Chain Singh Chain, who ‘helped’ Netaji escape, dies at 98

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, January 9

Chain Singh Chain, the Communist leader who is considered to have played a crucial role in Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s escape from India in 1941, is no more. He passed away here today at the age of 98.

Chain was the last of the generation who laid the foundation of the Communist movement in Punjab. He started his political career in the early 1930s with the Kirti Kisan Party, which was founded in 1928 and considered an extension of Ghadar movement. 

He was a close associate of prominent Communist leader Teja Singh Swatantar. Later, Chain also became a central committee member of the Lal Party, which had waged an armed peasant struggle in the erstwhile PEPSU in the late 1940s. It is known as PEPSU Mujhara movement. 

Gurmeet Singh, trustee of Desh Bhagat Yadgar Hall in Jalandhar, said that Chain played an important role in India’s freedom struggle. “It was Kirti Party’s responsibility to help Bose from India. And in Kirti Party, it was comrade Chain who was assigned the job,” said Gurmeet Singh.

However, the account has recently been countered in Sugata Bose’s book His Majesty’s Opponent, that it was All India Forward Bloc that was instrumental in doing so. Chain Singh Chain will also be remembered for his work on the history of Kirti Kisan Party.

“In 1942, he was arrested and was tortured at the British-run torture centre in Lahore Fort,” said Kesar Singh of Desh Bhagat Yadgar Hall, Jalandhar.

Another popular tale about Chain is that when the Telangana peasants’ struggle was at its peak, he was instrumental in procuring weapons from Punjab and supplying these to the struggling peasants.

He also founded the Punjab Freedom Fighters’ Association and served as its general secretary for long.  Even his wife Sushila Chain was a full-time member of the Communist Party of India. He was born in Danduwal village in Phillaur on August 25, 1917.