Khan, Chattar Singh, Bela Singh of Paragpur, Ganda Singh, and others, as well as a number of returned emigrants from Canada.^[5][7] Other included Sant Kartar Singh, Babu Santa Singh, and Sunder Singh.^[8] According to a CID report, their objectives were:^[9]

• To foment an uprising in Patiala State;
• To attempt contact with the Bolsheviks to synchronise an uprising across the North-West Frontier with that of Patiala;
• To foment trouble in Central Panjab;
• To recruit and gather arms; and
• To eliminate officials and individuals deemed enemies to the Khalsa.

Lahore Division Commissioner C.M. King, Superintendent of Police in the Intelligence department J.W. Bowring, Mahants Devi Das and Basant Das, Sunder Singh Majithia, and Kartar Singh Bedi (the nephew of Khem Singh Bedi) were held responsible for the Nankana massacre and were selected for assassination, as a lesson to collaborators and a message of defiance to the British.^[9][1]

Bowring attempt (May 1921)

Tota Singh Peshawari was sent to the North-West Frontier, where he was able to acquire a small collection of arms and ammunition. Bela Singh and Ganda Singh then visited Lahore on 23 May 1921 to assassinate Bowring, who was out of town that day. While at the Lahore railway station to return, they raised suspicion and were arrested by the police, to whom they divulged the plot under interrogation.^[10] As a result, many other members of the group including Amar Singh of Kot Bare Khan, Narain Singh, Tota Singh, Chattar Singh Kandhola, Chanchal Singh, Thakur Singh and Shankar Singh were arrested. Master Mota Singh, Kishan Singh, and Bijla Singh had managed to evade police; warrants were issued for their arrest as well as for Vatan Singh, Amar Singh of Delhi, and Gurbachan Singh.^[11][1][4]

The Akālī leadership, on learning about the plan to avenge Nankana, exhorted Sikhs not to associate themselves with such activities, and maintain the nonviolence policy of the SGPC,^[11] which issued communiqués to that effect.^[12] Nevertheless, despite the disawowal and arrests, the programme would continue.^[11] They would reject both the Akālī policy of passive suffering as unworkable, and the general Gandhian Congress strategy of non-violent non-cooperation as limiting the peasant struggle against imperialism.^[5] Appealing to Sikh martiality and deeming the Akālī approach as ineffective, they urged the people to resort to arms.^[9]

Public engagement

Building on the tentative plan of action, Kishan Singh announced a detailed programme in his speech at a Nimani mela held at Mastuana village in Jind State,^[13], during which he was interrupted by the organizer.^[14] Invoking the Zafarnama of Guru Gobind Singh, he declared that it was legitimate to resort to arms when peaceful means had failed. There, Karam Singh Babbar also recited the following poem:

The colonial bureaucracy was sought to be paralyzed by targeting its supporters (zaildars, safaidpośes ("white-collars"), lambardars, paṭwārīs (village registrars), informers and other collaborators) with various forms of punishment.^[15] Kishan Singh announced his programme of "reforming" those responsible for the Nankana massacre and other atrocities.^[8]

The Babbar programme would be centered on ਸੁਧਾਰ​ sudhār, or "reformation," a euphemism for the elimination of British officials and those deemed their stooges and lackeys, or ਝੋਲੀਚੁੱਕ jholīcukk, meaning "robe-bearer."^[1] Jholīcukks were the loyalist elements who were to be pressurized and frightened along with the officials,^[3] in the villages.^[16]

Composition

The movement had in its ranks many returned emigrants of the Ghadar Party, the prestige of which helped to popularize the Babbar jatthā.^[3] Such Ghadarites and emigrants included Karam Singh and Asa Singh.^[8] Like the Ghadarites, many Babbars similarly used 0.32 calibre revolvers and Mauser pistols, were believed to have established contact with revolutionary movements abroad, were believed by officials in Punjab to have been receiving funding for revolutionary propaganda from emigrants in the United States and Canada, and travelled throughout the province presenting their views to the populace.^[9] Also like the Ghadarites, the sphere of armed Akālī activity was mainly in Jalandhar district and Hoshiarpur district.^[3]

Besides them, the Babbars were chiefly retired and demobilized soldiers from World War I. Their time abroad had also exposed them to new ideas and an increasingly self-assured opposition to repressive British imperialism; with this exposure, many found it difficult to return to their traditional family occupation of farming. Many were disgruntled with the British for failing to receive land grants and other rewards in exchange for army service. The Babbars would also come to attract some groups of dacoits or bandits who were inspired to direct their activities towards a cause.^[3]

