Vishnu Ganesh Pingle was born on 2 January 1888 at village Talegaon Dhandhore, distt. Pune, Maharashtra; Marathi Brahmin. He received early education from Maharashtra Vidyalaya, Poona. While studying at Maharashtra Vidyalaya he came under the spell of the national movement which left a lasting imprint on him. In 1910 he left for Bombay and was employed in the nationalist Govindrao Potdar’s Alkali Works at Mahim. While working there Vishnu Ganesh Pingle came in close contact with Hari Laxman Patil a lawyer from Vasai and other nationalists. Pingle was inspired by the Japanese handloom industry at the height of the Swadeshi movement, and therefore, he began his own small Swadeshi loom at Awasha near Latur. In 1911 he left Awasha for the United States of America (USA) and reached there via Hong Kong. He became an Engineering Graduate from Seattle University, USA. While in the USA, Pingle associated himself with the Ghadr Party and became an active member of it. Pingle came in contact with Satyendra Bhushan Sen (Jatin Mukherjee’s emissary), Kartar Singh Sarabha, and other Ghadr leaders. Along with the members of the Ghadr Party, Pingle came in close touch with other Indian revolutionaries. As a part of the Ghadr conspiracy, Satyendra Bhushan Sen, Kartar Singh Sarabha, Vishnu Ganesh Pingle himself, and a batch of Sikh revolutionaries sailed for India from America by the S.S. Salamin in the middle of October 1914. Satyen and Pingle halted in China for a few days to meet there the Ghadr leaders (mainly Tahal Singh) for future plans. In November 1914 Pingle with other Ghadrites reached Calcutta (now Kolkata) and met Jatin Mukherjee - Bagha Jatin and had long discussions with him. It was Jatin who sent Pingle to Rash Behari Bose in Benaras in the third week of December 1914 to discuss the scheme for a rising. Pingle reported to Rash Behari that some 4000 Sikhs of the Ghadr Party had already reached Calcutta for organizing a rebellion they had planned. Pingle and Sachin Sanyal (also of Benaras) left for Amritsar to discuss the details of a concerted plan of rebellion with Mula Singh, who had come from Shanghai. Being Rash Behari’s man of confidence, Pingle assured the Ghadrites in Punjab of the Bengali militants’ cooperation. Towards the end of December 1914, in a meeting at Kapurthala, Pingle announced that a Bengali babu, Surendra Bose-an an expert in bomb-making is ready to join and help them. Pingle, along with Rash Behari Bose, Sachin Sanyal, and Kartar Singh Sarabha, became one of the main co-ordinators of the Ghadr rising in Punjab, in 1915. He was involved in the intensive propaganda for the revolt, visited the Military Cantonments of Meerut and Ambala in March 1915, and exhorted the soldiers there to rise against the British for the cause of India’s independence. He apparently was betrayed and arrested on 23 March 1915, with high explosive bombs in his possession. Vishnu Ganesh Pingle and other Ghadr heroes were put under trial (Lahore Conspiracy Case) in 1915 and charged with conspiring to create disaffection within the army in the style of 1857 mutiny and to overthrow the British rule. Pingle was convicted of offences under sections 121 (abetment of waging war), 121 A, 122, 124 A, 395, 396, 397, 398, 131, and 132 of the Indian Penal Code and awarded the death sentence. Vishnu Ganesh Pingle and his colleague, Kartar Singh Sarabha, were hanged in the Lahore Central Jail on 16 November 1915 and became together with the icons of revolutionary freedom struggle in India.