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Lala Har Dayal
‐
Founder of the Hindustan Ghadar Party and campaigner for Indian independence
Place of birth
Date of arrival to Britain
Location(s)
HA8 2ES
United Kingdom St John's College,
Oxford
OX1 3JP
United Kingdom
Place of death
Philadelphia, US
Date of time spent in Britain
1905–8, 1927–30
About
Lala Har Dayal was the son of M. Gaure Dayal, Reader in Government Service. After an MA in English and history at Punjab University, Har Dayal earned a state scholarship to study in Britain. He joined St John's College, Oxford in October 1905 to study Sanskrit. He was the Boden Sanskrit Scholar in 1907 and the Casberd Exhibitioner (awarded £30 by the trustees at St John's College). He was a member of the St John's College debating society as well. During his Oxford student days, Har Dayal would visit India House in Highgate. He began corresponding with Shyamaji Krishnavarma and in 1907 resigned from his state scholarship on ideological grounds. His wife was also studying at Oxford with Krishnavarma's financial assistance.
He returned to India in 1908 then left again in 1909 for Paris. He travelled and lived in various countries and eventually moved to the US in 1910 to take up a job as lecturer in Indian philosophy and Sanskrit. In 1913 he set up the weekly paper Ghadr in California and was one of the founding members of the Hindustan Ghadar Party.
In 1927 Har Dayal returned to London to prepare for a doctorate in Sanskrit at the University of London. He lived in Edgware. He received his PhD in 1930 and returned to the US. He died in Philadelphia in 1938.
Ghadar Party (California)
Forty-Four Months in Germany and Turkey, February 1915 to October 1918 (London: P. S. King & Son, 1920)
The Bodhisattva Doctrine in Buddhist Sanskrit Literature (London: Kegan Paul, 1932)
Hints for Self-Culture (London: Watts & Co., 1934)
Twelve Religions and Modern Life (Edgware: Modern Culture Institute, 1938)
Brown, Emily C., Har Dayal, Hindu Revolutionary and Rationalist (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1975)
Dharmavira, Lala Har Dayal and Revolutionary Movements of His Times (New Delhi: Indian Book Company, 1970)
Dharmavira (ed.) Letters of Lala Har Dayal (Ambala Cant[onmen]t: Indian Book Agency, 1970)
Gould, Harold A., Sikhs, Swamis, Students and Spies: The India Lobby in the United States, 1900–1946 (New Delhi: Sage, 2006)
Kapila, Shruti, Har Dayal: Terror and Territory (New Delhi: Routledge, 2009)
Paul, E. Jaiwant and Paul, Shubh, Har Dayal: The Great Revolutionary (New Delhi: Lotus Collection, 2003)
L/PJ/6/732, L/PJ/6/732, L/PJ/6/737, L/PJ/6/822, notes relating to scholarship and resignation from scholarship, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras
Image credit
Lala Har Dayal, 1987 Stamp of India, copyrighted work of the Government of India, licensed under the Government Open Data License – India (GODL), via Wikimedia Commons
