In the 75th year of the Independence of Bharat, it is essential for us as scholars and scientists to appreciate the tremendous contribution of the freedom fighters. The resistance towards British exploitation of our resources and attack on our cultural heritage was across the length and breadth of the country. This story is about one such unsung and hardly recognised patriot whose life itself is more eventful than any thriller.
From India to Ghadar Party in the US
Pandurang Sadashiv Khankhoje (1883 – 1967) was born in Wardha, Maharashtra. After completing his primary education in Wardha, he went to Nagpur for higher education. Early in life he was inspired by his grandfather — Venkatesh Bhikaji Khankhoje, who had fought the British in 1857. In 1899, there was a terrible famine in central India but the British utterly neglected the suffering native population. The young Khankhoje got deeply inquisitive towards the reason for the poverty amongst the natives and got highly motivated by the works of Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak. In Nagpur, he came in contact with several freedom fighters and revolutionaries from Bengal. The local police kept him under surveillance and as a result, his work and studies both got adversely affected. Hence, he decided to leave for foreign shores and pursue the freedom movement from abroad.
In 1906, Pandurang left India for Colombo and finally reached Japan. He started to work as a labourer in a tin factory, printing pictures on sheets of metal and making boxes. Here he decided to join the agricultural college to learn silk farming, rice plantation and horticulture. He had seen people suffering for food and therefore, the need for food security when Bharat would become free was foremost in his mind. For this, he moved to the United States of America. Here he enrolled in the Washington State College (now called Washington State University), graduating in 1913. However in between, he, along with Pandit Kanshi Ram, founded the Indian Independence League in Portland, Oregon. His works also brought him close to other Indian nationalists in the United States at the time, including Tarak Nath Das. In the years preceding World War I, Khankhoje was one of the founding members of the Pacific coast Hindustan Association, and subsequently founded the Ghadar Party. He was at that time one of the most influential members of the party. He met Lala Har Dayal in 1911. He also enrolled at a West Coast military academy. The idea was to have revolutionaries in the garb of scientists — a phrase that the British police used to record about Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray.
From 1913 onwards, Khankhoje became actively involved in the Ghadar Party, where he and his associates planned mutiny against the British. He visited Europe during World War I and subsequently went to Iraq to garner support for the Indian freedom struggle. During this time, Khankhoje travelled as far as Turkey and Iran under different camouflages. He reached Balochistan, adapted their life-style and secretly tried to influence the local population to support India in its war of independence.
The fear and incipient paranoia that engulfed the British due to the Ghadar movement led to extreme reactions on behalf of the government. This included the Jallianwallah Bagh massacre of innocent people on 13 April 1919. Almost all of the revolutionary leaders were either killed or sent to jail. It can be argued that the Ghadar movement was not planned well and the young people could not see the greater scheme of things. Also, they failed to grasp the reality that the common people were extremely poor and suffered from malnutrition, particularly due to siphoning of food and resources by the British during World War I. So, an uprising was not possible. It became clear to Khankhoje that the path to freedom would only be through scientific enlightenment.
Landing in Mexico
This is the time when Khankhoje took up the second mission in his life — a tapasya — to make Bharat self-sufficient in terms of cereals, oilseeds and fruits. So, he left Berlin in January 1924 to reach the shores of Mexico. The readers might wonder, why Mexico? Primarily, there were two reasons. Firstly, the climate of Mexico is tropical and hence, the soil and crop characteristics would be similar to that in India. So, the knowledge of hybrid variations in seeds could be instantly applied in Bharat for boosting food production. Secondly, the Mexican revolution of 20 November 1910 itself was a great moment of awakening. It was not only a cause for democratic and constitutional issues but also for social equality. Khankhoje could immediately correlate this with the cause of the social reforms by Sant Tukaram and Mahatma Jyotiba Phule in his motherland. The Mexican revolution was agrarian and brought equal rights to the native peasants who were earlier ruled by the foreign Spanish owners. It brought to the fore a national Mexican identity instead of narrow racial/caste profiling. It ultimately moulded Mexico into a rich and equitable society, which not only had precious natural resources but a wealth of intellectual awakening. Moreover, the people of Mexico embraced Khankhoje as one of their own because they could correlate and understand the modus operandi of European exploitation in Asia and Latin America.
