Yashpal

Yashpal Singh (3 December 1903 – 26 December 1976) was a Hindi-language writer, political commentator, a socialist and an essayist.

He wrote in a range of genres, including essays, novels and short stories, as well as a play, two travel books and an autobiography.

Yashpal was born on 3 December 1903 in the village of Bhumpal, (present-day Hamirpur district) situated within the Kangra Hills in British India.

His mother was poor and had sole responsibility for raising her two sons.

He grew up in an era when the popularity of the Indian independence movement was steadily increasing and with a mother who was a keen supporter of Arya Samaj.

He attended an Arya Samaj gurukul in Haridwar on a "freeship" basis, due to the family's poverty.

Such gurukuls were considered by the colonial administration to be "hotbeds of sedition" because they fostered pride in Hindu culture and Indian achievements, encouraging the notion that British rule was a "temporary setback or punishment for having permitted laxity in the Aryan religion."

Yashpal later said that during his schooldays he had daydreamed of a time when Indians would reverse the current situation to the point of ruling the British in England.

He was bullied by his fellow pupils at the gurukul on account of his poverty, and he left the school when he suffered a prolonged attack of dysentery.

Reunited with his mother in Lahore, Yashpal attended middle school there before progressing to high school in Ferozepur Cantonment, where the family had subsequently moved.

He found the urban environment and schooling to be more to his taste and he finished first in class in his matriculation exam.

Yashpal had been a follower of Mahatma Gandhi's Congress organisation from the age of 17, while still in high school.

He toured villages to promote Gandhi's message of non-cooperation among peasant people but they appeared disinterested and he realised that there was nothing in the Congress programme that addressed issues that affected them.

It was after one such tour that he received his matriculation results, the success in which entitled him to a scholarship at a government college.

He declined that award in favour of having to fund himself through studies at National College, Lahore, an institution that had been established by the Arya Samajist and Congress activist Lala Lajpat Rai with the aim of promoting social service and providing a quality education to Indians who did not want to be taught in British-administered colleges.

It was at National College that Yashpal met people such as Bhagat Singh and Sukhdev Thapar who were later to become the nucleus of the Punjabi armed revolution movement.

Encouraged by the tutelage of Jaichandra Vidyalankar, a historian and associate of Ghadarites, this group of students read widely of political theory and past revolutionaries from Europe and India.

The Hindustan Republican Association became known as the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) in 1928, with the change of name probably being largely due to the influence of Bhagat Singh, who was a prominent figure in it.

Sharing Singh's disillusionment with the impact of Gandhi's non-cooperation strategy, Yashpal joined with it.

His work for the HSRA was generally behind the scenes and he had a lower public profile than people who physically engaged in acts of revolution, such as Singh, Rajguru and Chandrashekar Azad.

While continuing his activism, he was employed as a clerk by the Lakshmi Insurance Company, a role that he deeply disliked and described "Before this, no one had ever been dissatisfied with me; in fact, I was always praised for my hard work and ability. But I proved to be totally incompetent as a clerk. Personally, I found the work so distasteful I could not apply myself to it. I made one mistake after another and was constantly criticized. Where were my lofty aspirations to be a successful lawyer or professor or effective political figure, sitting all day on my clerk's seat, sending interim receipts and writing dunning letters to clients to pay up their overdue premiums? ... I felt like I was sealed up inside a box, helpless, unable to break out. I felt that this was not my individual misfortune, but the lack of opportunity because of the way our society was managed. I felt that a change in the way the country and society were run was the only remedy.

Then I saw the revolution, not only as a beneficence, but as a cry for my very existence."

Yashpal became a fugitive in April 1929, hiding for a few weeks with a relative (Pandit Shyama) in the Kangra area (village Samhoon near Rail in Hamirpur) after a recently established HSRA bomb factory in Lahore was raided by police.

Realizing that the HSRA cause could not be furthered unless its members were organised, he was back in Lahore before June.

Bhagat Singh and Sukhdev Thapar had both been arrested and he did not have contact details for any members who were free.

Sukhdev Thapar was able to give him details of another member after Yashpal visited him in prison, posing as a lawyer, but the information was voided soon after due to a police raid on the HSRA's other bomb factory, in Saharanpur.

Some of those arrested at both factories became informants.

Yashpal then held discussions with leaders of the Hindu Mahasabha.

However, he differed from them ideologically.

Their offer to pay the HSRA 50,000 rupees to assassinate Muhammad Ali Jinnah was the final straw: the organisation of which he was a member were not to be guns for hire.

The last significant armed act of the HSRA was the attempt on 23 December 1929 to blow up a train carrying the then viceroy, Lord Irwin.

Yashpal detonated that bomb, which destroyed the dining car but only inconvenienced Irwin.

With several of its leaders imprisoned, some of whom were subsequently executed, Chandrashekar Azad reorganised the HSRA in 1930.

Yashpal was appointed to the central committee and became organiser in Punjab.

It was around this time that he met his future wife, Prakashvati Kapur, through his HSRA work.

That relationship caused much jealousy and also concern among other HSRA members: the 17-year-old Prakashvati was considered too young to be involved with the group, although already paying a subscription, and was perceived as being vulnerable.

There were also concerns about his commitment to the cause, since people thought that the life of a revolutionary was not compatible with marriage and HSRA members had taken a vow of celibacy.

The outcome was dramatic: Yashpal found out that some of his colleagues were plotting to kill him for being a double agent of the British under orders from Azad, and the HSRA was beset with internal divisions regarding those concerns and also accusations that Yashpal might turn informant, His information came from the would-be assassin, a member of the HSRA who was acting as an informer for the British authorities.

In September 1930, despite his personal acceptance of Yashpal's false integrity and honour, Azad felt it necessary to disband the fractured movement, distributing its weapons among the membership and telling them to go fight for the revolutionary cause on a decentralised, provincial basis rather than under direction from the committee.

He won the Hindi-language Sahitya Akademi Award for his novel Meri Teri Uski Baat in 1976 and was also a recipient of the Padma Bhushan.