by Anita Anand
After the service, the congregation left Dyer’s coffin, draped in the union flag, for one last night of quiet solitude before his final journey to London next morning. He had been traduced from the benches of the House of Commons seven years earlier. Though he would never know it, the capital would react very differently now.
When Dyer’s coffin reached London, it was taken to the Wellington Barracks, close to Buckingham Palace, where it was placed, reverentially, in the Guards’ Chapel. The rain was falling gently as mourners, some of whom had travelled for miles, came to pay their respects. At 1.30 p.m., those assembled watched solemnly as the coffin was carried out by Irish Guardsmen and gently placed on a gun carriage draped with the union flag. Reporters were struck by the presence of so many weeping strangers:
Two women in deep mourning, who wished to be nameless, stood on the stone steps leading to the Guards’ Chapel, Wellington Barracks, where the body of Brigadier General R. E. H. Dyer of Amritsar fame, arrived later yesterday morning. They were women who were residents at Amritsar, during the historic incident and told a representative of the press that they desired to pay tribute to one whom they regarded as ‘a very gallant officer’.7
The 75th Battery Royal Artillery, a Somerset regiment, provided the guard of honour and, together with the scarlet coats and tall black bearskins of the Irish Guards, they formed a protective wall around the gun carriage bearing Dyer’s body. The light rain of the morning had turned into a heavy downpour as the cortege made its way slowly up the Mall, one mile to St Martin-in-the-Fields, just off Trafalgar Square. Despite the rods of rain, a crowd walked behind the coffin cortege. Dyer’s widow Annie was veiled and supported by her brother-in-law, Colonel Edward Richards. Dyer’s children and the nurse who looked after him until the end followed. Behind them, drenched but determined, a silent army of men and women, soldiers and civilians.
Several hundred were waiting at the church. They included ex-servicemen of the 25th London Regiment, the same body of men who had enforced the crawling order in Amritsar after the massacre. Though they came in civilian dress, their affiliation was clear from the numerous service medals that clanked on their chests as they walked up the stairs to the chapel. One man, who gave his name as P. H. Nicol, spoke for them all when he stopped to address the gathered reporters: ‘He was one of the finest officers I have ever served under.’ The roads around St Martin-in-the-Fields were closed to accommodate the crowds who had come to say goodbye. These included prominent members of the military, including Sir George Arthur, the private secretary to Lord Kitchener himself.
Conspicuous by his absence was Dyer’s greatest champion in life. Sir Michael O’Dwyer, who, according to the press, ‘was unable to attend the funeral’, and had sent a proxy. No further explanation was given for his lack of attendance. Perhaps none was needed. Sir Michael had spent so many years defending his brigadier, his loyalty was not in question.
In the days leading up to the funeral, Sir Michael had given one of his most bombastic interviews to the Press Association:
‘If anyone was a victim of political expediency it was poor Dyer,’ said Sir Michael. ‘If prompt action had not been taken on the 13th April to reassert British authority in Amritsar, which had been in abeyance since the murders of British civilians on the 10th, I, as head of civil government in the Punjab realising how quickly the rebellion was spreading from Amritsar in all directions would have asked that an officer be put in command who would take drastic action.’
‘Everyone in India approved his action, and we had letters and telegrams from all quarters expressing approval – even from the government itself. Everyone was surprised when his action was called in question and he was recalled, for we all recognised that he had saved the situation in the only way possible.’8
Each time Sir Michael justified the killings of April 1919, Punjab’s barely healed wounds reopened. News of Dyer’s epic send-off merely poured salt over already unbearable hurt.
AMRITSAR, 30 AUGUST 1927
Savar Ali Shah first got word that ‘a foreigner’ was staying at the address of a known local prostitute at around 6 p.m. on the evening of 30 August 1927, but it barely gave the sub-inspector cause to raise his head from his desk at first. There was always so much to do. What did he care how some angrez chose to occupy himself behind his memsahib’s back? For generations the warren of gullies that made up Katra Sher Singh Bazaar9 had held seedy secrets. Above and between the hectic fabric shops and whirring tailors’ rooms, Madame Nur Jehan and her ilk plied their trade without much interference from the likes of him.
