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SOHAN SINGH JOSH
(Freedom Fighter)
A
veteran freedom fighter, Sohan Singh Josh was born on 12th
November, 1898 at village Chetnapura, District Amritsar. His
father, Lal Singh, was keen on the good schooling of his son,
but the difficulty was that there was no school nearby. Some
years later when a school was opened, Sohan Singh, in spite of
his comparatively advanced age, got admission in it.
Afterwards he passed the Middle examination from a Church
Mission School and the Matriculation from D.A.V. School,
Amritsar. For higher education he joined the Khalsa College,
Amritsar but had to leave it soon after on account of
financial difficulties.
Search
for employment took him to Hubli and later to Bombay where he
worked up to 1918 in the Censor’s office. Coming back to his
native village he began to work as a schoolteacher. But this
was not for long, as his real interest lay in the country’s
struggle for freedom. In 1921 when the Akali movement started,
he enthusiastically participated in it and traveled from
village to village preaching against the Government. For his
seditious activities he was arrested and tried in the Akali
Leaders’ Conspiracy Case and sentenced to three years’
rigorous imprisonment. At that time he was member of the
Shiromani Gurudwara Parbandhak Committee and the Shiromani
Akali Dal.
Having
a flair for writing, Sohan Singh adopted journalism as his
major vehicle of national propaganda against the Government.
He was associated with the rebel Sikh paper Akali brought out
by the Master Sunder Singh Lyallpuri. In 1925 he helped to
bring out the revolutionary paper, Kirti. When in 1935 Kirti
assumed the name of Parbhat, once again Josh was its Editor
and Publisher. In 1943 the Communist Party of India brought
out a new paper, Jang-I-Azadi and appointed Singh as its
Editor.
A
confirmed Communist was he was, political freedom from the
foreign yoke in 1947 failed to satisfy him and he continued
his struggle for economic freedom. This again landed him in
jail from 1949 to 1950, but his spirit remained undaunted and
he continued his work through the columns of Nawan Zamana.
Source:chakdephate.com
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