Bhagwan Singh in 1914
Bhagwan Singh in 1919
Bhagwan Singh 'Pritam' alias 'Gyani,' a revolutionary poet, an eloquent speaker, and the second president of the Ghadar Party, belonged to Viring, a small village in the Taran Tarn (erstwhile in Amritsar) district of Punjab. He was born in the home of his father, Sarmukh Singh, and his mother, Har Kaur on 27 July 1884. A scholar of Panjab University, Lahore, Bhagwan Singh was a well-educated man of his time. In 1905, he tied the nuptial knot with Harbans Kaur of Sialkot. For a short period, as a Sikh missionary of Khalsa Diwan, he lectured on Sikh philosophy in Delhi and Peshawar. Along with S. Ajit Singh, he actively participated in the Pagri Sambhal Jatta movement in 1907. To avoid arrest, the following year, he left India and went to Penang. After spending over a year in South-East Asian countries, he arrived in Hong Kong in March 1910. Here, he became the chief priest of the community gurdwara. He was arrested twice in 1911 and 1912 for preaching sedition among Indian soldiers. Later, he moved to Canada in April 1913.
Bhagwan Singh arrived in Canada under the guise of Natha Singh, in connivance with British intelligence officer William Hopkinson, who wanted to use him as an agent against the nationalist Sikhs. Ditching Hopkinson, he joined Bhag Singh, Balwant Singh, and other nationalists and worked for the Ghadar Party. In his lectures, he revealed the true nature of British imperialism to the audience. As a result, he was deported by immigration officials in December 1913. On his way to India, he jumped from the ship in Japan and met Maulvi Barkatullah – another important Ghadar Party leader. He also met Dr. Sun Yat Sen, the leader of the Chinese revolutionary Party, Kuomintang. He spent the next two years in East Asian countries working for the Indian revolutionary movement.
Before the outbreak of World War I, he arrived in San Francisco on May 23, 1914. There was a leadership vacuum in the Ghadar Party following the departure of Sohan Singh Bhakna, Bhagwan Singh took over the Ghadar Headquarters and became Ghadar Party's second president. He wrote many poems for the Ghadar under the pen name 'Pritam.' He returned to Japan in October 1914 and met Ras Bihari Bose. In 1916, after spending a year in China and the Philippines, he returned to America. On April 6, 1917, the United States entered World War I as a British ally. In the changing situation, the Woodrow Wilson administration ordered the arrest of Indian revolutionaries. On 8 April 1918, American police arrested him near the Mexico border. He was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment for his revolutionary speeches in the famous Hindu-German Conspiracy Case.
Following his release, he turned to spirituality and founded the 'American Institute of Culture' in 1930. He wrote extensively on a wide range of topics, including spirituality, health, the art of living, and human-training systems. He arrived in India on November 10, 1958. Partap Singh Kairon, the Chief Minister of Punjab, greeted him and allotted him a house in Saproon, near Solan. After a brief illness, he died on September 8, 1962, in the Dr. Sens Nursing Home in New Delhi.
American Newspapers’ reporting about Bhagwan Singh in different times