Incidentally, Sir Luis Dane was hit by one shot, which broke his radius bone and dropped him to the ground with serious injuries. A bullet also hit Lord Lamington, whose right hand was shattered. He was arrested on the spot. His weapon, a knife, his diary, along with a bullet fired on the day are now kept in the Black Museum of Scotland Yard.
Back in India, there was a strong reaction to this assassination. Similar comment may be made on British rule in India. Will the historians of the future have to record that it was not the Nazis but the British ruling class which destroyed the British Empire?
In , Britain was in the midst of fighting for its survival in Europe and depended heavily on supplies from India to support the war effort. Nervous about any threat to their wartime supply lifelines from the heartlands of India, the British Government in India would receive fortnightly reports on the political situation sent from local administrators all over India. Similar sentiments were expressed at numerous other places country-wide.
I regard it as an act of insanity…I hope this will not be allowed to affect political judgement. We have our grievances against Lord Zetland. We must fight his reactionary policies, but there should be no malice or vindictiveness in our resistance. We have not been unaware of the trend of the feeling of non-violence, particularly among the younger section of Indians.
Bose advocated the approach that the political instability of war-time Britain should be taken advantage of—rather than simply wait for the British to grant independence after the end of the war which was the view of Gandhi, Nehru and a section of the Congress leadership at the time.
Having failed to persuade Gandhi of the necessity of this, Bose organised mass protests in Calcutta. He ought to be. I thought I could get more. I must have been too slow. While awaiting trial in Brixton Prison Udham Singh went on a 42 day hungerstrike and had to be forcibly fed daily. Singh explained his actions to the court at his trial: I did it because I had a grudge against him.
He deserved it. As with other executed prisoners, he was buried later that afternoon within the prison grounds. Sadhu Singh Thind himself went to England as a special envoy of the Indian Government and brought back the remains of the Shaheed. Among those who received his casket at Delhi airport were Shankar Dayal Sharma, then president of the Congress Party, and Zail Singh, then chief minister of Punjab, both of whom later went on to become Presidents of India.
Indira Gandhi, the prime minister, also laid a wreath. He was later cremated in his birthplace of Sunam in Punjab and his ashes were immersed in the Ganges river. However, he was soon arrested over the 25 associates. At the time of his arrest, evolvers, ammunition and copies of a prohibited Ghadar Party paper called "Ghadr-i-Gunj" were confiscated, which led him to five years in prison.
In , Udham Singh was released from the prison, but his movements were monitored by the Punjab Police. However, he was able to dodge the Punjab Police and reached Germany via Kashmir.
In the year , he reached London and was employed as an engineer. He made plans to kill O'Dwyer, who was responsible for killing hundreds of peaceful protestors at the Jalianwala Bagh. Udham Singh concealed a revolver in his Jacket's pocket and entered the meeting area. After the meeting concluded, Udham Singh started moving towards the stage and shot O'Dwyer twice, killing him instantly. Udham Singh was immediately arrested by the officials for killing O'Dwyer. He deserved it. I don't belong to society or anything else.
I don't care. I don't mind dying. What is the use of waiting until you get old? Is Zetland dead? He ought to be. I put two into him? I bought the revolver from a soldier in a public house. My parents died when I was three or four. Only one dead?
I thought I could get more. With fortune favouring the brave, however, he astutely navigated interceptions at crucial junctures, episodically adopting new personae. Yet he was not impregnable.
Whilst notorious for his act of militancy, it is pertinent that Singh also participated in Indian community organising, including for a nascent trade union known as the Indian Workers Association. Both men were Akalis who had migrated to Britain after their own anti-colonial agitations across s Punjab.
Indeed, following his arrest in , Udham Singh entered into secretive correspondence with Johal, which testifies to their nexus of trust. These connections curiously reveal how, even in the diaspora, religious institutions functioned as covert hubs of Indian resistance and Sikh baradari.
Although physically diminished by 42 days of hunger-strike and forced feeding, Singh was defiant. The press was tightly muzzled. We may infer that Singh saw himself as belonging to this revolutionary fold. Of all these individuals, however, it was Bhagat Singh whom Udham Singh most idealised — unsurprisingly so, given their extended friendship and imprisonment together during the s. Indeed, much like his idol, Udham Singh was radically committed to the solidarity of the international working class.
I am against the Imperialist Government. Nevertheless, his statement reveals his fondness for symbolism. Thereafter, on March 16, , Singh wrote to the investigating superintendent to request Indian clothing including a turban. This was despite Singh himself being a clean-shaven Sikh. Having deciphered his identity, the British did not oblige. In a historically contested re-telling, the American scholar Farina Mir has further claimed that at trial, Singh swore his court oath upon the Heer-Ranjha — an 18th century Punjabi epic by Waris Shah — rather than the Holy Guru Granth Sahib.
The significance of this claim being that Singh affirmed his moral integrity upon an emblem of Punjabi identity, rather than the sanctity of his personal faith. Whatever the truth may be, we know that following the pronouncement of his death sentence, Singh requested the Chaplain of Pentonville Prison to source him a Gutka Sikh Prayer Book.
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