Teja Singh Sutantar

Teja Singh Sutantar

Subject : History

Section: Art and Culture

Concept :

• Punjab Chief Minister unveiled a statue of Teja Singh Sutantar, a former MP and revolutionary leader.

Teja Singh Sutantar

• Teja Singh was born as Samund Singh in 1901 in Aluna village of Gurdaspur district.
• After completing his schooling, he joined Khalsa College in Amritsar.
• Following the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919, he joined the Akali Dal to participate in the movement to liberate gurdwaras from degenerate mahants.
• However, in September 1921, he formed his own squad called the Sutantar Jatha, which successfully liberated a gurdwara in a village called Teja in Gurdaspur district from the mahants.
• He later freed another gurdwara in Othian village from mahants.

Early life and revolutionary activities

• In early 1923, Teja Singh went to Kabul as a Sikh missionary and there he came into contact with a few leaders of the Ghadar Party, who were preparing for their second attempt to overthrow the British government.
• They persuaded Teja Singh to undergo military training, so he joined the Turkish military academy in 1925 under the pseudonym Azad Beg.
• He later moved to Berlin and then to Canada and the United States, where he addressed congregations of Indians, mainly Punjabi Sikh immigrants.

Political Career

• After visiting several countries, Teja Singh returned to India and became a prominent leader of the communist party (CPI).
• He contributed revolutionary articles to the party journal, the Kirti, frequently writing about issues that plagued peasants.
• In May 1937, he was elected unopposed to the Punjab Legislative Assembly as a nominee of the Indian National Congress while he was still in prison.
• He continued to remain a member of the Punjab Legislative Assembly till 1945.
• He was also the secretary of the Communist Party (Punjab) from 1944 to 1947.

Post Independence political activities:

• Post-independence, Teja Singh, who a prominent leader of the Kisan Sabha, led a number of peasant agitations against the government and landlords.
• He was a key leader in the PEPSU Muzara movement, which started in the 1930s and went on till 1952.
• The movement was started by landless peasants (muzaras) in PEPSU (Patiala and East Punjab States Union, which included the districts of Mansa, Sangrur, Barnala, and parts of Bathinda, apart from Patiala) to obtain ownership rights of the land they had been tilling for generations.
• The farmers would finally receive land rights in 1952.
• After independence, Teja Singh formed his Lal (Red) Party with the Kirti group of the Punjab Communist Party as its nucleus.
• He would go on to become a member of the Punjab Legislative Council from 1964-1969.
• He edited Lal Jhanda, a monthly magazine in Urdu, Lal Savera, a Punjabi weekly and contributed to various newspapers.
• In 1971, he was elected to the Lok Sabha.