For his excellent field work on crop productivity and research in boosting production of cereals, Khankhoje was appointed as the professor of Botany and Crop Breeding in the National School of Agriculture of Mexico. He led the Mexican corn breeding programme and was appointed Director of the Mexican Government’s department of agriculture. His research work on the new variety of corn was extremely successful. Khankhoje discovered that the maize seed had very low resistance towards frost and drought. So, any climatic fluctuations like low-rain or floods quickly destroyed the cultivation and this caused the eventual famines in tropical countries like India. Therefore, he established an experimental field in the national school of agriculture. This was the starting point of the ‘Green revolution’. One might be able to correlate it to the experimental fields near Pusa in Delhi where the Lerma Rojo 64 variety of dwarf wheat was introduced from Mexico. Khankhoje provoked great interest amongst the students and public and soon the open-fields were converted into experimental stations. This was the time when Mexico’s ministry of education decided to make a fresco on the very fundamental work of Khankhoje. A mural that features Khankhoje, ‘Our Bread’, was made by the noted painter Diego Rivera in 1938. It shows Khankhoje seated at the centre like in the famous ‘Last Supper’ painting by Leonardo da Vinci. He heads a table and breaks the bread with a big knife. A farmer and a soldier stand on either side with people from different nations sitting around the table. Mexico is represented by the child wearing overalls signifying the hardworking population. However, Khankhoje was not happy with someone painting his murals only. He collaborated with Rivera to draw a highly accurate depiction of plant anatomy, development of seeds and flowers. These were useful for teaching the students latest developments in botany through textbooks.
While working amongst the farmers, Khankhoje quickly realised that the peasants needed to be given hands-on training in the new and scientific methods of farming. Therefore, he started the free schools of agriculture in 1926. At the back of his mind, Khankhoje was hopeful that these practical experiences could be extremely useful for the annadataas (food providers) in his motherland. The free school of agriculture prospered and so did the progress in the green revolution. In February 1928, an article in the Excelsior newspaper informed the public that a new department of plant genetics would be started in the national school of agriculture headed by Professor P Khankhoje. Here, Khankhoje as a professor of plant genetics produced new variants of corn. Of particular interest was a corn that contained only grains and no kernel! This was a massive discovery and immediately one could envision the rapid boost in the production of foodgrains. News of Khankhoje’s discovery spread like wild-fire in the community of agricultural scientists, and hundreds of young scientists across the world started writing letters to him for internships and research training positions so that they could learn the techniques and help their own people. In August 1930, the Excelsior reported under the headline: ‘Marvels Created by a Hindu Savant’, in which he was asked: ‘Will you earn much money from this new discovery?’ He replied: “I am not working in life for money, I am only looking for happiness. I am deeply convinced that I am just a simple traveller on this earth and I must travel lightly”. The answer tells us his deep belief in the Dharmic philosophy of Bharat.
Returning to India
In spite of his extremely busy schedule in research, he kept minute by minute updates of the path towards freedom back in India. Mexico was one of the first countries to recognise the independent Bharat and it was due to the great efforts of Khankhoje. In April 1949, Khankhoje arrived in India, 43 years after he had left! It was a great occasion for a patriot like him. On arrival at Bombay, to his great agony and surprise, the immigration official detained him because he was still an enemy of the British empire. In fact, he was classified as one of the most wanted revolutionaries by the British secret service agent. He was made to wait for hours before being allowed to proceed. While, this was a case of bureaucratic slip-up, yet a glance of the history sheet maintained by the British on Khankhoje (full report available in: S. Sawhney, I Shall Never Ask for Pardon: A Memoir of Pandurang Khankhoje, New Delhi: Penguin, September 2008) reads: ‘Obtained B.Sc. Degree from Cornwallis University in agricultural science, was an important member of the Gadar Party — top enemy of Britain…’
Back in India, he addressed the concerns of farmers and helped them garner new technologies. In 1957, he was appointed as a member of the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR). He was instrumental in devising means to popularise soyabeans as an affordable vegetable source of protein. He also advocated modern research on Ayurvedic plants like Neem and Classia tora. The revolutionary in the scientist never stopped. In 1965, during the India-Pakistan war, the 79-year-old Khankhoje walked to the army recruitment centre in Nagpur to offer service on the battlefront. On 18 January 1967, Khankhoje passed away at the age of 81.
The life of Pandurang Sadashiv Khankhoje was filled with commitment towards Bharat. All his life, he moved from one country to another to fight for the freedom of the motherland. When the Ghadar movement failed, he germinated the green revolution as a scientist par excellence to help ensure food security for Bharat. In between the Ghadar and the Green revolution, he served humanity with the highest commitment.
*The writer is currently a Professor of Chemistry at the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, Kolkata. His research interests include computational materials on exotic molecular and materials properties at the mesoscopic and nanoscale dimensions. As per the latest survey by Stanford University, he belongs to the top 2% scientists in the category of “Chemical Physics”.
