On 30 March 1928, novelist W Somerset Maugham, based on his first-hand experience of the world of espionage, published a collection of sixteen stories and introduced a British spy named ‘Ashenden’. The author had been recruited in 1915 over dinner in London by Major John Wallinger, the former head of the Indian Political Intelligence Office. Maugham claimed his stories were truthful accounts of his experiences as a snoop in Switzerland during WWI. He had carried a gun and his central character Ashenden was a wry self-portrait. He also revealed that he intended to publish fourteen more stories but was forced to destroy them as according to his friend Winston Churchill, they contravened the Official Secrets Act.
Maugham, besides inventing arguably the first full-fledged professional secret agent in British fiction decades before James Bond, Harry Palmer, Alec Leamas, and George Smily, had stumbled upon a striking individual from the Indian freedom movement. In one of the chapters in Ashenden, titled ‘Giulia Lazzari’, Maugham writes about an incident involving a European dancer who was blackmailed into luring her Indian nationalist lover, Chandra Lal, to his arrest and elimination. Though the story has been adapted by BBC Radio and even filmed, the real-life identity of Chandra Lal has since mystified readers and history buffs. The fictional character Chandra Lal brings to mind a mix of Indian revolutionaries active in Europe in that period. However, on deeper examination of the physical attributes, background, location, and historical specifics in Maugham’s story there is an undeniable resemblance to the Indian revolutionary, Har Dayal (1884-1939).
Har Dayal is not a popular name that everyone instantly recalls. His patriotic endeavours, amazing triumphs, and fascinating life are not widespread. His writings and books have not been in circulation in India or overseas for decades. Yet the history of the Indian freedom struggle has produced no greater enigma than this heroic leader. The brilliant scholar had immersed himself in academics more extravagantly, and grandiosely, than anyone before him at Oxford (1905-07). He outperformed his contemporaries by not only resigning from difficult-to-acquire Oxford scholarships but also heroically abandoning the chance to be a member of the elite Indian Civil Service (ICS).
His phenomenal mind was filled with thoughts of liberating his motherland and invading Britain with a revolutionary Indian army. He wanted to introduce Sanskrit among its natives to accomplish reverse colonization. In 1909, he successfully escaped from India on the eve of the birth of his daughter, as his arrest and transportation to Cellular Jail were imminent. He became part of the group of Indian revolutionaries at the India House in London till it was disbanded. Evading the constant surveillance of Scotland Yard and the British secret agents, Har Dayal moved between Paris, Geneva, Algiers, and Caribbeans before reaching California via Harvard in April 1911. A glowing recommendation for this extraordinary intellectual by Professor Arthur Ryder at Berkeley led to his appointment as the first Indian to teach at an American University (Stanford in March 1912).
On the morning of 23 December 1912, a powerful bomb directed at the Viceroy Lord Hardinge exploded as he entered the new capital city of Delhi. Though the assassination bid failed it brought back the spectre of the Ghadr of 1857 and challenged the might of the British Empire. The police detectives connected the bomb outrage to the brain of Har Dayal based in San Francisco. The bombing in Chandni Chowk also stirred sizeable numbers of Indian migrants in North America. Numerous public meetings were held all along the West Coast in Bay Area, Seattle, Portland, Astoria, St John, and Vancouver.
For the first time in Indian history, a global movement to destroy the British Empire by an armed revolt took shape in America. This political startup in Northern California originated with seed funding from the migrants themselves. Sohan Singh Bhakna was elected as President, Har Dayal as Secretary, and Jawala Singh and Kesar Singh as Vice Presidents. They added a new weapon to their arsenal – a printing press. Har Dayal’s intellect was employed in publishing revolutionary literature. The first day of November 1913 will go down in Indian history as a red-letter day. On this day the first issue of the newspaper was launched. Its name was Ghadr. For Har Dayal the newspaper signified a “new epoch in the history of India” and at the launch at Shattuck Hotel in Berkeley, he declared, “Today there begins in foreign lands, but in our country’s language, a war against the English Raj…” In its inaugural issue, Ghadr was defined as a “harbinger of freedom,” the “enemy of the British Government,” and “a cannon the aim of which will spare no tyrant.”
Within weeks of publishing the newspaper the non-sectarian Ghadr Party modeled on the Ghadr of 1857 with its nerve center in California became the most significant anti-colonial resistance movement in the world. This was the first such organization to demand India’s freedom way back in the pre-WW1 era. The red, yellow, and green-coloured flags of the Ghadr Party represented the goals of the movement: freedom, brotherhood, and equality. The circulation of Ghadr newspaper was immediately banned within the British Empire yet it reached not only the Indians in North America but was smuggled into Britain, France, Germany, South Africa, East Africa, Hong Kong, Burma, Malaya, and Singapore. Ghadr enthused an entire generation of Indians from Kartar Singh Sarabha and Rash Behari Bose to Udham Singh and women revolutionaries like Gulab Kaur.
Har Dayal, the architect of the Ghadr, had the vision of building the Berkeley-Berlin-Baghdad-Bengal axis. The stage was set for Ghadr patriots from North America and the rest of the world to return to India as revolutionaries. Besides sending ships laden with weapons to India plans were afoot for training in arms and even flying planes. Then suddenly on 26 March 1914 under pressure from the British foreign office, American authorities arrested Har Dayal on a false allegation. He was released the next day. With rumors circulating of his potential elimination by British agents, Har Dayal disappeared from America.
