ARJAN SINGH GARGAJJ

ARJAN SINGH GARGAJJ (1905-1963), revolutionary and journalist, was born the son of Sundar Singh Ramgarhia, an artisan of Tarn Taran, in Amritsar district of the Punjab, in 1905. In 1919, when he was studying in class VI, young Arjan Singh was expelled from school for refusing to salute the Union Jack, imperial standard of the British rulers. Undaunted, he plunged into the Akali agitation launched in 1920. He left home soon after and took up residence in the office of the Gargajj (lit. thunderous) Akali Diwan established by Jathedar Teja Singh Bhuchchar.

This earned him the epithet “Gargajj”. Arjan Singh was arrested in April 1922 on a charge of publicly reciting a seditious poem and sent to jail for six months the youngest Akali prisoner. Again in 1923, after the Shiromani Akali Dal as well as the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee had been outlawed in the wake of the Nabha agitation, Arjan Singh was taken into custody and awarded oneyear imprisonment, but was not released until September 1926, when orders banning the Akali Dal were withdrawn. From the Akali Dal, he went across to Naujawan Bharat Sabha, an organization of young socialist revolutionaries.

He became a member of the editorial staff of the Kirti, a professedly leftist magazine founded in February 1926 by Santokh Singh, a Ghadr revolutionary. He was imprisoned for his anti government writings in 1929 and, again, in 1930. Speech making was banned for him in 1931, and in 1932 he was interned in the town of Tarn Taran. After briefly serving as subeditor of the Babar Sher and chief editor of the Cartoon, he joined the Akali as a subeditor in 1935. He suffered imprisonment for his political convictions even after Independence and worked on newspapers such as Jangi Azadi and Nawan Zamana. His three published works, all in Punjabi, are Do Pair Ghatt Turna, Shahid de Bol and Mera Apna Ap. Arjan Singh Gargajj died on 10 March 1963.

References :

1. Pratap Singh, Giani, Gurdwara Sudhar arthat Akali Lahir. Amritsar, 1975
2. Josh, Sohan Singh, Akali Morchian da Itihas. Delhi, 1972