When it became apparent that the prostitute’s ‘foreigner’ had brown skin, it piqued the sub-inspector’s interest. Western clothes were worn by well-heeled, educated Indians. For one of them to be roaming the sweaty back streets of Amritsar’s red-light district was unusual. For him to be boarding at a house of ill repute, well, that was downright suspicious. The stranger was apparently going by the name of ‘Sher Singh’, which told Savar Ali nothing at all. It did not appear on any of his lists, either local or from the central bureau, but still, his instinct told him it was worth checking out.10
Within an hour of hearing about the mysterious visitor to his city, Savar Ali had assembled and despatched three men to visit Madame Nur Jehan’s brothel and find out more about this ‘Indian foreigner’.11 It could be something, it could be nothing – he would only know if he banged on some doors. His men, Savar Ali knew, could bang heads together, too, if needed.
Wearing his American clothes around the bazaar had been foolish, but Udham’s vanity often trumped his good sense. Had he even acknowledged the risk, he might have felt it was worth it. A double take from a pretty girl in the market would have meant more to him than money. In their eyes Udham would see what he already felt in his bones. He was a different man. He was a better man. He was a man worthy of attention. No longer the pathetic orphan who cried for his dead family; no longer the failed soldier without a war story; Udham had come back to Amritsar to be a hero to his people – they just did not know it yet.
His city lulled Udham into a false sense of security. Renting a room in the heart of one of Amritsar’s oldest bazaars, the smells wafting through his high window – a mixture of spice, dust and piss – were all ones he had known since childhood. The prickling moisture on his skin came from Indian heat, quite different from the summers he had spent in America. It would have felt like a loved one’s embrace, familiar, intoxicating, but with jarring reminders of unhappier times, too. Like bony fingers, they prodded at his conscience, even as the city held him tight.
Jallianwala Bagh was just minutes away, and though the orphanage was further, a fragment of his unhappy childhood was pottering around his room in flesh-and-blood form. As Udham carefully folded his American clothes and put them away, Tara Singh watched him and chatted amiably. They had been boys together at the orphanage.
Tara showed Udham what his life might have looked like had he not left India: never straying far from the orphanage and scraping a living using the same carpentry skills he and Udham had learned as children. Now they were men. Tara had a job working at a nearby factory. There is every reason to believe that his was a hand-to-mouth existence, since he seemed perfectly happy to be seen with his friend under the roof of a prostitute. In fact, it had been Tara Singh who suggested Udham might get a cheap room at the brothel. No man living a ‘respectable’ life would have done that, nor been so comfortable spending time there.
Madame Nur Jehan had given Udham a simple charpoy (a rope-strung cot) in the pokey top room of her building, charging him 10 rupees a night for the privilege.12 It was not much, but Udham was used to worse. He even seemed to get on well with the madame, taking his meals with her, even convincing her to go on drives around the city. It was not a friendship exactly, but it was companionship. That very day, Madame Nur Jehan and Udham had visited the Ram Bagh gardens for a couple of hours.13 It was the same place Dyer had used as his base on the day of the massacre.
We do not know how much Tara knew of his old friend’s Ghadar/Bolshevik transformation, or what he made of Udham’s reversion to his birth name, Sher Singh. We do know that just before 7 p.m. on 30 August 1927, Udham left the brothel in his Indian clothes: a white cotton pair of trousers, loose-fitting cotton kurta shirt, red coat and naswari brown turban. He told Tara and the madame that he was going to the Hall bazaar.
Savar Ali’s police raided the brothel just minutes after he left. It is impossible to know whether it was Tara or the madame who ultimately betrayed Udham, but when the police left the brothel shortly after interviewing them both they knew what Udham was wearing, where he was going and that he had a gun in his pocket.
Udham meandered his way towards the Hall bazaar. As far as he was concerned, he was now invisible. Just another Indian wandering the busy market at dusk. At 5 feet 8 inches, however, Udham was taller than most, and when the police emerged from one of the narrow gullies leading to the market, despite the failing light, they found him quite easily.
