Author: Savitri Sawhney
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 2008
Language: English
Pages: 341
ISBN/UPC (if available): 9780143063766
Description
The Remarkable story of one of the Most Important Combatants in a secret war of Independence History Knows Little About – A war for Indian Liberty that was Fought on Foreign Shores
Pandurang Khankhoje realized early that life under the British yoke was not for him. The then rulers of India were equally quick to grasp the fact that the young man spelt trouble for the authorities, and cast a dragnet for him. When Khankhoje fled abroad, the searh for the potential incendiary never let up, and the proud nationalist passed from country to country and from continent to continent, never losing sight of his dream-a free motherland.
The angry young man trained in the making of explosives and in warfare, and roamed the globe looking for like-minded people who equalled him in their desire to end British dominance. He became a founder - member of the radical Ghadar Party in America-many of whose members were executed by the British- which worked unrelentingly towards gathering followers sympathetic to its cause.
Khankhoje’s commitment took him to Japan, Russia, the US, Persia and elsewhere, always on the run, before he found safety in Mexico, a country that struck him as being oddly like his own, which had experienced a similar history of foreign domination. Here, the revolutionary married, had a family and turned his energies to agriculture, going on to become an international authority on high-yielding food crops, especially a new variety of corn.
But all the while, his heart was set on returning to his homeland. It was forty years before that was to happen, but he did see India again, and he saw her gain her freedom before he died. In I Shall Never Ask for Pardon, Khankhoje’s daughter, Savitri Sawhney, dips into his diaries to resurrect the voice of a hitherto silent hero of India’s struggle for freedom.
‘There will never be another life like that of this unsung Indian revolutionary, a patriot and internationalist in equal measure’. – Siddharth Varadarajan
Contents
Preface
A Revolutionary is born
Japan, 1906
San Francisco
An Indian Student in America
Birth of the Ghadar
Flames of War, 1914
Aleppo to Baghdad
Shiraz to Neyriz
The End of the War
Germany to Russia
The Mexican Years
The Family Man
Independence
The Final Return
Epilogue
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index