Freedom Fighters of Indian Independence - 3

SHAHEED BHAGAT SINGH (28^TH September 1907- 23^RD March 1931)

Very mention of this name – Shaheed Bhagat Singh, rushes flow of patriotic blood in our veins even today.  Bhagat Singh was born on September 28, 1907, at Banga in Lyallpur district (now Pakistan) to Kishan Singh and Vidyavati.

His family was politically active. His grandfather followed Swami Dayanand Saraswati’s Hindu reformist movement - Arya Samaj and had put Bhagat Singh in Dayanand Anglo-Vedic High School, which had considerable influence on young Bhagat Singh.

His father and uncles were also involved in the freedom struggle.  In fact, at the time of his birth, his father Krishan Singh, his uncles  Ajit Singh and Swarn Singh were in jail, for demonstrating against implementing the colonization bill in 1906.

His uncle, Sardar Ajit Singh, established the Indian Patriots' Association, well-supported by his friend Syed Haidar Raza in organizing the peasants against the Chenab Canal Colony Bill*. Ajit Singh had number of cases against him which forced to flee to Iran.

*Canal Colonization in Punjab in itself is a vary vast subject.

For the benefit of readers and in a nut shell - after the East India Company defeated the Sikh Empire in 1849 and annexed the Punjab, with a view to finance the new administration of the province, the local government needed to increase revenues. Hence the idea to Colonize Canal areas.

Coming back to the Hero of the day, Shaheed Bhagat Singh, in 1919, when he was barely 12 years old, he visited the site of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre hours after thousands of unarmed people gathered at a public meeting had been killed. This incidence had severely affected the young Bhagat Singh. When he was 14 years old, he was among those in his village who welcomed the protesters of   the killing of a large number of unarmed people at Gurudwara Nankana Sahib on 20 February 1921.

These incidences and the calling off of non-co-operation movement after the Chouri Chaura incidence in 1922 made the young Bhagat Singh disillusioned with Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of non-violence.   

Singh joined the Young Revolutionary Movement and began to advocate for the violent overthrow of the British Government in India.

In 1923, Bhagat Singh joined the National College in Lahore. He is believed to be good at studies and a avid reader of books. In the college he also participated in extra-curricular activities like in the dramatics society and essay competition set by the Punjab Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, winning the competition on writing on the problems in the Punjab. 

He was inspired by the movement of Giuseppe Mazzini, the Italian activist of Italian Unification.  He founded the Indian socialist youth organization Naujawan Bharat Sabha in March 1926. He also joined the Hindustan Republican Association, which had prominent leaders, such as Chandrashekhar Azad, Ram Prasad Bismil and Shahid Ashfaqallah Khan.

A year later, to avoid an arranged marriage, Bhagat Singh ran away to Kanpur leaving behind a letter stating that he wished his life to be dedicated to the noblest cause, that of the freedom of the country and there was no rest or worldly desire that would lure him.

In the meantime, Police became concerned with Bhagat Singh's growing influence on youths and arrested him in May 1927 on the pretext that he had been involved in a bombing that had taken place in Lahore in October 1926. He was however released on a surety of Rs. 60,000 after five weeks his arrest.

He wrote for, and edited, Urdu and Punjabi newspapers, published in Amritsar and also contributed to low-priced pamphlets published by the Naujawan Bharat Sabha that severely criticized the British. He also wrote for Kirti, the journal of the Kirti Kisan Party ("Workers and Peasants Party") and briefly for the Veer Arjun newspaper, published in Delh and often used pseudonyms, names such as Balwant, Ranjit and Vidhrohi.

In 1928, the British government set up the Simon Commission to report on the political situation in India. Some Indian political parties boycotted the Commission because there were no Indians in its membership, and there were protests across the country. When the Commission visited Lahore on 30 October 1928, Lala Lajpat Rai led a march in protest against it. Police attempts to disperse the large crowd resulted in violence.

The superintendent of police, James A. Scott, ordered the police to lathi charge the protesters and personally assaulted Lala Lajpat Rai, who was injured very badly. Rai died of a heart attack on 17 November 1928. Doctors felt that his death might have been hastened by the injuries that he had received. When the matter was raised in the Parliament of the United Kingdom, but the British Government denied any role in Rai's death.

Bhagat Singh was a prominent member of the, Hindustan Socialist Republican Association, HSRA.  The HSRA vowed to avenge Rai's death and Bhagat Singh conspired with revolutionaries like Shivaram Rajguru, Sukhdev Thapar, and Chandrashekhar Azad to kill Scott.  However, in a case of mistaken identity, they shot John P. Saunders, an Assistant Superintendent of Police, as he was leaving the District Police Headquarters in Lahore on 17 December 1928.

Contemporary reaction to the killing differs substantially from the adulation that surfaced later on the shooting.

The Naujawan Bharat Sabha, which had organised the Lahore protest march along with the HSRA, found that attendance at its subsequent public meetings dropped sharply. Politicians, activists, and newspapers, including The People, which Lala Lajpat Rai had founded in 1925, stressed that non-co-operation was preferable to violence. The murder was condemned as a retrograde action by Mahatma Gandhi.   

