Harkishan Singh Surjeet, Born’ on 23rd March, 1916 at Bandala, District Jullundur into a Bassi Jat family, he received education up to Matriculation. He was still at school when he started his association with the national movement. In 1930 he joined the Naujawan Bharat Sabha which had been founded by young revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh and Bhagwati Charan. After the execution of Bhagat Singh and his friends Rajguru. and Sukhdev, young Harkishan Singh participated in the Civil Disobedience movement. Though he was a minor at the time, he was arrested and imprisoned for a period of four years in 1932 for his seditious activities. After he was released fron Jail, he joined the Communist Party of India. In 1936 he became a co-founder of the Kisan Sabha in the Punjab. Henceforward, his interest lay not merely in the political content of liberty; its social and economic contents exercised equal pulls on his mind. In order to propagate his ideas widely among the people, he started a journal called Dukhi Duniya from Jullundur. But the repressive policy of the Punjab Government came in his way and he bad to shift to Saharanpur from where in 1938 he brought out the paper under a new name, Chingari The same year he was elected Secretary of the Punjab Kisan Sabha. When the Second World War broke out, all important Communist leaders were rounded up and detained in Rajasthan. Harkishan Singh was one of these detainees. He was released along with other comrades in 1943. His political activities were intensified after 1947, as to his mind Independence was no more than attainment of political liberty. In 1951, he was elected Secretary of the State Committee of the C.P.I. Two years later, his services to the Party were recognized by giving him a seat on its Politburo.
After some years when internal differences of the C. P. I. led toa split and a new organisation under the name of the C. P. M. (Communist Party of India-Marxist) was established, he threw in his lot with the new party which elected him to its Politburo in 1967. But his active association with the Kisan movement remained unaffected. Rather, he became a key figure in it and in 1969 was elected Vice-President of the All-India Kisan Sabha.Later he was one of the central figures of his Party, C. P.M. Besides, heis Editor of the Party’s Punjab: paper, Lok Lehar.
He was author of a book called Future of Kashmir in which he has put forth the stand of his Party on this vital matter. Surjeet died in New Delhi on 1 August 2008 of cardiac arrest. Surjeet, aged 92, had been convalescing at the Metro Hospital in Noida since 25 July 2008.
References :-
- Eminent Freedom Fighters Of Punjab by Fauja Singh (1972)
- Communist Party of India (Marxist). Harkishan Singh Surjeet