Professor Harish K. Puri

Harish K. Puri is a political scientist and historian from Punjab, best known in this record for his work on the Ghadar movement. Wikipedia says he was born in 1938, taught political science at Guru Nanak Dev University in Amritsar, is now retired, and was chairman of the university's Dr B. R. Ambedkar Chair. The Fulbright programme lists him at the university as Professor and Head of political science for his 1990 to 1991 research award at the University of California, Berkeley.

His books include Ghadar Movement: A Short History (National Book Trust, 2011). Wikipedia also lists Dalits in Regional Context (Rawat, 2004), which he edited, and Terrorism in Punjab: Understanding Grassroots Reality (Har-Anand, 1999), written with Paramjit S. Judge and Jagrup Singh Sekhon. The Tribune's review of Dalits in Regional Context said that in his own chapter he examines the place of Dalits within Sikhism and analyses the Singh Sabha reform movement.

The debate over the Ghadar movement

Jaspal Singh Sidhu's report in Sikh Siyasat News of 14 October 2013 describes his argument. Sidhu, a retired UNI correspondent, writes that Puri described the Ghadari Babas as "secular nationalists" who had shed their Sikh background, presented Lala Har Dayal as the brain of the movement, and is praised by Left activists for an objective account. Ajmer Singh, Sidhu reports, rejects the view that the Ghadari Babas dissolved their Sikh identity into a pan-Indian identity, and, Sidhu says, cites the Babas' ties with the SGPC and the Akali Dal in his book Ghadari Babe Kaun San? (2013). Sidhu's article is an opinion piece that takes Ajmer Singh's side. This page gives the arguments as Sidhu reports them and does not quote Puri's own text.

Remembered for: histories of the Ghadar movement and studies of caste and of the violence in Punjab, and as the scholar whose reading of the Ghadari Babas Ajmer Singh disputes.