Gulab Kaur was born at Bakshiwala in Sangrur district and emigrated with her husband, intending to reach the United States. They were in Manila when the Ghadar Party's call to return went out in 1914.
She joined the Ghadar Party. Her husband did not, and went on. She stayed and worked as an organiser, distributing literature and, according to the accounts, using a press card as cover to move among the returning Punjabi workers on the ships.
She came back to Punjab, continued organising, was arrested and served two years at Lahore.
She died around 1931, in her early forties.
There is very little documentation of her and what exists comes largely from Ghadar movement accounts and from later Punjabi writing. She is the best known of a small number of women in the Ghadar movement and the others are barely names.
The Desh Bhagat Yaadgar Hall at Jalandhar holds what there is.
She left for Manila with her husband intending to go on to America, joined the Ghadar Party there, and stayed when he did not.
Her work was distribution and courier: carrying literature and arms past inspection, using a press card as cover on the docks.
She was arrested in Punjab and served two years at Lahore. She died in 1931. There is a memorial in her village and almost nothing written about her in any language, which is true of nearly all the women of the movement.