However, Jawaharlal Nehra wrote later that Bhagat Singh did not become popular because of his act of terrorism but because he seemed to vindicate, for the moment, the honour of Lala Lajpat Rai, and through him of the nation. He became a symbol, the act was forgotten, the symbol remained, and within a few months each town and village of the Punjab, and to a lesser extent in the rest of northern India, resounded with his name. Innumerable songs grew about him and the popularity that the man achieved was something amazing.

After killing Saunders, the group escaped to pre-arranged safe house. The police launched a massive search operation to catch them, blocking all entrances and exits to and from the city; the CID kept a watch on all young men leaving Lahore.

On 19 December 1928, with the help of Durgawati Devi, wife of another HSRA member, Bhagwati Charan Vohra, Bhagat Singh and Rajguru set out by train from Lahore to Howrah via Bhatinda.

Bhagat Singh and Rajguru, both were carrying loaded revolvers, dressed in western attire (Bhagat Singh cut his hair, shaved his beard and wore a hat over cropped hair), and carrying Devi's sleeping child, Bhagat Singh and Devi passed as a young couple, while Rajguru carried their luggage as their servant.

At the station, Bhagat Singh managed to conceal his identity while buying tickets, and the three boarded the train heading to Kanpur. There they boarded a train for Lucknow since the CID at Howrah railway station usually scrutinised passengers on the direct train from Lahore. At Lucknow, Rajguru left separately for Benares while Bhagat Singh, Durgawati Devi and the infant went to Howrah, with all except Singh returning to Lahore a few days later.

For some time, Singh had been exploiting the power of drama as a means to inspire the revolt against the British, purchasing a magic lantern to show slides that enlivened his talks about revolutionaries such as Ram Prasad Bismil who had died as a result of the Kakori conspiracy.

In 1929, he proposed a dramatic act to the HSRA intending to gain massive publicity for their aims. Influenced by Auguste Vaillant, a French anarchist who had bombed the Chamber of Deputies in Paris, Bhagat Singh’s planed to explode a bomb inside the Central Legislative Assembly. The intention was to protest against the Public Safety Bill, and the Trade Dispute Act, which had been rejected by the Assembly but were being enacted by the Viceroy using his special powers; the actual intention was for the perpetrators to allow themselves to be arrested so that they could use court appearances as a stage to publicise their cause.

The HSRA leadership was initially opposed to Bhagat's participation in the bombing because they were certain that his prior involvement in the Saunders shooting meant that his arrest would ultimately result in his execution. However, they eventually decided that he was their most suitable candidate. On 8 April 1929, Singh, accompanied by Batukeshwar Dutt, threw two bombs into the Assembly chamber from its public gallery while it was in session. The bombs had been designed not to kill, but some members were injured. The smoke from the bombs filled the Assembly so that Singh and Dutt could  have escaped in the confusion had they wished. Instead, they stayed shouting the slogan "Inquilab Zindabad!" ("Long Live the Revolution") and threw leaflets. The two men were arrested and subsequently moved through a series of jails in Delhi.

According to Neeti Nair, associate professor of history, "public criticism of this terrorist action was unequivocal." Gandhi, once again, issued strong words of disapproval of their deed. Nonetheless, Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt were elated and responded to the criticism by writing as follows

“ We hold human life sacred beyond words. We are neither perpetrators of dastardly outrages nor are we 'lunatics' as the Tribune of Lahore and some others would have it believed ... Force when aggressively applied is 'violence' and is, therefore, morally unjustifiable, but when it is used in the furtherance of a legitimate cause, it has its moral justification.”

The trial began in the first week of June, following a preliminary hearing in May. On 12 June, both men were sentenced to life imprisonment for: "causing explosions of a nature likely to endanger life, unlawfully and maliciously." Batukeshwar Dutt had been defended by Asaf Ali, while Bhagat Singh defended himself.  Doubts have been raised about the accuracy of testimony offered at the trial. According to an article in the India Law Journal, the prosecution witnesses were coached, their accounts were incorrect, and Bhgat Singh was given a life sentence.

On 15 April 1929, the Lahore bomb factory set up HSRA was discovered by the police, leading to the arrest of other members, including Sukhdev, Kishori Lal, and Jai Gopal (who would become a witness subsequently).

Not long after this, the Saharanpur factory was also raided and some of the conspirators became informants. With the new information available, the police were able to connect the three strands of the Saunders murder, Assembly bombing, and bomb manufacture. Baght Singh, Sukhdev, Rajguru, and 21 others were charged with the Saunders murder.

He was sent to Central Jail Mianwali from the Delhi jail. There he witnessed discrimination between European and Indian prisoners. He considered himself, along with others, to be a political prisoner. He led other Indian political prisoners who were being treated as common criminals, in a hunger strike, demanding equality in food standards, clothing, toiletries, and other hygienic necessities, as well as access to books and a daily newspaper. The hunger strike inspired a rise in public support for Bhagat Singh and his colleagues from around June 1929. The Tribune newspaper was particularly prominent in this movement and reported on mass meetings in places such as Lahore and Amritsar.  

