Awakening

Caxton Hall was packed like sardines, men, and women standing shoulder to shoulder. Not only the pale-skinned Britishers but Asians of different colors, different features, all assembled to hear Michael O’Dwyer speak at the joint meeting of the East India Association and the Central Asian Society. I was seated right near the podium, arriving early, following the saying “The Early Bird catches the worm”. The worm had to be crushed, was a promise I had made to myself after witnessing what was meant to be a celebration turning into a blood bath. The cold metal of the revolver pressed against my skin was reassuring. And it was loaded with ammunition. 

George, the soldier on crutches, a factory colleague, disgruntled and critical of the British high handedness, caught my attention, as the best person to approach for purchase of arms. I had watched him wheeling and dealing with others on the factory shop floor during lunch recess, overhearing bargains being struck on imported cigarettes, tinned food, chocolates, in scarce supply. He was a resourceful guy with a gang of undercover retired soldiers, partners in the supply chain. Friday nights we would meet in the local pub for a pint or two or more for the topers. However much, they persuaded me to join in the drinking spree, I stood my ground, stating religious reasons. They understood and accepted me as one of them, fondly nicknaming me the turbaned ‘Lemonade Mate’. One Friday night, I gingerly approached George. ‘Mate I need to buy a gun and ammunition. Now don’t put on that look of innocence. Your reputation precedes you. I have overheard exchange of conversations in the lavatories”

 

While no shock registered on his face, his raised eyebrows were enough to imply this would not be an easy bargain. It wasn’t! Several rounds of negotiations in private got me the revolver in exchange for gold coins. He walked in nonchalantly into the pub with a brown paper package and handed it over to me, with his lop-sided grin saying “Here ‘Lemonade Mate’, I got you some cheese sandwiches to go with your drink’ That was our password for the exchange. That night seemed the longest in my life, hashing out the details of the plan that was hatched when I was merely twenty years old. To get back at them for the atrocities committed on my land, and on my people.

Next morning, 13^th March 1940 seated amongst the crowd, I kept an eye on Michael O’Dwyer’s movements. As the meeting concluded and the monster was leaving the podium, I shot him twice at close range and fired at the rest of the consortium behind him. I saw Dwyer falling in slow motion, legs buckling, blood spewing from his chest, and then landing on the wooden platform face down. Before I could empty the six chambers and reload, the police were upon me, pinning me to the ground. I never resisted. My mission was accomplished and I feared nothing, not even death by hanging. They bundled me into the police van and took me to Brixton Prison. As the van moved, I could see the crowd spilling out through the doorway, trampling over each other, like a herd of cattle fleeing from a menacing storm.  

Shoved into the tiniest cell with high walls with a small window, I spent time reminiscing over the events that lead me to take this step, which would brand me as a murderer in history. To comfort myself and keep my mind from straying, I kept reciting the five daily prayers of Sikhism, the nitnem banis. These I had learnt during my stay at the Khalsa Orphanage Putlighar in Amritsar. It was here I was initiated into the Sikh rites and my name changed to Udham Singh from Sher Singh, given by Pitaji. May his soul rest in peace. May he forgive me for my sins, and may he be proud of his son Ram Mohammad Singh Azad, alias Sher Singh, alias Udham Singh. The name change during prison custody was to send a message across the rulers, anti-colonial sentiments that existed in the minds of all the three major religions of Punjab viz. Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs.

I tried to plough through the surface of memories I had of Pitaji as a four-year-old child. He would leave early in the morning walking through the fields to the village of Upalli, where he served as the railway crossing watchman. Returning fatigued at night, all I recall was him hanging up the kerosene lamp on the wall hook, washing his hands and feet and sitting for dinner, ‘Bebe’ served him on a rimmed bronze plate. Soft whispers reached my ears, a lulling sound that put me to sleep. One morning my brother and I woke up to my mother’s loud wailing, shattering the walls of our small house. Sleepy eyed, we watched her disheveled figure, beating her head on the wooden ‘charpai’ where Pitaji laid still, eyes wide open, unmoving. The neighbors were quick to arrive to console us. Pitaji the bread earner had left us empty stomached. Mukta Singh my elder brother and I were taken in by the Khalsa Orphanage. That is the only memory spool that doesn’t rewind.  

The Orphanage more than compensated for the loss we brothers suffered from being separated from our parents. Fed, clothed, educated, the teachers were always kind, taking care of our physical and mental health. Many like us, stayed here under their protection and left only when we attained a level of education to enable us to survive on our own in the outside world. After passing my matriculation exam in 1918, I left the Orphanage the following year 1919 to fend for myself. The year that I will never forget till my last breath. The seeds of revenge sowed, watered, fertilized, nurtured, and eventually cracking the surface with the shoot-out at Caxton Hall, an act of revenge, I’m not afraid to admit.

