The Patient Assassin

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by Anita Anand


  It is thanks to the brilliant historian and collector Peter Bance that I found the account of Nazir Mattu in Sheffield archives. Peter, you are a star and never let me down. Thank you.

  It is clear that Shiv Singh Jouhl was a pivotal figure in Udham’s later life in prison. He stood by his friend till the end and took possession of Udham’s meagre belongings after he was hanged. I heard that Shiv Singh had a son, Ajit. When I tried to trace him I hit numerous brick walls. Nobody knew where he was. Some said he had emigrated to Canada, others that he lived in America. Some insisted that he had passed away. My journalistic nerves jangled with the need to find out for sure, and after almost two years of searching, I am delighted to say I found Ajit Singh Jouhl alive and well and living in England. He was also a fount of useful information, and I will never forget the afternoon he and his wife, Elaine, spent at my home piecing together an extraordinary mosaic.

  Dr Kim Wagner is just the best of the best. While I waded through Udham’s life, he was doing magnificent work researching and writing about the Jallianwala Bagh massacre itself. Though we were ploughing overlapping fields, Kim was always an amazing support and generously helpful. In Kim I know I have found a dear friend for life.

  Thanks to two wonderful men I have learned more than I thought I ever needed to know about guns and bullets. Chris Cobb-Smith, who became a friend after looking after me on somewhat risky BBC foreign assignments, and Jonathan Ferguson, Keeper of Firearms & Artillery at the National Firearms Centre in Leeds, have together helped me understand what it feels like to hold, conceal and fire the gun Udham used at Caxton Hall. My thanks to the wonderful archivists at the British Library and The National Archives. You have seen far too much of me lately.

  Ian Marshall of Simon & Schuster and Rick Horgan of Scribner have been magnificent. When I was drowning in sources and losing sight of my story, they pulled me up for air. Ian in particular has been a patient midwife for The Patient Assassin. His counsel has been kind and creative. I thank them both for their faith in me. My thanks also to Frances Jessop for casting a cool and considered eye over my work. I can sometimes get caught up in convolution. Frances invariably set me free. Kaiya Shang, also at Simon & Schuster, has been a veritable angel. A lesser woman may have been driven mad by my constant tweaking, but not Kaiya. Or if I did send her round the twist she never showed it.

  Thanks also and always to John Ash and Patrick Walsh at Pew Literary. Patrick is so much more than my literary agent. His guffaw at the end of a phone call is more restorative than a slug of gin . . . Speaking of which, without my mates Mel Cochran, Zeta Hade and Claire Solomon, I might have lost my marbles. Thank you, wonderful women, for putting up with my endless moaning, and pouring coffee or cocktails down my craw. Thanks, too, to my long-distance sisters Gullie and Sid. Always at the end of a phone line. Thanks also the wonderful Diana D – you kept the wheels from falling off so many times.

  My family have played a huge part in the writing of this book. My father and uncles, the sons of Ishwar Das Anand, have ingrained his story in my mind and heart. Thanks to you, Dad, Lala-ji’s memory lives on in the pages of this book. I think you would have been proud.

  My father-in-law, Mengha Singh, a wonderful raconteur, whose own father was a pedlar at the same time Udham Singh was pretending to be one, brought that hand-to-mouth world to life. Coming from such humble beginnings, what you and my mother-in-law, Sawaran Kaur, have accomplished is truly awe-inspiring.

  And to you, Simon Singh, my husband and my love – thanks so much for your support and for keeping the ship afloat while I disappeared into the sometimes seemingly endless storm of research and writing . . . And to you, my sons, Hari and Ravi, thanks so much for constantly pulling me into the sticky, noisy, wonderful world of the living, even when I was wading through some of the most harrowing accounts of the dead.

  NOTES

  Chapter 1

  1. BBC broadcast, London, 14 July 1940: http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk­/­UnknWarr.html.

  2. Albert Pierrepoint, Executioner Pierrepoint: An Autobiography, Harrap, 1974, p. 125.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Ibid., p. 94.

  5. Ibid., p. 126.

  6. TNA PCOM 9/872 – Secret memo from Hugh Grierson, Senior Medical Officer, Brixton Prison, 6 June 1940.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Pierrepoint, Executioner, op. cit., p. 96.