Rallying support

The Babbar leaders, ascribing the failure of the Ghadar movement to lack of popular awareness and support, sought to inform and enlist the rural population for their cause before taking action.^[15] In November 1921, he met Bhai Sunder Singh Makhsuspuri and Karam Singh Jhingar while in Doaba,^[14] and they would form two initial jatthās to travel throughout the province to this end. Religious diwans, or assemblies, were organized, and cyclostyled leaflets were distributed among villagers, who formed the majority of the participants in the Babbar movement, which was greatly sustained by the contempt among Sikh peasantry for British imperialism and its supporters as well as for moneylenders, attacks on whom were driven by economic grievances caused by their exploitation.^[15]

Programme established (December 1922)

Despite the Akālī disavowal of the programme and the SGPC's exhortations, the movement attracted a significant following from the rural Sikh population of Doaba. As a result, Jatthedār Kishan Singh convened the Babbar jatthās on 25 December 1922 at Jassowal village, attended by prominent members including Dalip Singh, Karam Singh, and Santa Singh, where he declared the timing and atmosphere in the region favorable to implement the Babbar programme, as well to forestall British attempts at sabotage. The decision was published in the next issue of the Babbar Akālī Doābā.^[16]

Another meeting of the general body was soon held there on 30-31 December, in which the working committee announced the following decisions:^[28][29]

• The working committee alone could decide when and by whom a target would be eliminated.^[30] Members were not in indulge in personal vendettas,^[1] or to initiate an action arbitrarily, though if a member came across a collaborator by chance, it was advisable to assassinate them after considering carefully;
• Cash and goods of collaborators were not to be lifted unless expressly permitted by the working committee, in which case it was all to be passed on to the jatthās’ common fund to purchase necessary arms, not for personal needs.^[1][30]
• While members were forbidden to touch the belongings of innocents, it was considered permissible to loot the property of the Government and notorious moneylenders.^[30]
• Children of collaborators were not to be touched, nor their women insulted or molested during the course of a Babbar action;^[1][30]
• Only those who could freely execute the orders of the working committee could be members of Babbar jatthās. Those with family encumbrances and other engagements were advised not to join as full members, but to help as sympathizers.^[1][30]
• The earlier decision of chopping off the noses and ears of collaborators was replaced by the new decision to assassinate them, as the former took longer and could be used to turn public sentiment against them;^[30]
• Every assassination was to be announced in a special leaflet with the names of the Babbars responsible.^[30]

The members were to regularly recite gurbani, or Sikh scripture. In order to evade police detection and conceal their activities, they developed a secret code. The total number of Babbars barely exceeded 200; even members did not know the exact number. The outer circle of the jatthā consisted of sympathizers who fed and sheltered active members, relayed messages for leaders, arranged divans for itinerant speakers, and distributed leaflets.^[1]

In one leaflet, the Babbars made the following appeal to the people of Doābā:

As the Indian movement has subsided, the Tenth Guru has, therefore, in his infinite mercy, sent the Babbar to help the nation out of its critical situation. The Babbar will make his appearance in the Doaba where the Sikh army stands drawn up in battle array. He will expose the secret of the Feringhees who will shriek with pain.

The paper further called upon readers to:

bring about anarchy by means of (double-edged sword), cut down the foreigner and purge the land of sinful deeds... and burn the police stations, plunder the treasuries, place gun powder under the railway lines, raid the magazines, steal arms and sing the song of liberty.

The paper also called upon Hindus and Muslims to join the Khalsa in their struggle.^[10]

March 1923

Official measures against the Babbars escalated in 1923, including police raids at Pindori, Kishanpura, Jassowal, Paragpur, Bika, Rajowal, Kot Fatuhi and Daulatpur,^[35] and the arrests of leading Babbars like Kishan Singh on 26 February, Master Mota Singh and Sunder Singh, through tips or betrayals,^[25] Assa Singh on 1 March, Amar Singh of Kot Fatuhi on 26 March, Karam Singh Jhingar, and Dalip Singh Gosal on 5 January. Babbar activity would also escalate.^[25]

On the night of 2 March 1923, Babu Santa Singh, Banta Singh Dhamian, Sadhu Singh, and Banta Singh Paragpur attacked Jamsher railway station, where stationmaster Chanan Ram and Jamadar Sapuran Singh were falsely charging money from passengers and collaborating with the British. Having previously warned them, the Babbars entered the booking office and their homes, though only obtaining Rs. 30, and they were warned again.^[36]

