Dr. Tariq Rahman

Bhagat Singh’s name became a legend in India during the 1930s. In the eyes of the law he was criminal, a murderer, and a terrorist after having murdered Saunders, an English police officer. In the eyes of the freedom fighters of India, even those who themselves employed only constitutional means for doing so, he was great patriot, a heroic rebel who gave the supreme sacrifice of his young life to vindicate the honour of his motherland and to set his countrymen free. His trial was called a ‘political trial’ and the major theme of the book under review is that justice was prostituted for political ends by the state----something which is of even more significance in both India and Pakistan now than it was when we were under foreign rule.

Bhagat Singh is a legend but, like all legends, even the basic facts about him are hidden in the anecdotes and supernatural stories which surround those whom the public romanticizes. A.G. Noorani, therefore, devotes the initial two chapters to basic facts about Bhagat Singh, his family, and the turbulent politics of the time. Bhagat Singh belonged to a village near Lyallpur. His father, Kishan Singh, and uncle, Ajit Singh, were both anti-British political activists. He was born on 1907, at the beginning of an era of increasingly anti-British political feeling. In 1919, when he was only a boy, the Jallianwala Bagh tragedy occurred. Bhagat Singh traveled all the way to Amritsar and returned with a bit of earth soaked with the blood of the victims. As such, not surprisingly, Bhagat Singh did not marry when asked to do so by his family. He started believing in violent means to evict the British from Indian soil but he kept high standards of personal behaviour and never gave up reading or respect for life.

As it happened, Lala Lajput Rai, a highly respected anti-British political leader of the Punjab was assaulted by J. A. Scott, The Superintendent of Police, on 30 October, 1928. Bhagat Singh and his associates, who had formed a Marxist influenced anti-British group, decided to murder him to vindicate the honour of India. As it happened, poor Saunders, who was only a newly arrived young officer from England, was mistaken for Scott when he moved out on his motorcycle and Bhagat Singh, along with Shivram Rajguru, shot him dead on 17 December 1928. Both escaped but Bhagat Singh and Batiskeshwar Dutt appeared again on 08 April 1929 to throw two bombs in the Central Assembly chamber which killed nobody through a few people received minor injuries. This time they did not run away but got arrested. It was only slowly that the police realised that they had caught Bhagat Singh-----the most wanted terrorist in India. Then began the court drama which is described here.

A.G. Noorani makes several points. The first is that the British government amended the law so that the accused could not appeal to a higher tribunal. The second is that the magistrate who heard the trial was so helpless against the overbearing police that he could not even order that the accused not be handcuffed or given humane treatment in jail. The third is about the inhumanity of the treatment which was such that Bhagat Singh and his associates started fasting in protest against it. As they were political prisoners they felt they should be treated like other political prisoner but, despite evasive reassurances, they were not. The fourth is that the accused were tried and sentenced in absentia because they refused to attend court after some time. The fifth is that most witnesses could not, in fact, recognize Bhagat Singh and that they were instructed by the police and so on.

Noorani delves deep into law books to prove that the government went to great lengths to insure that the young men be hanged. Justice Agha Haider, who was impartial, was removed. Later, when the judgment was sent to the Privy Council, it was again brushed aside. The point of dispute this time was whether the Governor General’s decision is final about the declaration of an ‘emergency’ or should the courts decide whether the ‘emergency’ really existed. The full argument is reproduced in Chapter 11 and in Chapter 12 Noorani tells us that on March 24, 1931 James R. Atkin, in far away Nigeria, decreed that the Governor General’s word was subject to judicial review. But in India the Governor General’s word was law and Bhagat Singh’s death was certain.

A highly interesting aspect of the issue is the reaction of the most eminent people of the day. Nebru and Jinnah both wanted to save Bhagat Singh and were strongly in support of his case. Gandhi, believing in non-violence, did not support him in principle. Jinnah did the most to support him in fact also. On 12 and 14 September 1929 Jinnah gave speeches in the Central Legislative Assembly to save his life. These are impassioned speeches which Noorani has mentioned in the text and reproduced in full in Appendix 3. He accused the government of being bent upon sending Bhagat Singh to the gallows and, in the meantime, not even treating him as a decent man. He said that a hunger-striker had a soul and that Bhagat singh and his associates were men of honour and principle even if one disagreed with those pricincples.

Gandhi, it emerges from correspondence which has been revealed only now, did not try to save Bhagat Singh when he met the Viceroy, Lord Irwin. He did write a letter to Irwin in the end, at the very last moment, but even this was not forceful enough and, in any case, it was too late by then. This in itself would have been consistent with Gandhi’s aversion to violence but the fact that Gandhi pretended to have tried to save Bhagat Singh harder than he actually did is somewhat denigrating to the image of Gandhi the saint. But these are minor failings in a man like Gandhi who did so much to save human life.

The question which is relevant for us now is as to why Pakistanis, with the exception of I.A Rehman, fail to mention Jinnah’s efforts to save Bhagat Singh. The reason is obvious--- because he was not a Muslim. The two-nation theory, which did allow Jinnah himself to rise above prejudices, now seems to make it impossible for Pakistanis to place historical events in their proper context. Bhagat Singh was a murderer but he was an idealistic young man and the state had no right to rig his trial. This is the main point of the book and one which is especially relevant for India, as Noorani says, as well as Pakistan. The standards of the British, even as colonial rulers, were higher than the modern states in India and Pakistan which refuse to acknowledge the idea of political dissent and idealistically motivated violence. For us who see the courts under all kinds of pressure, it comes as surprise that the British had scruples and went to great lengths to ensure that the semblance of the trial was not given up even they wanted to assassinate Bhagat Singh. If there are any lessons to be learnt from the book they are that when there are acts of a violent nature, especially if they are political, one must go deep into their reasons to understand their genesis. And, secondly, the law must be under no pressure, especially under executive pressure, because the essence of the law is to judge on the basis of available evidence even if a criminal is let off in the process. This is far better than the indictment of an innocent person.