Was Udham Singh at Jallianwala Bagh on day of massacre? Book reignites debate

CHANDIGARH: The curious case of a school textbook in Punjab suggesting that one of India's celebrated freedom fighters, 'Shaheed' Sardar Udham Singh, wasn't anywhere near Amritsar on April 13, 1919 - the day of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre - has ignited sentiments in his native state that go beyond challenging this alleged historical untruth.
Generations have grown up hearing and reading about how Udham Singh, who would go on to "avenge" the massacre of innocents two decades later, tended to those wounded at Jallianwala Bagh hours after the carnage and also helped a woman find her husband in a heap of bodies.
Some accounts mention that he stood over the victims' bodies at Jallianwala Bagh that day and vowed to make it his life's mission to get them justice. He would wait until March 13, 1940, for that moment to arrive.
Udham Singh's act of shooting dead Michael O'Dwyer, who was the British lieutenant governor of Punjab at the time of the massacre, in London's packed Caxton Hall and his arrest, conviction and execution thereafter remain one of the more compelling stories of the movement for Independence.
Earlier this year, a six-member team from Ferozpur's Shaheed Udham Singh Memorial Society landed in Chandigarh to meet officials of Punjab School Education Board (PSEB) and contest the veracity of the information mentioned in one of its published textbooks.
The original version of Punjabi Paath Pustak, a Class IV textbook, states that Udham Singh was abroad when bullets from British soldiers' guns rained on a Baishakhi Day crowd at Jallianwala Bagh protesting the Rowlatt Act and the arrest of freedom fighters Saifuddin Kitchlew and Satyapal.
"A textbook published by PSEB says Udham Singh was abroad when the Jallianwala Bagh carnage happened. That's a blatant historical distortion. We have submitted documentary evidence supporting the fact that Udham Singh was present at Jallianwala Bagh that day. Fortunately, PSEB responded positively to our request and decided to amend the chapter," Jaspal Handa, a member of Shaheed Udham Singh Memorial Society, told TOI.
This isn't the first time that Udham Singh's presence or otherwise at Jallianwala Bagh on April 13, 1919, has been debated. Various books and accounts disagree on this aspect of the massacre episode.

In a foreword to B S Maighowalia's 1969 book Sardar Udham Singh: A Prince Amongst Patriots in India, former defence minister V K Krishna Menon writes, "Sardar Udham Singh, who joined the national movement early in his life, soon parted company with Gandhiji. The key factor in this conversion was the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, which impelled him to rebel against the authority, almost individualistically, but with determination coupled with bitterness."
Menon, who was part of the team that defended Udham Singh during his trial in London, then cites an instance suggesting that the latter's presence at Jallianwala Bagh on the day of the massacre would define his life thereafter.
"Sardar Udham Singh was driven to avenge the death of martyrs. The grimmest element in this determination of vengeance seems to have been the acceptance of the request of an Indian woman who had decided to immolate herself at Jallianwala Bagh. But Udham Singh undertook to retrieve the body of the dead husband."
In 1974, Udham Singh's remains, which had been lying in England since his execution in 1940, were brought to India. The same year, Central Khalsa Orphanage, where Udham Singh had spent a part of his childhood, published a Punjabi book on him authored by Suba Singh.
Quoting various sources, Suba Singh writes, "Ratan Devi from Peshawar had also come to Amritsar. But her husband fell victim to the bullets. In the evening, she was wailing and asking for help. Udham Singh heard her voice and went to the place of the massacre along with her. With much difficulty, he located the body of her husband and even retrieved it."
The book also mentions that on April 14, authorities of the orphanage had deputed some youth at the site of the massacre for relief and rescue operations and that Udham Singh was part of it.
In one of his books, Dr Sikander Singh, who did his PhD on Udham Singh, writes, "Udham Singh was also there. He was doing the work of a water carrier."
Martyrs of the Twentieth Century by Giani Gurmukh Singh Musafir states, "On the day of the massacre, Udham Singh was present in the orphanage. A group of boys from the orphanage was deputed to care for injured people. He was deeply shocked while tending to the victims and pledged to take revenge."
The first challenge to these accounts of Udham Singh being present at Jallianwala Bagh came from a set of British files declassified in 1997.
The documents, included in historian Dr Navtej Singh and Avtar Singh Jouhl's 2002 book Emergence of the Image: Redact Documents of Udham Singh, provide detailed information about Udham Singh from his days in Amritsar to his execution in Pentonville prison in England.
Accounts of his presence at Jallianwala Bagh on April 13, 1919, were apparently first questioned in the communication dispatched by the then home department to the British secretary of state for India, on June 20, 1940.
"Enquiries made in his (Udham Singh's) home village at Sunam in Patiala state and in Amritsar do not confirm his statement that any of their relatives was shot in Amritsar in 1919, or that he was present at Amritsar," states the communication.
The London-based British authorities purportedly tried to ascertain whether any relative of Udham Singh was at Jallianwala Bagh during the protest that culminated in a tragedy.
In response, the home department wrote on April 8, 1940, "We have no knowledge of any brother or other relative being in Amritsar...His 1927 Amritsar statement to the police, although detailed and accurate in all other aspects, made no mention of either claimant."
The documents also claim that Udham Singh was then working in Africa and returned to India at least two months after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. After his arrest in London for O'Dwyer's assassination, Udham Singh's initial statement gives the impression that he was not present in Amritsar on April 13, 1919, the papers suggest.
Cannon Row police station's A Division noted on March 13, 1940, "He first left that country (India) during 1918, from Mombasa, East Africa, and worked there as a motor mechanic for a German firm in Nairobi. He could not recollect how long this situation lasted but thinks it was for eighteen months. He says he was sacked for not going to work. He returned to India about June 1919."
Bharat Bhushan, coordinator of the UK-based Shaheed Udham Singh Welfare Trust, told TOI that since all official British files linked to Udham Singh were classified till 1989, writers of books published in the previous decades didn't have access to the important cache of primary sources. "The contrary fact (about Udham Singh being abroad on the day of the massacre) emerged once the British authorities declassified the documents," he said.
But so intertwined were the tales of the Jallianwala massacre and Udham Singh that the British ostensibly tried hard to delink his act (of assassinating O'Dwyer) from the massacre. "The heroic act of the martyr and his apparent link to the massacre was proving uncomfortable for them," Bhushan said.
A communication between British officials appears to confirm their apprehension, "The anniversary of Jallianwala Bagh will fall on the 13th April... It would be advisable to avoid holding Udham Singh's trial on this date."