On 11 March 1923, lambaṛdār Buta Singh and his grandson Surjan Singh were shot in Nangal Shama.^[25] In this case, while Buta Singh was a CID collaborator who had gotten rich being so, and had proudly collected certificates from government officers, the killing of Surjan Singh and the injury of a Ram Chand in the process was disapproved by the Babbars, who forbade those responsible from entering homes in the future, and relegated them to serving as lookouts.^[37]

On 19 March, Labh Singh, an ex-mistrī of the Police Training School, Phillaur who was believed to have aided in Kishan Singh's arrest, was shot dead in Hoshiarpur district. The Babbars claimed credit for these assassinations in an open letter to the governor issued in 22 March, threatening the same for other jholīcukks.^[25]

Three attempts were made on Kabul Singh Binning on 14, 17 and 23 March, who escaped each time.^[34]

On 22 March, at a meeting at Thakar Singh's hermitage, Karam Singh Daulatpur, Udey Singh and Dhanna Singh Behbalpur claimed the murders up to that point in the letter. It was also decided that no Babbar would offer himself for arrest alive. Copies of the letter were sent to Jalandhar Deputy Commissioner Diwan Durga Das and Minister of Kapurthala State Mian Sahib, and pasted in Pindori Nijjaran and other villages.^[34]

On the morning of 27 March, Hazara Singh of Behbalpur was shot,^[25] euphemistically reported in the Babbar Akālī Doābā on 14 April as having been given a reward of three "squares of land" (bullets).^[38]

April–May 1923

Akali bargain

Like the Akālī leaders and the SGPC, national leaders like Mahatma Gandhi also disapproved of the Babbars^[12] as deviating from their policy of nonviolence towards the government.^[39] Gandhi had described them as "misguided patriots" and asserted that Babbar assassinations were not acts of heroism. Such stances would encourage British repression of the movement and execution of its leaders.^[12]

Following the first successful Babbar assassination of zaildār Bishan Singh, the government cracked down on the Akali movement, initially not differentiating between the mainstream Akalis and the Babbars, until atrocities began to radicalize nonviolent Sikhs against the government.^[39] The government then changed course, beginning to distinguish the two groups, and attempting to assure the Akalis that only seditious Sikhs that renounced non-violence were subject to such measures. Akali leaders warned would such measures against mainstream Akalis would push Sikhs further away from nonviolence and demanded a change in policy, which was accepted by the government, under the condition that the SGPC openly condemn the Babbars, and which released prisoners of the Guru-ka-Bagh morcha on 25 April. In return, the SGPC passed a resolution advising Sikhs and Akālī jatthās to disassociate from and refrain from helping those who had abandoned nonviolence.^[40]

Seeing this bargain, Babbar leaders like Master Mota Singh, and the nascent Naujawan Sabha charged the SGPC with "giving a green signal to the Panjab Government for the execution of the Babbar Akalis," allowing them a free hand in dealing with Babbar trials, sentences, and executions in exchange for the release of Akālī prisoners.^[12]

Summer 1923

On 27 May, Chaudhari Ralla Ram and his brother Ditta of Kaulgarh village, Hoshiarpur District,^[25] who were CID and police informers, were assassinated by a team composed of Karam Singh Daulatpur, Dhanna Singh of Behbalpur, Udey Singh Ramgarh, Banta Singh Dhamian, Dalip Singh Dhamian, Babu Santa Singh, Anup Singh of Manko, Dhanna Singh of Kotli Bawa Das, and Bishan Singh of Magat, Ludhiana.

Sūbedār Sunder Singh Randhawa, who had enrolled five people, including his son, as special constables against the Babbars, was targeted nest, but managed to escape. Paṭwārī Atta Muhammad of Nanda Chaur, an informer, was assassinated on 6 June by Banta Singh, Dalip Singh Dhamian, and Dhanna Singh of Kotli Bawa Das. On 15/16 July, Bishan Singh of Sandhara escaped with serious injuries.^[42]

Further activity

Babbar assassinations and threats in their publications alarmed London, where MPs expressed concerns regarding law and order in Panjab and the safety of officials there. The Panjab Government was criticized for perceived laxity and reducing police numbers.

