IISER MOHALI

The Ghadar movement is widely regarded as a significant phase in the broader narrative of Indian independence, distinguished by its international origins and the profound impact it generated, particularly through its efforts to radicalize Indians against their political and social subjugation. Notably, several individuals associated with this movement later produced memoirs and autobiographical accounts, most of which were published after 1947. My paper draws on four Punjabi autobiographies and memoirs—Naina Singh Dhoot’s The Political Memoirs of an Indian Revolutionary, Sohan Singh Bhakna’s Meri Ram Kahani, Wasakha Singh’s Atam-Katha, and Chain Singh Chain’s Mera Siasi Safar—to examine how the revolutionary self is forged and problematized in political life writing from Punjab. The argument is also informed by a wider body of Punjabi autobiographies and memoirs of varying lengths that document the same historical period. With regard to the translation of these autobiographies, I foreground the politics of exclusion that has shaped their reception, particularly the fact that most of these texts remain untranslated into English. I do not primarily engage in close verbal or syntactic readings of the available translations; instead, I focus on uncovering the ideological frameworks that determine which narratives are considered worthy of translation and which are systematically or deliberately neglected. Finally, I also examine how these autobiographies function as important indicators of the marginalization of women within political and revolutionary narratives.

Amandeep Kaur earned her PhD in 2018, mapping the growth of modern Indian poetry from its progressive phase during and after the colonial period, identifying its transformational propensities with a focus on its representation of resistance through the matrices of caste, class, and gender in the post-progressive phase. Her publications include “Alienation of the Other: Examining Marginal Narratives in Select Punjabi Films” in The Routledge Companion to Caste and Cinema in India (Routledge, 2023), “Kisan Protests in Punjab 1907–2021: A Literary Lineage of Resistance” in Agrarian Reform and Farmer Resistance in Punjab (Routledge, 2023), and, most recently, “Translating the Revolutionary Self: Political Auto/biographies and Memoirs in Punjabi” in Life Writing and Translation: Indian Perspectives (Routledge, 2025). Her co-edited book titled Voices of Change: Progressive Poetry and Cultural Resistance in India is forthcoming from Springer in 2026.