Revolutionary politics was the order of the day, and soon after coming out of the Orphanage, I joined the revolutionary group. On 10^th April 1919, following the arrests of Satya Pal and Saifuddin Kitchlew under the Rowlatt Act, there were protest marches in the streets. On Baishakhi day 13^th April, 1919 there was a celebratory spirit in the air, crowds assembling at the Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar, to sing and dance and exchange sweets as is customary. Over 20,000 people had gathered on the occasion. Some of my friends joined me in serving water to the people who had walked miles from outlying villages, dressed in their finery, carrying with them jaggery sweets, chole baturi, sugar cane cubes, packed in cloth bags, carried on their heads.  

The men were dressed in kurta, lunge, jacket, turra, tucked in their pockets a pair of matching handkerchiefs in readiness to break into the Bhangra dance. The women were in Salwar Kameez, the more affluent in colorful Phulkari work material. The Bagh looked like flowers had blossomed from nowhere. What followed next, makes my hair stand on edge, my blood boil, my anger near the explosion, as I hid on the branch of the tallest tree in the compound, mutely watching the gruesome death drama unfolding, on what was to end on a celebratory note.

The white ‘sahebs’ had got wind of the gathering and arrived with their troops before the dance could even commence, firing in the air, and then at the crowds. What I mistook in the first instance as the lighting of fireworks, were actually bullets being pumped into chests. Fountains of blood rose into the air, screams of pain, shock, alarm, rented the air. I watched helplessly my brothers and sisters being felled. And they were defenseless! The allegation that the crowds were armed with lathis was a fabrication to defend the merciless act committed at the Jallianwalla Bagh on 13^th April 1919 by the British troops under instructions of the Lieutenant Governor of Punjab, Michael O’Dwyer. “Shoot the bloody animals and don’t stop till I say”, he kept repeating with a monstrous look on his face, as though he was overseeing the slaughter of pigs in a slaughter house. That’s what the Bagh looked like that day…A SLAUGHTER HOUSE!!

Every day they pushed a tin plate with dry bread and a tin cup of water through the gap between the floor and iron door, into my cell. “You better eat up”, they hollered each time seeing the plate untouched. I would be hanged anyway, so what better than to die in the cell out of starvation. My physical strength was waning, but mental strength pulled me through. They pulled out my skeletal frame and had me intravenously fed. I tried pulling out the tubes, but my hands were tied to the metal frame of the bed. Thankfully they never shaved my hair or beard. That would be the final nail in the coffin and I would have screamed blue murder if they even made such an attempt. Thankfully, they understood this was my religion, my identity, my pride, they cannot take away, just as they cannot take away the collar from a Church priest.

On 1^st April 1940, I was formally charged with the murder of Michael O’Dwyer and sent to Brixton Prison. The hearings went on for a couple of days. They asked what had motivated me to commit such an act against a servant of Her Majesty, the Queen of England. In my poor English, all I kept repeating was “I did it because I had a grudge against him. He deserved it. He was the real culprit. He wanted to crush the spirit of my people, so I have crushed him. For a full 21 years, I have been trying to seek vengeance. I am happy that I have done my job. I am not scared of death. I am dying for my country. I have seen my people starving in India under British rule. I have protested against these atrocities. it was my duty. What greater honor could be bestowed on me than death for the sake of my motherland. I don’t belong to society or anything else. 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.” I sounded incoherent by language limitations. What I had meant was, I wish more would have died that day, but just one fell. For the loss of so many innocents, in my mind, one dying was no justice! 

On 31^st July 1940 they came to my cell in the early hours of the morning. They asked if I had anything to say before going to the gallows. Any last wish. Hands and legs chained they lead me through the narrow corridors of Pentonville Prison, pulled the black hood over my face, with the Priest uttering “Please God, forgive this man for his sins”.  In my muffled voice, I replied “My God knows I have done no wrong, nor do I beg mercy to be pardoned. Through my hanging, history will learn the true story of Jallianwala Bagh Massacre, and the unfairness of it all. I welcome death with open arms. Praise the True name, for it is through the True name that satisfaction is found. The mind/soul cleansed with the jewel of spiritual wisdom does not become dirty again. As long as the Lord Master abides in the mind, no obstacles whatsoever are encountered. O Nanak, surrendering one’s head, one is emancipated, and the mind and body become truly sanctified”, the last prayer I said, before the noose was pulled over my head.

One of history’s heroes whose, trials and tribulations, and determination to avenge the British rulers, continues to inspire us for generations! And the perpetrators have never admitted or apologized for this massacre of innocent humans.