  9. Ibid., p. 126.

  10. Ibid.

  11. Ibid.

  12. Ibid., p. 127.

  13. TNA PCOM 9 /872 – Secret memo undated: The execution of Udham Singh (unsealed 2016).

  Chapter 2

  1. From ‘Obituary of Sir Michael F. O’Dwyer’ by Percy Sykes, Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society, Vol. 27.2, 1940, p. 139.

  2. Sir Michael O’Dwyer, The O’Dwyers of Kilnamanagh: The History of an Irish Sept, John Murray, 1933, p. 2.

  3. Sir Michael O’Dwyer, India as I Knew it, Constable & Company, 1926, p. 1.

  4. Sir Michael O’Dwyer, The History of the O’Dwyers (originally published as The O’Dwyers of Kilnamanagh: The History of an Irish Sept), with foreword by Tom O’Dwyer, Celtic Bookshop, 2000, p. 17.

  5. Ibid., p. 8.

  6. Ibid.

  7. Ibid.

  8. John Beames, Memoirs of a Bengali Civilian, Chatto & Windus, 1961, p. 102 (written in 1896).

  9. O’Dwyer, India as I Knew it, op. cit., p. 19.

  10. Ibid., p. 7.

  11. Ibid., p. 8.

  12. Ibid.

  13. Ibid.

  14. Report from the Select Committee on East India Produce: Together with the Minutes of Evidence, 1840, Thomas Cope evidence, 14 July 1840, Parliamentary Papers, p. 451.

  15. O’Dwyer, India as I Knew it, op. cit., p. 27.

  16. Ibid., p. 29.

  17. Ibid.

  18. Ibid., p. 42.

  19. Ibid.

  20. Ibid., p. 78.

  21. Ibid., dedication plate.

  Chapter 3

  1. Mrs Margaretta Catherine Reynolds, At Home in India: Or Tâza-be-Tâza, H. Drane, 1903, p. 122.

  2. Sayha Sunami, Sunama Da Itihas, Sunam, 1982, p. 31 (Punjabi).

  3. Udham Singh would use many dates of birth in his life, but 26 December 1899 is celebrated as his official birthday. The date has been corroborated by the historian Navtej Singh (Challenge to Imperial Hegemony: The Life Story of a Great Indian Patriot Udham Singh, Publication Bureau, Punjabi University, 1998, p. 33) based on interviews with Bhai Chanchal Singh Kambo (a relative of Udham Singh), Captain Ram Singh and Jamadar Kala Singh, all of whom lived in Sunam.

  4. IOR L/P5/12/500, Udham Singh statement to police, collated biography submitted to the assistant chief constable by DD Inspector J. Swain, 19 March 1940.

  5. David Arnold, Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-Century India, University of California Press, 1993, p. 200.

  6. J. N. Hays, Epidemics and Pandemics: Their Impacts on Human History, ABC-CLIO, 2005, p. 345.

  7. From an interview by Sikander Singh of Mai Aas Kaur (28 November 1984), cited in Sikander Singh, Udham Singh, alias Ram Mohammed Singh Azad, B. Chattar Singh Jiwan Singh, 1998, p. 80.

  8. Bharat da Garurav, Sardar Udham Singh, Jagan Nath Sandhey, Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, 1975, p. 2 (Punjabi).

  9. Navtej Singh, Challenge to Imperial Hegemony: The Life Story of a Great Indian Patriot Udham Singh, Publication Bureau, Punjabi University, 1998, p. 5.

  10. Ibid.

  11. B. S. Maighowalia, Sardar Udham Singh: A Prince Amongst Patriots of India, the avenger of the massacre of Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar, foreword by Krishna Menon, Chhabra Printing Press, 1969, pp. 13–14.