Udham never saw them coming. All of a sudden a large policeman, Sohne Khan, jumped on his back. Like a bear, he wrapped his arms around Udham from behind, pinning his arms to his side. Udham tried to reach for the gun in his pocket, but could not release his hands. He and the policeman came crashing down together, still in the peculiarly violent embrace, as two other officers piled in to subdue him.14 The gun in his coat pocket was fully loaded and ready to fire.15 It was a miracle the thing did not go off in the scuffle.
Having successfully disarmed their suspect, the police hauled Udham back to Savar Ali’s station and threw him into a cell, while the sub-inspector started the First Information Report, or FIR, which would eventually lead to prosecution. The next morning, the prisoner would be transferred to a place where more experienced men than Savar Ali Shah could question him. Amritsar police had ways of getting the truth out of men like this. There was so much they did not know about ‘Sher Singh’.
Udham was held and questioned for fifteen days straight,16 during which time he was interrogated morning and evening by two seasoned detectives, who took it in turns. In the 1920s, Indian police were not averse to beating confessions out of a suspect, and between them, Goga Singh and Murad Ali managed to break Udham Singh. When they were finished with him, he had told them almost everything. Almost.
He told them about his parents and the death of his brother. He told them about the orphanage, about his failure in the army and about his ignominious return to India. He told them about his destitution, sleeping under water tanks near the station, scrapping for work. He told them about going to East Africa, working the Lunatic Line and abandoning his contract.
Day after day, the police peeled back the layers of his life, only to find there was so much more to learn. Not only did this man go by the name Sher Singh, he was ‘Ude Singh’, the orphanage nickname Tara Singh would have used for him. Most tantalisingly, he was apparently Frank Brazil. When they discovered that gora (white man’s) alias, the story of his time in America, or a version of it, came pouring out of Udham.
He told them about Pritam, about meeting him in Punjab all those years before and wanting to help him get to the United States. He told them about travelling to England with Pritam, meeting Gurbux Singh and his advice about El Paso. He did not tell them how he had abandoned his young companion at the border, leaving him to rot in detention, nor the names of the Ghadars who had scooped him up and taken him to Claremont.
He did talk about Long Beach, working in the car factories there, about moving to Detroit, and about Mr Mather [sic], who had got him a job at Ford. He would not, however, divulge Mather’s full name, nor where he came from in India, claiming he did not know. Punjabis are well known for finding out each other’s family histories within minutes of meeting each other. The joy of discovering ‘pind’ or ‘village’ connections remains one of the great pleasures of being part of the Punjabi biradri.* It is impossible to believe that anyone who had spent weeks in Mr Mather’s company, who owed him his job and quite possibly the roof over his head, would not have exchanged such basic intimacies.
Udham told his inquisitors that he had travelled to Europe, visited Germany and Russia, Hungary and Poland, because he wanted to see something of the world. When asked how exactly he had paid for the trip, he claimed he had saved most of the money and ‘Pasito’ [sic], his Italian benefactor, had lent him the rest.17
When pushed to account for the vast sums it would have cost for such a trans-European trip, Udham spoke of a New York benefactor named ‘Joe Henry’,18 who ‘first of all lived in California and had now opened a restaurant [the Marlborough] in New York’. The mysterious Joe had apparently dropped more than $1,000 at Esposito’s home for Udham to use as he saw fit. There was never any explanation of why he might do such a thing.
The story, like many of Udham’s confessional ramblings, seemed insane. Why would a gora of all people spend that much money on a Kamboj illegal alien? The story might well have earned Udham a beating.
Four years after the savage interrogation that drew so much from Udham Singh, a ‘Joe Henry’ would appear in the records of the United States Naturalization Department, though the police never made the connection. On 1 July 1931, one ‘Lahorey Singh also known as Joe Henry’ put in a petition for American citizenship in New York.19 He gave his address as 25 South Street, New York, and declared his place of birth to be a village called Hiren, ‘in the district of Jullund [sic]’ in Punjab.20 Though Joe Henry’s name was now officially American, he was as Sikh as Udham himself. For a man to change his name so drastically was suspicious. For him to have such vast sums of money to funnel into Udham’s pockets through a third party, even more so.
