Biography
Lala Har Dayal was an Indian revolutionary, scholar, and anti-colonial organizer who became a leading figure of the Indian independence movement in the United States. A lecturer at Stanford University, he was also active in the Bay Area labor movement and served as secretary of the San Francisco branch of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). In 1913 he helped found the Ghadar Party in San Francisco, which called for an armed uprising against British rule in India. On March 16, 1914 he was arrested by U.S. immigration authorities for deportation as an "undesirable alien," on the grounds that he was an anarchist, and was freed on bail on March 27, 1914. Rather than submit to deportation he jumped bail and fled to Switzerland on April 14, 1914, beginning a long exile in Europe, where he continued to work for Indian independence. His exile ended when he returned to the United States on November 7, 1938. He died in Philadelphia the following year.
