THE entire history of our movement for freedom from British imperialism bears a very deep imprint of the Ghadar movement which was launched by those who had gone abroad for earning their livelihood but soon formed an organisation for the liberation of their motherland on the lines of the Great Uprising of 1857. This was what CPI(M) Polit Bureau member Sitaram Yechury stated while addressing a public meeting to commemorate the centenary of the Ghadar movement and to pay homage to the memory of the martyrs and others who suffered and made numerous sacrifices. The event was jointly organised at Chandigarh, on February 4, 2014, by the Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh state units of the CPI(M). Yechury told the gathering that it would not have been possible for our countrymen to achieve freedom had there not been the tireless efforts of several Indian patriots who launched the Ghadar Party in a foreign country and were made to bear tremendous sufferings. It is even today very much relevant to learn a lesson from our history and make the people aware of the challenges our country is facing today from imperialism that is hand in glove with the corporate sector to loot the valuable resources of our country. He explained how the total amount of money squandered in a single scam was sufficient to feed all the malnourished children and also provide free education to all of them. Yechury reminded that leaders of the Ghadar movement were from all communities --- Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs --- as well as from all the regions of India. The legacy of the movement, therefore, is secular to the core and needs to be defended with all our might, challenged as it is today from the communal forces of Hindutava and other varieties. He also mentioned that the economic policies of the BJP as well as the Congress were almost the same and they often resort to match fixing within parliament for getting all the anti-people legislations passed without a debate. It was the Left parties, he claimed, who are consistently resisting the ruinous policies of liberalisation and privatisation inside the parliament as well as struggling in the roads. Others who spoke on the occasion included the CPI(M) state secretaries in all the three states, viz Charan Singh Virdi (Punjab), Rakesh Singha (HP) and Inderjit Singh (HARYANA), the CPI’s Punjab state secretary Bant Singh Brar, Bhagat Singh’s nephew Abey Singh Sindhu, Ms Raghubir Kaur and Vijay Mishra. CPI(M) Central Secretariat member Nilotpal basu also took part in the function.