There are some things that can be inferred from the interrogation. Udham, it appears, had used Tara Singh as callously as he had once used Pritam Singh. Sometime after his friend had got him the room at the brothel, Udham had convinced Tara to let him store a suitcase at the factory he worked at. The fact that Tara had never been identified as a Ghadar sympathiser in Sher Singh’s FIR, though he was mentioned in it, and that the police appear to have let him go after their initial questioning, suggests he was a convenient dupe for Udham. He needed to hide his suitcase, and Tara Singh had a place that would fit his needs, no matter what danger it might put him in.
Police had found a key in one of Udham’s pockets after his arrest. They forced him to show them what it unlocked, and that was when they discovered his suitcase in Tara’s place of work. Inside, they found more than they could ever have hoped for: two pistols, clearly marked with identifying serial numbers – one empty, the other fully loaded; and further down, in folds of cloth, another distinctly foreign-looking firearm. It was the Colt automatic Udham had recently procured in America, a type of gun rarely seen in India.21
There was a substantial amount of ammunition in the case too, ‘150 cartridges’22 according to the updated FIR, as well as a few personal items: a black woollen jacket and black wallet, or ‘purse’, as the police called it, containing six photographs. Most of them were unremarkable, some were of Udham himself, but one intriguingly showed an unknown ‘white woman’,23 as the investigators put it. We can assume the picture was of Lupe, and the fact that he still carried her image with him must indicate that he still had feelings for her, even though he had abandoned her for the sake of his mission.
Kotwal officers noted down the rest of the contents of the suitcase: ‘some certificates, one card, an empty match-box’ and ‘one envelope with address in English’.24 Frustratingly, they never disclosed whose address it was. They also found a pile of printed material, arguably as dangerous as the guns and ammunition that spilled out of Udham’s case. There were copies of the banned Ghadar publication Ghadr-di-duri, filled with anti-British propaganda, and Ghadar-di-Goonj collections of banned poetry, particularly powerful tools for the movement. Seditious verses were far easier to remember, recite and disseminate among those who could neither read nor writ
e.
Udham also had copies of Gulami-di-Jehar (The Poison of Slavery,) and Desh Bhagat-di-jaan (Lives of the Martyrs), both considered seditious by the British. It was clear that these, like the Colt automatic gun, had been produced in America.25 Some of the articles within had even been penned by Sir Michael’s old nemesis, Har Dayal.
Udham’s suitcase groaned with incriminating material. Caught red-handed, worn down by days of interrogation, Udham now had nothing to lose. He told his interrogators that he had ‘come from America to free the country from the British’.26 He also told him the
Russians were ‘busy getting India free’.27 By now, such words were mere icing on the cake. Amritsar police knew they had managed to lay their hands on a real-life Ghadar.
Udham was presented before Amritsar’s District Magistrate, a man named S. Bishan Singh, and sentenced to five years’ rigorous imprisonment. Had Sir Michael still been in charge, the punishment would likely have been far more severe. To a man like Udham, who had dedicated his life to avenging the suffering of April 1919, the sentence must have been crushing. He had done everything right as far as he was concerned. He had left his country, travelled thousands of miles, proved himself to the Ghadars, won their backing, and now, just when he was within touching distance of his revenge, Dyer was dead, honoured by his countrymen, Sir Michael was still roaming free, unrepentant as ever, and he was going to prison.
Udham had given up everything, including a woman who had loved him, and, if his throwaway remark to the police was true, children too. And for what? So that history could repeat itself? So that two little boys in America would grow up without a father, so that he might once again be labelled a failure, just another faceless non-entity in Punjab’s vast and crowded prison system? When the police had finished with him he must have been all but spent, yet just when he should have been at his lowest ebb, Udham managed to find reserves of strength that many of us will never need. He had come so far that something inside him decided that prison would not break him.