User talk:Siddhartha Ghai/Manifesto of HSRA

Copyright Status

The Manifesto of the w:Hindustan Socialist Republican Association was supposedly distributed at the 1929 Lahore session of the Indian National Congress.^[1] The text of the manifesto may be found at the following links:

• English link 1
• English link 2
• Snippets in Hindi

I am not aware whether the original manifesto was in english or hindi or both.

The text at these links mentions two names, either or both of whom may be (considered) the authors of this text. They are named in the text as:

• B.C.Vohra
• Kartar Singh

Per this google books link, the full name of B.C.Vohra is Bhagwati Charan Vohra, who per this page of the Punjab Museums website, died on 28 May, 1930. And per page 6 of this pdf, the Kartar Singh named in the text happens to be w:Kartar Singh Sarabha who died on November 16, 1915.

Now, as far as my knowledge goes, there are two possible cases for its copyright, with two subcases each.

Which Indian Copyright Law applies?	Was it published in the US within 30 days of first publication, and all copyright formalities including registration, renewal etc were complied with?	Copyright Status
Indian Copyright Act 1914	Yes	???
	No	???
Indian Copyright Act 1957	Yes	???
	No	???

Now, as far as I understand the Indian Copyright Act 1957(current official version, related rules, w:Copyright law of India, Indian Copyright Law), since both (possible) authors died more than 60 years ago; this text should be in the public domain. In this, I'm assuming that the 1957 law applies instead of the 1914 Indian Copyright Act. The 1914 Indian Copyright Act was itself a modified version of the British w:Copyright Act 1911(citation needed)(original text of the British law).

This leads me to the conclusion of the last case to be public domain in India. Now the question remains whether it is under copyright in the US now. The following searches were conducted to find whether any copyright renewals took place for any such document.

Search query	Rutgers	Stanford
Kartar Singh	21 results. None contains "Kartar"	[1]: no results
Kartar Singh Saraba	Probably same 21 results, None contain "Kartar" or "Saraba"	[2]: no results
Kartar Singh Sarabha	Probably same 21 results, None contain "Kartar" or "Sarabha"	[3]: no results
B.C.Vohra	no results	[4]: no results
B C Vohra	no results	[5]: no results
BC Vohra	no results	[6]: no results
Bhagwati Charan Vohra	no results	[7]: no results
HSRA	no results	[8]: no results
HRA	no results	[9]: no results
Hindustan Socialist Republican Association	2858 results, None contain "Hindustan"	[10]: no results
Hindustan Socialist Association	2810, None contain "Hindustan"	[11]: no results
Bhagat Singh	21 results(Probably the same as above), None contain "Bhagat"	[12]: no results

Since no results were found that related to this document, and the 1911 British act is 50pma(and the Indian Copyright Act was 50pma till 28 December 1991, when it was amended to be 60pma), hence the result:

Which Indian Copyright Law applies?	Was it published in the US within 30 days of first publication, and all copyright formalities including registration, renewal etc were complied with?	Copyright Status
Indian Copyright Act 1914	Yes	Case highly unlikely per the search results
	No	Public Domain in India and US(Since it became public domain in India in 1981)
Indian Copyright Act 1957	Yes	Case highly unlikely per the search results
	No	Public Domain in India and US(Since it became public domain in India in 1981)

However, the following information should be noted:

• If the public distribution at the 1929 congress session at Lahore is not counted as publication, the manifesto was probably never officially published in British India(since the organisation concerned was a revolutionary one, and probably banned or illegal). I may be wrong in assuming this. Also it might have been officially published for the first time after Indian independence(1947) posthumously. Alternately, it may have been officially published elsewhere(outside India) first.
• A copy of the 1914 Indian Copyright Act has not yet been found.

--Siddhartha Ghai (talk) 20:48, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

References

1. Grewal, P. M. S. (2007). Bhagat Singh, liberation's blazing star. LeftWord Books. p. 51. ISBN 978-81-8749-665-6. Retrieved 30 October 2011. 

Possible Sources

This is a list of possible sources for getting a scan of the manifesto (so far only one source). If anyone can get their hands on one, they're requested to scan and upload the manifesto (I may/may not be able to get one)

• Bhagat Singh (1986). Shiv Verma, ed. Selected writings of Shaheed Bhagat Singh. National Book Centre. 

--Siddhartha Ghai (talk) 22:10, 7 February 2012 (UTC)