A stamp in honour of Bhai Paramananda; Image Source- iStampGallery

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Bhai Paramanand was one such footnote that deserves to be a chapter heading. He was the embodiment of an individual who always stood for his own ideals, whatever it may be. He was not afraid of disagreements and rows. An example of his ideals maybe his career as a lecturer at Punjab University. He taught political economics and history for a fixed allowance of 75 rupees. He denied all sorts of higher positions and higher allowances.

He also worked alongside Gandhi in South Africa as a Vedic missionary after which he toured many countries of South America preaching the culture of the Vedas. He finally joined Lala Hardayal and both of them established the Ghadar Party and even wrote a book for them called Tarikh-I-Hind
At this point in history just before the First World War, there was a sizeable population of Indian expatriates mostly Sikhs facing racial discrimination in places like Canada in lieu of their country being a bonded one. This inspired them to launch the Ghadar movement to free India from British clutches. The main plan of the Ghadar militants was to organise an armed mutiny against the British while they were busy in the First World War by organising and mobilising all the Indian soldiers within the British Army. However, this plan could not succeed as there were ample whistleblowers within the Party.

> Bhai Paramanand was sent to the Cellular Jail in Andaman for his involvement in the conspiracy. Here was faced with adverse conditions. The prisoners in Cellular jail were made to hard labour in the form of extracting fine coconut fibre from of bundle of coconut fibre. They also had to grind oil just like animals did on the farms. In addition to this, the prisoners were often met with solitary confinement which made them extremely suicidal.
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Bhai Paramanand was greeted with all of this and more and he has poignantly written about his state of mind at that point in time. “My own mind was kept agitated by the thought, ‘Why should I live longer?’ A sort of special feeling of uneasiness occupied my heart. Every moment I was debating within myself whether I should cut short my life or continue to live.” These were the ramblings of his disturbed mind.

Finally, he went on a fast until death as he could no longer tolerate the treatment. After weeks of starvation, he was force-fed milk with the help of tubes and released by 1920 by George V. Such was the cruelty of the British administration.

> Although he might have worked closely with Gandhi, he was critical of his moves. He highly criticised the Khilafat movement which was extremely irrelevant in the Indian context which ultimately failed to secure its main objective. He also wanted to avoid partition. According to Bhai Paramanand, India was composed of three elements – Hindus, Muslims and British. He asked Gandhi to unite the first two to drive out the latter. Gandhi however dismissed him as an optimist.
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Thus, as time went on the world forgot about Bhai Paramanand and he cascaded into the footnotes of history. He was the man who lived and died for a single ideal – independence of India and that is commendable.

Why are some people immortalised in the pages of history and others are cascaded into the footnotes? We will never find the answers to these rhetorical questions. However, what we can do is highlight those very important footnotes in history and spark conversations that could never take place before.