On 4 June 1923, Charles Yate, describing the Babbar programme to the House of Commons, sought a government statement on the Punjab situation. A motion was again tabled on 14 June in the British Parliament regarding the Babbars, but was shelved by the Secretary of State of India for lack of sufficient information on it, other than fortnightly reports on the Punjab situation sent to London, and on the grounds that Babbar activities, which would be the basis of judicial proceedings against them, would in the meantime not be commented upon. He sent an urgent telegram requested a detailed history of the movement. He would try to allay fears over the safety of Europeans in Punjab by quoting anti-Babbar measures implemented by the Punjab Government in one of their letters, and suggesting more active steps against the Babbars. The Government would adopt more such measures.^[44]

In the second week of June 1923, Babu Santa Singh, Dalip Singh Dhamian, Banta Singh Dhamian, Anup Singh Manko and Dhanna Singh of Kotli Bawa Dass hid out in Malwa. Babu Santa Singh was arrested at Tapa Railway Station on 20 June by Mir Fazal Imam, on the basis of information from Sant Kartar Singh. Documents were recovered from Babu Santa Singh, including a letter, addressed to Jawala Singh and Bhagwan Singh of Fatehpur Kothi in Hoshiarpur, which referred to the Uḍārū Press cyclostyle. Bhagwan Singh was arrested, and the cyclostyle confiscated, in a resulting raid in the village, while Jawala Singh escaped.^[45][12]

Babu Santa Singh himself turned state's evidence under custody, with nine other Babbars arrested with his information,^[45] including Banta Singh Behbalpur on 28 August, Milkha Singh Moranwali, Besant Singh of Randhawa Masandan, Chhaja Singh Masanian, and Bawa Singh and Udham Singh of Pindori Nijjran on 1 September, Munsha Singh Johal on 4 September, Amar Singh Rajowal 6 September, Partap Singh Sialkot on 7 September, Wattan Singh Ganeshpur and Thakar Singh Bharta on 9 September 1923.^[46] Arrested Babbars were subjected to physical tortures, some of whom as a result disclosing information and statements about other Babbars and their movements.^[45]

On 8 August, the Government issued a third proclamation for arrests of fugitive Babbars, with the following rewards:^[47][48]

• Karam Singh Daulatpur: Rs. 3000
• Udey Singh of Ramgarh: Jhuggian Rs. 2000
• Dhanna Singh Behbalpur: Rs. 2000
• Banta Singh Dhamian: Rs. 1000
• Dalip Singh Dhamian: Rs. 1000
• Waryam Singh Dhugga: Rs. 1000
• Dhanna Singh Kotli Bawa Dass: Rs. 500
• Anup Singh Manko: Rs. 500
• Bishan Singh Mangat: Rs. 400
• Buta Singh Pindori Nijjaran: Rs. 200

Through informers, Buta Singh Pindori was arrested on 14 August.^[47] Other arrests included Kirpal Singh Malakwal on 18 September, Narain Singh Chattiwind on 19th October, and Man Singh Gujranwala on October 26.^[46]

Important Babbar hideouts at Pandori Nijran, Kishanpur, Jassowal, Paragpur, Kot Fatuhi and Daulatpur were located and raided, resulting in 186 arrests, including 25 of those suspected of complicity in murders. From the collected information and statements, police were able to trace and arrest remaining Babbar leaders, including Babu Santa Singh and Dalip Singh Dhamian.^[12]

Saboteurs

In addition, monetary rewards were announced to further incentivize quick arrests of Babbar leaders, and jagirs and money were promised in exchange for useful information from their relations, cooperating with whom certain Babbars were induced to become informers, including the cases of Anup Singh and Jawala Singh.

Death sentences

In the final judgment delivered on 19 January 1926, six Babbars were condemned to death and 13 to life imprisonment, with 29 sentenced to various prison terms and 40 acquittals. Kishan Singh Gargajj, Babu Santa Singh, Dalip Singh Dhamian, Karam Singh Manko, Nand Singh Ghurial and Dharam Singh Hayatpur were hanged on 27 February 1926.^[1][52]

After the movement

Several Babbars acquitted by the court continued their activities after the movement was suppressed.^[53] In 1933, safaidpoś Bela Singh Jian, who had killed two Ghadarites and collaborated with William C. Hopkinson in infiltrating the Ghadar Movement and in the Komagata Maru incident, was killed by a team consisting of Hari Singh of Sundh, Ishar Singh of Jandoli, Bakhshish Singh of Chabbewal, and Hazara Singh of Maki.^[54] In 1936, Anup Singh Manko, the turncoat who had caused the death of Karam Singh Daulatpur of Babbar Akālī Doābā, was assassinated by Gurdit Singh, Kartar Singh Kirti and Ujagar Singh, who was one of the youngest Babbars.^[55][56] On 25 March 1940, Bachitter Singh and Ajaib Singh assassinated Karam Singh of Mannanhana, who had gotten Dhanna Singh of Behbalpur killed.^[57] This action would conclude Babbar activities, as Babbar remnants would split and join other groups and factions.^[58]