Gulab Kaur: A brave woman who returned from Philippines to India to fight British

New Delhi, July 21: India had many women freedom fighters, many of those never got their due respect and Gulab Kaur was one of them. As the country is set to celebrate its Azadi Ka Amrut Mahotsav to commemorate the 75 years of independence, it is time for us to remember such unsung heroes.

Who was Gulab Kaur?
Born in 1890 in a poor family in Bakshiwala village in the Sangrur district of Punjab, she was married to Mann Singh. In a bid to have a better life, they decided to move to America, but due to limited resources, the couple went to Manila (Philippines) and planned to move USA once they have enough money to travel to the US.

During their stay in Manila, Kaur came in contact with some leaders of the Ghadar party and she got inspired by their stories. It did not take much time for her to join it.

Hafij Abdullah, who was a very persuasive, hard-working and patriotic leader, was heading the party.

She was given important party assignments and she proved her mettle. Soon, Kaur was assigned the important task of keeping vigil at the party's printing press in the guise of a journalist.

Not only did she take care of the printing press, but she also used her press pass to ferry arms for the Ghadar Party members despite too much of risk involved in it.

Gulab Kaur also kept on working for the expansion of the party and encouraged people to join it.

As the strength of Ghadar party grew significantly, the party then decided to send committed revolutionaries to India and create a forceful freedom movement there.

Gulab Kaur and her husband decided to bid goodbye to their American dream and decided to return to fight for their motherland. However, his mind changed at the last minute and he refused to return to India. Her attempts to convince him went in vain.

She had only two options before her - either to return to the motherland or leave the movement with her husband to lead a comfortable life in America. In the end, she made her mind to bid goodbye to her hubby, forever, for the love of India.

Then, Gulab Kaur boarded the ship along with other Ghadarites and headed back to India. Once reaching Hong Kong, Ghadarites organised meeting to motivate more immigrant Indian to join their cause. She used to give inspiring speech and recite patriotic poems that used to have an electrifying impact on Indians.

After reaching India, many of the Ghadarites were arrested by police and CID but Gulab Kaur managed to escape. She started organizing people for revolutionary activities in Hoshiarpur, Jalandhar and Kapurthala districts with an aim of mobilising the masses for armed revolution against the British.

She also printed literature on freedom movement and distributed it among the freedom fighters. She ferried arms for revolutionaries.

She had the knack of evading arrest, but she was caught finally by the British. A case of the seditious act was registered against her and she was sentenced to a hard punishment for two years. She was imprisoned in Lahore.

In jail too she raised her voice against the British which earned the wrath of the jail authorities.

However, her health deteriorated after she was released from jail. Despite her bad health, she tried to unite people to fight against the British. Finally, she died in 1931.