Book Excerpts

In Memory of a Martyr | The Execution of Bhagat Singh

Bhagat Singh, one of the most influential revolutionaries of the Indian Independence movement, was only twenty-three when he was executed in 1931. Now, almost a century later, Dr Satvinder Singh Juss, a London-based law professor and practising barrister, looks at the flaws in the British legal process that was followed leading to the hanging. Read an excerpt:

Within a week Jawaharlal Nehru had angrily denounced the judgment. In a Speech in Allahabad on 12th October 1930 he was excoriating in his criticism, not just of the Special Tribunal alone, but also of  the Viceroy and Governor-General of India (who held office between 1926 to 1931). This was a  most turbulent and tempestuous period of time in India because between 1930 and 1932, three Round Table Conferences were organised by the British Government with the Indian National Congress. The purpose had been to discuss constitutional reform in India.  The three Conferences were to no avail. In fact, the stakes in India’s struggle for independence had been raised during this time because in 1928, India saw the visit of the Simon Commission to Lahore, the death of Lala Rajpat Rai at the hands of the police,  the avenging of his death with the murder of J.P. Saunders by Bhagat Singh, and the founding of the Hindustan Republication Association (‘HSRA’) by Chandrashekar Azad and Bhagat Singh. Then in 1929 there was the throwing of the smoke bombs in Delhi Legislative Assembly Hall by Bhagat Singh and B.K. Dutt.  Mahatma Gandhi’s Civil Disobedience Movement was by comparison at this time a tame affair. At its height, it had only achieved his defiant 1930 ‘salt march’ to the sea in protest at the British monopoly of salt. This paled into insignificance with the violent climax in 1931 of the secret execution, ahead of their allocated time in Lahore Jail, of these three young revolutionaries who had become household names. It was Bhagat Singh, Sukh Dev, and Rajguru who the authorities were fearful of and not Mahatma Gandhi. Even by calling forward the timing of their execution the backlash which was inevitable still came.  

This was the febrile atmosphere amid which Nehru openly defended the actions of the these three young men. Quite simply, he demanded to know, in words which are rarely recalled today whether, “If England were invaded by Germany or Russia, would Lord Irwin go about advising the people to refrain from violence against invader? If he is not prepared to do that, let him not raise the issue. It is for Mahatma Gandhi and others, who believe with him, to do so…. But let there be no mistake about it. Whether I agree with him or not, my heart is full of admiration for the courage and self-sacrifice of a man like Bhagat Singh. Courage of the Bhagat Singh type is exceedingly rare. If the Viceroy expects us to refrain from admiring this wonderful courage and high purpose behind it, he is mistaken. Let him ask his own heart what he would have felt if Bhagat Singh had been an Englishman and acted for England.” This exemplary Speech brings out two points. First, that the debonair Harrow-and-Cambridge-university-educated Nehru himself could not resist justifying the use of ‘violence against the invader’ in just the same way as the Indian revolutionaries fighting for Indian freedom were doing. Second, that Nehru was obliquely aware that Mahatma Gandhi himself, notwithstanding his Civil Disobedience Movement, was not necessarily of the same mind.  

India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, was a close confidant of Mahatma Gandhi, who it was said had failed to save Bhagat Singh from the gallows in 1931 when he alone had the influence to do so.  The full story of Bhagat Singh, who he was, what he did, and how he came to die at the tender age of just 23-years, remained still to be told, it was widely believed. Over the decades that followed, a belief persisted that forgotten moth-eaten documents lay undiscovered in Lahore which contained hidden secrets and lost answers to these questions.  Partition of the sub-Continent meant that Indians found it next to impossible to obtain a visa to go and trawl through these hidden archives. Within the Islamic Republic of Pakistan itself, it was anathema to ascribe the fruits of their independence to anyone other than Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah. 

Today if one makes a Google inquiry on the internet, of any of the big names leading up to the independence of India, one fails to come up with the name of Bhagat Singh. If one undertakes a search on social media of any of these names nothing connects them to the name of Bhagat Singh.  Whether it is in the lives of  India’s imperial masters, such as Governor-General Irwin, or in the lives of India’s founding father of independence,  Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, there is not a trace of Bhagat Singh. Nor is there any such trace in the histories of  any of the big lawyers such as  DN Pitt KC who defended him.  Nor indeed, in anything associated with distinguished judges of the realm such as Viscount Dunedin, who heard Bhagat Singh’s appeal in the Privy Council. Nothing connects anyone anywhere to Bhagat Singh.  It is as if his name has been erased from any connection with the build up to India’s independence. To survive, Bhagat Singh has had to find a home in the vivid memorialisation of great men in common Indian folklore.

 

To read more, order your copy of The Execution of Bhagat Singh today!

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