On 28 June 1914, the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife Sophie led to an unprecedented global war encompassing several nations and empires. Meanwhile, thousands of Indians were recruited to fight for the British Empire in Europe during the Great War. Mulk Raj Anand’s novel Across the Black Waters is a fair representation of the Indian soldiers in this conflict. By then the British secret service conceivably at the initiative of Maugham and Major Wallinger had located Har Dayal on the outskirts of Geneva, Switzerland. It was reported that from the relative safety of neutral Switzerland in 1915, the most hunted Indian revolutionary conspired with the Germans to launch a revolutionary army for liberating India. He later relocated to Berlin and visited the Indian soldiers in the Prisoner of War camps. Here he sang Iqbal’s nationalistic song, ‘Saare Jahan Se Achcha’, and invited the soldiers to join his revolutionary army to liberate India.
The archives of Britain, America, Canada, Germany, Sweden, and India reveal that the British Empire feared Har Dayal like no one else. The Lieutenant Governor of Punjab, Sir Michael O’Dwyer, called Har Dayal, “the most sinister figure in the revolutionary movement”. Har Dayal had over the years steadily risen to the top position in the British secret service’s list of most wanted revolutionaries. He would retain this coveted title for decades to be dethroned only after his death. From September 1915 to the summer of 1916, author Maugham worked for British intelligence in Switzerland and performed other undercover roles. He reported to Major Willinger who was committed to destroying the global Indian revolutionary movement.
In Ashenden, Maugham has described the character sketch of Chandra Lal in detail and the resemblance to Har Dayal is astonishing. Ashenden’s superior Colonel R (based on Major Wallinger) notes, “He (Chandra Lal) is the most dangerous conspirator in or out of India. He’s done more harm than all the rest put together. You know that there is a gang of these Indians in Berlin; well, he’s the brains of it…” Har Dayal’s detractors and severest critics including The New York Times had to recognise the colossal power of his mind and praised him as “not only the brainiest man… but also the most cultured”. It is stated that Lal much like Har Dayal had escaped from India to America, from there went to Sweden and eventually reached Berlin.
Portraying this amazing Indian, Maugham informs the reader that Chandra Lal, akin to Har Dayal, has a wife in India and neither drinks nor smokes plus “considerable sums of money have passed through his hands and there has never been any question as to his not having made a proper use of them”. The two photographs as described in the story reveal Lal wearing a turban over a long Indian dress and another one with him looking ill-at-ease in European clothes. Both these were significantly similar to Har Dayal’s usual attire who was known to be not particular about his sartorial appearance. Though there are also many discrepancies between the lives and personalities of Chandra Lal and Har Dayal, Maugham’s narrative empathizes with the Indian revolutionary. He wrote, “One can’t help being impressed by a man who had the courage to take on almost single-handed the whole British power in India… He’s aiming at freedom for his country… it looks as though he were justified in his actions.”
On 15 February 1915, the impact of the Ghadr was finally evident. That day the Indian 5th Light Infantry ironically called the ‘Loyal 5th’ for their role in suppressing the Ghadr of 1857 rebelled at Alexandra Barracks in Singapore. The New York Times depicted the uprising as the paramount threat to British authority since 1857. However, a quick reaction followed – 614 troops were in detention; 52 men had been slain and around 150 went missing. After a top-secret Court Martial, 202 men were convicted: 63 were transported for life and 43 were publicly executed. The news of the uprising was straightaway censored in India.
By the end of WW1, despite the formation of the first provisional government of Free India in Kabul by the Indian revolutionaries, the Komagata Maru saga in Vancouver, the Indo-German trial in San Francisco, and the Lahore Conspiracy trials, all efforts to recreate the Ghadr in India failed. Yet the world’s richest and most formidable military empire was powerless to arrest the brilliant Har Dayal as he always remained three steps ahead of his pursuers. Incensed they banned him in India, rubbished him in the media and the British agents infiltrated the Ghadr Party to infect some members with the communal virus.
Far away from India, living hand to mouth and often falling sick, Har Dayal resurfaced in the media in India 1920s and ’30s as Ghadr personified to independently inspire the revolutionary movement. Later he successfully finished a doctorate in Buddhism from London but continued to remain the clear and present danger for British imperialism. The Ghadr movement lit the first spark with Ghadr Party’s proclamation for India’s freedom in November 1913. Sixteen years later in 1929, the Indian National Congress finally adopted the goal of complete independence. Then during WW2, former Ghadr patriot Rash Behari Bose collected the remnants of the Ghadr Party in Asia and handed the baton of the revolutionary army to the liberator of India — Subhas Chandra Bose.
Har Dayal did not live to see his motherland’s freedom. He passed away in his sleep in Philadelphia, America on 4 March 1939. His obituary as a renowned revolutionary, author, and intellectual appeared in The New York Times. The British Empire had succeeded in keeping him in exile for over thirty years, but as portrayed in Ashenden the British secret service failed to eliminate him. Har Dayal remains immortalised as ‘Chandra Lal’ thereby shining a light on a golden chapter of the Indian freedom movement.
The writer is the biographer of Subhas Chandra Bose and Har Dayal and is the author of ‘India on the World Stage’. He can be reached at [email protected]. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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