Delhi City News Archives

Bhagat Singh: Real and imagined

The Parliament House has seen more than just speeches and legislations since it was inaugurated in 1927. The Central Hall was where Indian Independence was actually realised with the transfer of power. And it was from this magnificently-domed hall that Jawaharlal Nehru made his 'tryst with destiny' speech on the night of August 14-15.

Parliament House was also the site of Bhagat Singh's 'propagandist' bomb attack at what was then the Central Assembly Hall. No it wasn't the present Central Hall, which was then a library, but one of the two Houses. On April 8, 1929, Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt tossed two bombs onto the corridors of the assembly just when the Viceroy's proclamation enacting two bills - Public Safety and Trade Disputes - was to be made despite a majority of the members being opposed to them. No one was hurt as the bombs were deliberately thrown away from people.

The duo shouted Inquilab Zindabad and showered the hall with red leaflets that began with a quote from French anarchist Auguste Valiant: "It takes a loud voice to make the deaf hear." The action seemed to have been inspired by Valiant's symbolic gesture of throwing a small bomb into the Chamber of Deputies to highlight the plight of the people in 1893.

As with other aspects of Bhagat Singh's life, myths abound over his association with Delhi. What can be said with a degree of certainty is that in September 1928, the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army was born in the ruins of Ferozeshah Kotla (and not at the site of the present Shaheed Park outside Kotla). Among those present were Bhagat Singh and Ajoy Ghosh, future general secretary of CPI.

Another place linked in popular imagination with Bhagat Singh is the old Viceregal Lodge, what is now the DU vice-chancellor's office. The tale goes thus: After their arrest at Parliament House, Bhagat Singh and his associate were kept in the wine-celler of the lodge. There are even popular accounts of him being made to sleep over ice slabs here. But all this, says historian Shahid Amin, is pure imagination.


"A trial of 14 persons charged with conspiracy to commit murder and with other arms and explosives offences did start in the main block of the Old Viceregal Lodge on April 15, 1931. But that was three weeks after Bhagat Singh had been hanged (on March 23, 1931)," he says.

Chowk-a-bloc at Chandni road

Picture a crowded Bhai Mati Das Chowk, the T-junction on the main Chandni Chowk road that is popularly known as Fountain because of the presence of a defunct sprinkler. Now picture an angry crowd of 25,000-30,000 people, fiery speeches being made and a nervous police force keeping a lookout for trouble. That, in short, gives you a glimpse into the fateful afternoon of March 30, 1919, when this piazza-like street turned into a site for an outpouring of seething anti-British sentiment.

The public meeting at Fountain was perhaps the biggest Delhi had seen in many years. The occasion was a hartal announced by the Delhi Satyagraha Committee in response to Gandhi's call for a nationwide satyagraha on April 5 to protest against the Rowlatt Act which had indefinitely extended the 'emergency measures' enacted during World War I in order to control public unrest and root out conspiracy.

"Earlier in the day, five persons had been killed in police firing while trying to make shopkeepers at the railway station shut their establishments," says historian Shahid Amin. "So the city was extremely tense and agitated when the meeting took place at the Fountain. The police mulled taking action to break up the gathering but better sense prevailed. Given the sheer number of people at the meeting, any police provocation could have led to a Chauri Chaura-like action."

Nineteen people were killed in Delhi during the agitation between March 30 and April 18, says Amin. There were riots at Ballimaran and Edward Park near Jama Masjid. During the course of the agitation, Swami Shraddhanand, one of the main leaders of the stir, famously bared his chest daring the police to kill him. His statue still stands outside the Town Hall.

The agitation marked a new low in the British government's relations with Delhiites. Historian Narayani Gupta writes that Deputy Commissioner H C Beadon, never a popular figure in Delhi, further fuelled the fire by saying that agitationists were 'badmashes'.
"Ironically, we have a locality in Karol Bagh still named after him. It's called Beadonpura," says Amin.

The Delhi experience and violence in Punjab prompted Gandhi to call off the anti-Rowlatt stir. On April 13, the massacre at Jallianwalla Bagh took place.

The last footprints of the Mahatma

Gandhi spent the last 144 days of his life at Birla House at 5 Tees January Marg. It was here, in the evening of January 30, that Bapu emerged from a meeting with Sardar Patel and was walking to his daily prayer meeting when his life was snuffed out by an assassin's bullets. The building was acquired by the government in 1971 and is now called Gandhi Smriti.

But there are other places in the city where Bapu lived during his long political life. One such place is the Harijan Colony at Mandir Marg where he lived from April 1946 to June 1947. Ganni, a resident of the colony, isn't sure how old he is, but he remembers Gandhi as someone who taught his people not to stoop while sweeping the floor, which led them to start using the long broomstick.

The colony, now Valmiki Sadan, still retains the austere aura that Gandhiji championed. "The government has come up with numerous offers to make a memorial in the room where he stayed, but the Valmiki samaj has declined. Gandhiji himself turned down an offer from seth Birla when he offered to renovate this room for him," said Maharaj Krishna Vidyarthi, who takes care of the Valmiki temple next door.

Valmiki sadan is actually an NDMC colony, which now houses third and fourth generations of the initial inhabitants who had lived with Gandhi. "He used to come armed with his stick in the afternoons asking us to disperse and let him sleep. We used to wonder why this old man won't let us play in peace," says 76-year-old Sukha Ram, president of Valmiki Samaj.

Gandhi also lived for a while at Harijan Sevak Sangh in north Delhi and, in the early part of his career, he stayed with prominent citizens of the city.

Source: The Times of India