Jawaharlal Nehru met Singh and the other strikers in Mianwali jail.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah spoke in support of the strikers in the Assembly,

The government tried to break the strike by placing different food items in the prison cells to test the prisoners' resolve. Water pitchers were filled with milk so that either the prisoners remained thirsty or broke their strike. When nobody faltered and the impasse continued, the authorities then attempted force-feeding the prisoners but this was resisted too.

Since the activities of the hunger strikers had gained popularity and attention amongst the people nationwide, the government decided to advance the Saunders murder trial. Bhagat Singh was transported to Borstal Jail, Lahore, and the trial began there on 10 July 1929.

In addition to charging them with the murder of Saunders, Singh and the 27 other prisoners were charged with plotting a conspiracy to murder Scott, and waging a war against the King.

Bhagat Singh, still on hunger strike, had to be carried to the court handcuffed on a stretcher; he had lost 14 pounds from his original weight since beginning the strike.

The government was beginning to make concessions but refused to move on the core issue of recognising the classification of "political prisoner".  By now, the condition of another hunger striker, Jatindra Nath Das, lodged in the same jail, had deteriorated considerably. The Jail committee recommended his unconditional release, but the government rejected the suggestion and offered to release him on bail. On 13 September 1929, Das died after a 63-day hunger strike. Almost all the nationalist leaders in the country paid tribute to Das' death.

Mohammad Alam and Gopi Chand Bhargava resigned from the Punjab Legislative Council in protest, and Nehru moved a successful adjournment motion in the Central Assembly as a censure against the "inhumane treatment" of the Lahore prisoners.

Bhagat Singh finally heeded to a resolution of the Congress party, and as request by his father, ended his hunger strike on 5 October 1929 after 116 days. During this period, Bhagt Singh's popularity among common Indians extended beyond Punjab.

The strike now being called off, attention now was turned to Bhagat Singh’s trial, where he was to face a Crown prosecution team and the prosecuting inspector, Bakshi Dina Nath.  

To speed up the trial, the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, declared an emergency on 1 May 1930 and introduced an ordinance to set up a special tribunal composed of three high court judges for the case. This decision cut short the normal process of justice as the only appeal after the tribunal was to the Privy Council located in England.

On 2 July 1930, a habeas corpus petition was filed in the High Court challenging the ordinance on the grounds that it was ultra vires and, therefore, illegal;

The prosecution depended mainly on the evidence of P. N. Ghosh, Hans Raj Vohra, and Jai Gopal who had been Singh's associates in the HSRA. The trial ended on 30 September 1930. The three accused, whose charges were withdrawn, included Batukeshwar Dutt who had already been given a life sentence in the Assembly bomb case.

Since The ordinance (and the tribunal) was to lapse on 31 October 1930 as it had not been passed by the Central Assembly or the British Parliament, On 7 October 1930, the tribunal delivered its 300-page judgement based on all the so called evidence and concluded that the participation of Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, and Rajguru in Saunder's murder was proven. They were sentenced to death by hanging.

Of the other accused, three were acquitted (Ajoy Ghosh, Jatindra Nath Sanyal and Des Raj), Kundan Lal received seven years' rigorous imprisonment, Prem Dutt received five years of the same, and the remaining seven (Kishori Lal, Mahabir Singh, Bijoy Kumar Sinha, Shiv Verma, Gaya Prasad, Jai Dev and Kamalnath Tewari) were all sentenced to transportation for life.

After the rejection of the appeal to the Privy Council, Congress party president Madan Mohan Malviya filed a mercy appeal before Irwin on 14 February 1931. Some prisoners sent Mahatma Gandhi an appeal to intervene.

A plan to rescue Singh and fellow HSRA inmates from the jail failed. HSRA member Durga Devi's husband, Bhagwati Charan Vohra, attempted to manufacture bombs for the purpose, but died when they exploded accidentally.

Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were sentenced to death in the Lahore conspiracy case and ordered to be hanged on 24 March 1931. The schedule was advanced by 11 hours and the three were hanged on 23 March 1931 at 7:30 pm in the Lahore jail. It is reported that no magistrate at the time was willing to supervise Singh's hanging as was required by law. The execution was supervised instead by an honorary judge, who also signed the three death warrants, as their original warrants had expired. The jail authorities then broke a hole in the rear wall of the jail, removed the bodies, and secretly cremated the three men under cover of darkness outside Ganda Singh Wala village, and then threw the ashes into the Sutlej river, about 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) from Ferozepore.

Bhagat Singh's trial has been described by the Supreme Court as "contrary to the fundamental doctrine of criminal jurisprudence" because there was no opportunity for the accused to defend themselves. The Special Tribunal was a departure from the normal procedure adopted for a trial and its decision could only be appealed to the Privy Council located in Britain. The accused were absent from the court and the judgement was passed ex-parte. The ordinance, which was introduced by the Viceroy to form the Special Tribunal, was never approved by the Central Assembly or the British Parliament, and it eventually lapsed without any legal or constitutional sanctity.

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