Udham Singh's letters roared like his gun... as the noose waited

Time of India

2 days ago

CHANDIGARH: His was the gunshot that echoed through the British Empire. 'I will be getting married with execution,' Udham Singh wrote from Brixton Prison in 1940, just weeks after pumping bullets into Michael O'Dwyer to avenge the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.
This, and other letters from Udham Singh lie in silent isolation at Guru Nanak Dev University's Bhai Gurdas Library in Amritsar. The letters, some brittle with age, reveal a revolutionary who idolised Bhagat Singh, called him his 'best friend', and longed to be executed on the same day that Bhagat Singh had kissed the noose (March 23, 1931).
'The case against me,' he wrote, 'is case I waited for many years.'
In 1971, then IAS officer Manohar Singh Gill brought Udham Singh's prison letters from the UK to India and handed them over to Guru Nanak Dev University in 1972.
Sealed in glass and hidden behind layers of permissions, few even know these letters exist. Udham's pistol remains in the UK as an exhibit in Crime Museum, London. His ashes are at seven sites in India.
The letters give a fascinating insight into Udham Singh. Calling the prison a 'castle' and himself 'a guest of HM King George,' Udham Singh writes with bitter humour, unmistakable loneliness, and unshaken resolve.
'The place I am in is very nice but I am looking forward to go to a better castle,' he writes in a March 15, 1940, letter — two days after he shot O'Dwyer.
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'I have many bodyguards and am well looked after.'
The letters, written in a mix of unpolished English, half-formed grammar, and biting wit, were addressed to Shiv Singh Johal, his friend in London in 1930s. In one striking sentence, he tells him: 'I hope and wish soon I will be born again when all of you will be old. Because the case against me is case I waited for many years.' Udham spent four months in prison before being hanged on July 31, 1940.
'He called himself 'Mohamed Singh Azad' to challenge every colonial label,' says retired GNDU political science professor Harish Kumar Puri, who co-authored 'Letters of Udham Singh' in 1974 with the late historian Prof JS Grewal. 'These letters show his anguish, his sarcasm and his clarity. He knew exactly why he was there.' In a letter dated March 30, Udham Singh makes it clear he had no desire for mercy or legal help.
'I never afraid of dying,' he writes, urging that nomoney be spent on saving him — 'the murderer,' as he sardonically calls himself. Instead, he says, that money should be used for education.
His last letter, dated May 20, 1940, is brief but heavy with finality: 'Do you think you could find time to come to see me before I go to the Old Bailey, as after the trial I may not be able to see you.'
Less than three months later, on August 6, just days after Udham Singh's execution, his friend SS Johal wrote to the governor of Pentonville Prison requesting his ashes and belongings on behalf of the Khalsa Jatha Gurdwara.
'The committee of my church have asked me to request you to hand me over late Udham Singh's ashes to be taken to India for the purpose of interning the ashes with religious rites according to Sikh religion,' Johal wrote.
The prison authorities refused. A reply from Deputy Governor HP Lambert the same day said: 'I regret that I cannot accede to your request for you to have the ashes of this man.'
'These are more than prison notes,' says Prof Puri. 'They're evidence of a mind that saw through colonial injustice, and still had the energy to joke, demand books, and call out hypocrisy, all from inside a death cell.'
GNDU V-C Prof Karamjeet Singh says the university is committed to preserving and honouring the legacy contained in these fragile pages. 'These letters are part of our rare collection and an important piece of our history,' he says.