Revolutionary patriot

I SHALL NEVER ASK FOR PARDON — A Memoir of Pandurang Khankhoje: Savitri Sawhney; Penguin Books, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110017. Rs. 399.

Suranjan Das

Pandurang Khankhoje, a remarkable Indian revolutionary, was involved with organising a secret war for Indian independence. Primarily based on his diaries, his daughter Savitri Sawhney vividly recreates the hitherto little discussed mission of a rebel who moved to Japan, Russia, the U.S., Germany and Persia to foster revolutionary networks against the British Raj.

Motivated initially by his grandfather, who had participated in the 1857 Revolt, and fired later by Tilak’s thoughts, Khankhoje founded, during his school days at Wardha, the Bal Samaj, which organised every Sunday discussions for local boys on national and international revolutionaries. This group joined famine relief effort and religious festivals to propagate the nationalist message, worked under the cover of a circus to escape police surveillance, and forged links with the country’s similar secret societies. Convinced that revolution was the only way to win Indian independence, Khankhoje went to Japan in 1906 to gain military training. He formed the India Independence League, which subsequently coordinated Indo-Japanese cooperation for India’s liberation.

In Tokyo Khankhoje met the Chinese nationalist leader Sun Yat Sen. For Khankhoje, Japan and China could be India’s models for adapting modernity and prioritising national against fragmented identities.

In 1907 Khankhoje went to the U.S. that attracted many Indian workers and students. Despite his pecuniary distress he completed his agricultural studies and training in explosives. He imbued the Indian migrants with anti-British feelings and organised in 1910 the India Independence League, which later transformed into the Azad-e-Hind Party. He was a military leader for the Ghadarites, working closely with revolutionaries like Kashiram, Har Dayal, Sohan Singh and Bhupen Dutta. During the First World War Khankhoje reached Germany, using a Muslim name. With Indian revolutionaries like Virendranath Chattopadhyay he formed the Indian Independence Committee, which later became the Berlin Committee. But its three-pronged German-sponsored plan of attacking British India from Afghanistan, inculcating nationalist propaganda amongst British Indian soldiers in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East, and shipping armaments for Ghadarites in India unfortunately failed. Sawhney graphically reconstructs the trying circumstances in which Khankhoje and his comrades fought the British, and the solidarity they received from Perso-Baluch tribes. Khankhoje was himself captured, but he escaped dramatically. For a while he was in Persian Sultan’s personal service.

The Bolshevik Revolution reinvigorated the Indian rebels abroad. But while Khankhoje’s Berlin group considered the overthrowing of colonialism as necessary condition for the establishment of communism in India, M.N. Roy argued the other way. Khankhoje met Lenin twice, and later recalled how these interviews turned him a ‘Leninist’. But Lenin ultimately accepted the Roy thesis on India. Between 1921 and 1923 Khankhoje joined Indian revolutionary activities in Europe, although dissensions within the Indian Revolutionary Council and his financial strains made him leave for Mexico in 1924.

In his early Mexico days Khankhoje earned his livelihood as a daily wage-labourer. Later through his old contacts he returned to academics, becoming a professor in National School of Agriculture.

His researches on improving maize cultivation helped making bread affordable for the poor Mexicans. Through his free schools he taught Mexican farmers new production methods. He made “forays” into archaeology too, discovering Mexico’s largest idol. Khankhoje also participated in Mexico’s cultural resurgence. In 1936 he married Jeanne, whose family originally hailed from Alsace-Lorraine. Consultancy assignments with American companies improved his financial profile.

Khankhoje’s heart, however, lay with India. He hastened to return home with his family, once India won independence. That independent India’s officialdom retained continuity with the British bureaucratic steel-frame was tasted by Khankhoje when he got detained at Bombay since his name had not been removed from the “proscribed list”.

Unaffected by public adulation, Khankhoje served with distinction on the Agricultural Policy Committee of the Central Provinces and Berar, and the Indian Council for Agricultural Research. He tried making Indian farmers aware of advanced technology, and researched on the use of weeds in daily life. During the 1965 Indo-Pakistan war the 79-year-old Khankhoje volunteered for recruitment. Largely due to his efforts, Mexico became the first Latin American state to establish diplomatic relations with India.

In his later life at Nagpur he got immersed in the Vedas, the Koran and Buddhism. Yet, Khankhoje retained his firm commitment to agriculture. Interestingly, on his last day —January 18, 1967— he attended a function of an agricultural college.

The book’s title aptly encapsulates the personality of a revolutionary who combined in himself both patriotism and internationalism. It is an extremely readable biography. An appendix on the chronology of Khankhoje’s life would have been helpful.

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