Anupama Nair
“Why wait to be old enough to die? I am giving my life for the country…” wrote the brave son of Bharat Mata, in a letter to his countrymen before being hanged. Who is this brave son I am talking about? He is Udham Singh, who shot dead the cruel Lieutenant Governor of Punjab who was responsible for Jallianwala Bagh massacre, “when the British were gunning down thousands of innocent Indians protesting against the Rowlatt Act” he promised he would avenge the Massacre.
Let me tell you more about him. Udham Singh was born in a Kamboj Sikh family as Sher Singh on 26 December 1899 in Sangrur district of Punjab, India. His mother died in infancy, and his father, Tehal Singh, died some years later. His father was a farmer and also worked as the watchman of the railway crossing in the village of Upalli. When he and his brother became orphans, they were taken in by the Central Khalsa Orphanage Putlighar in Amritsar. He was given the name Udham Singh in the orphanage. He passed his matriculation examination in 1918 and left the orphanage in 1919, the year of the massacre. Singh was an eyewitness of the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre. Punjab was witness to intense political turmoil and Singh grew up observing the changes taking place around him.
Udham Singh blamed O’Dwyer as he believed it was O’Dwyer who transferred Brigadier Reginald Dyer to Amritsar before the massacre, “as he was worried that there might be a second Indian mutiny, given the Hindu-Muslim unity and the demonstrations and strikes. Instead of Dyer, who instructed his men to open fire at the crowd gathered in Jallianwala Bagh, O’Dwyer is considered to be the actual perpetrator, since Dyer could not have executed it without his permission”.
According to sources, Udham Singh, who would have been about 19 years old at the time, was injured during the massacre and was surrounded by the dead until he was able to move till next morning. “Then he picked up some blood-soaked earth and smeared it across his forehead and vowed to take revenge”.
He was deeply “scarred by the event and soon got involved in the armed resistance that was unfolding in and outside India”. In the early 1920s, he traveled to East Africa, where he worked as a laborer before migrating to the USA. He first came in contact with the members of the Ghadar Party (a revolutionary movement organized by the immigrant Punjabi-Sikhs to secure India’s independence from British rule) in San Francisco. For the next few years, he traveled across the US to secure support for the movement, using several aliases such as Sher Singh and Frank Brazil.
He made his way back to Punjab on the orders of Bhagat Singh (whom he admired) by working as a carpenter on a ship traveling to India. The same year, he was arrested for the possession of illegal arms and for running the Ghadar Party’s radical publication, ‘Ghadar di Gunj’. He was jailed for four years till 1931. General Dyer died after suffering a series of strokes and it was the same year Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were hanged for their involvement in the Lahore conspiracy case.
He was released in 1931 but was under constant surveillance of the British police due to his close links with Bhagat Singh’s Hindustan Socialist Republican Association. He managed to escape to Kashmir, and then to Germany. He finally reached England in 1933 with the aim of assassinating Michael O’Dwyer, “who had even called the massacre a correct action”.
However, Singh never forgot the real reason he had gone to England. He knew the time had come to achieve his goal when he learned that Michael O’Dwyer was scheduled to speak at a meeting in London’s Caxton Hall on March 13, 1940. Udham Singh had also acted in two British films, Elephant Boy and The Four Feathers, but no one was lucky enough to recognize him.
(to be continued…)
Very few people know about this great personality. Good these articles bring awareness about them.
Thank you for highlighting such personality
Great article.
Great article.
Great article.
Great article.