Ram Nath Puri
Indian-American freedom fighter best known as the editor of Circular-i-Azadi
Ram Nath Puri (or Ramnath Puri) was an Indian-American freedom fighter best known as the editor of Circular-i-Azadi, a publication critical of the British Raj, often linked to the early history of the Ghadar Party.
Early life
Puri was born to a Punjabi family on 21 September 1881. His father was Jawala Mul Puri from the village of Khem Karan, in what was then the Lahore District of British India.
He started his career as a bank clerk in Lahore, when he published two anti-colonial pamphlets and a political cartoon of an emaciated "Father India" bound in chains. He attracted the attention of British authorities for having published what they termed "objectionable pamphlets" and a "seditious cartoon." The British confiscated Puri's pamphlets, arrested his agent, and harassed him directly. He decided to leave India.
In late 1906, he migrated to the United States, as a political exile, according to historian Bipan Chandra.
Activism in the United States
In 1907, he founded the Hindustan Association. According to his own description in Circular-i-Azadi, the association was based in San Francisco, California, and had branches in Astoria, Oregon and Vancouver, British Columbia. Lalkar describes "the principal condition for membership of the HA was that the members would rid themselves of prejudice based on caste, colour and creed."
Between 1907 and 1908, he launched and published three issues of Circular-i-Azadi (also transliterated as Circular-e-Azadi), an Urdu language paper critical of British rule in India and focused on political education, published out of San Francisco and Oakland, California.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q23140214. The first chronological checks are 1881, 1906, 1907 and 1908.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ram Nath Puri” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.