  12. Gurcharan Singh, Shadeed Udham Singh, Punjabi University, 1995, p. 45.

  13. B. S. Maighwallia, Prince Amongst Patriots op. cit., pp. 13–14, and Sikander Singh, Udham Singh, op. cit., p. 81.

  14. Navtej Singh, Hegemony, op. cit., p. 36.

  15. Diwali, according to the lunar calendar
, fell on 5 November that year.

  16. Sikander Singh, Udham Singh op. cit., p. 81.

  17. Ibid.

  18. Navtej, Hegemony, op. cit., p. 37.

  19. Navtej Hegemony, op. cit., p. 38.

  20. Register of admissions, Khalsa Central Orphanage, Putlighar, Amritsar, entries 121 and 122, 28 October 1907.

  21. Sikander Singh, Udham Singh, op. cit., p. 82.

  22. Navtej Singh, Hegemony, op. cit., p. 40.

  23. Suba Singh, cited by Sikander Singh, Udham Singh, op. cit., p. 83.

  24. Minute book, Festival of Empire Minute Book, Coll. Misc., 459, London School of Economics Archives, London.

  25. Daily Telegraph, 9 July 1911.

  26. Hansard, Durbar Expenditure, Vol. 22, 16 March 1911.

  27. O’Dwyer, India as I Knew it, op. cit., p. 102.

  28. Ibid.

  29. Ibid.

  30. Jessica Douglas-Home, A Glimpse of Empire, Rain Tree, 1988, p. 60.

  31. Ibid.

  32. A . F. Madden and John Darwin (eds), Select Documents on the Constitutional History of the British Empire and Commonwealth: The dominions and India since 1900, Greenwood Press, 1993, Vol. 6, p. 660.

  33. Ibid.

  34. Los Angeles Herald, 15 November 1909.

  35. Jessica Douglas-Home, Empire, op. cit., p. 61

  36. O’Dwyer, India as I Knew it, op. cit., p. 167.

  37. Ibid., p. 168.

  Chapter 4

  1. Shyamaji Krishravarma: Life and Times of an Indian Revolutionary, Lakshmi Publications, Delhi, 1950, p. 123.

  2. Daniel Brückenhaus, Policing Transnational Protest: Liberal Imperialism and the Surveillance of Anticolonialists in Europe, 1905–1945, Oxford University Press, 2017, p. 15.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Brückenhaus, Policing (op. cit.), p. 27; Har Dayal speech cited in Niroda Kumāra Baruwā, Life and Times of an Indian Anti-Imperialist in Europe, Oxford University Press, 2004, p. 39.

  5. O’Dwyer, India as I Knew it, op. cit., p. 162.

  6. Ibid. p. 170.

  7. Ibid. p. 162.

  8. Ibid.

  9. Ibid., p. 125.

  10. Ibid., p. 157.

  11. Ibid., p. 413.

  12. Santanu Das, ‘The Indian Sepoy in the First World War’, British Library, 6 February 2014: http://­www.bl.uk­/­world-war-one­/­articles­/­the-indian-sepoy-in-the-first-world-war

  13. O’Dwyer, India as I Knew it, op. cit., p. 216.

  14. Ibid., p. 213.

  15. Heike Liebau (ed.), ‘The World in World Wars: Experiences, Perceptions and Perspectives from Africa and Asia’, Studies in Global Social History, Vol. 5 2010, p. 141.

  Chapter 5

  1. Still the case today. Author interview with custodians of the Khalsa Orphanage, Amritsar, 2016.

  2. Ibid.

  3. War Speeches of Sir Michael O’Dwyer, Superintendent Government Printing, 1918, p. 85.

  4. Ibid., p. 87.

  5. Ibid., p. 44.

  6. Ibid.

  7. Ibid., p. 55.

  8. Ibid.

  9. Udham Singh alias Sher Singh Amritsar Kotwali statement 1927, cited in Sikander Singh, Udham Singh, op. cit., p. 84.

  10. Ibid.

  11. Ibid.

  12. Ibid.

  13. Ibid.

  14. Ibid.

  15. Paul Ghuman British, Untouchables: A Study of Dalit Identity and Education, Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2011, p. ix.

  16. Dietrich Jung, ‘The “Ottoman–German Jihad”: Lessons for the Contemporary “Area Studies” Controversy’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 41.3, 2014, p. 41.

  17. ‘Despatch received by the Secretary of State for War and the Chief of the General Staff’, India Second Supplement to the London Gazette, 10 July 1917, pp. 1–13.

  18. Ibid.

  19. Udham Singh statement, 1927. Cited in Sikander Singh, Udham Singh, op. cit., p. 85.

  20. TNA HO 144/21444 CRIMINA L CASES: SINGH, Udham Convicted at Central Criminal Court (CCC) on 5 June 1940 for murder and sentenced to death, early history of Udham Singh, cites his service in Basra. Sikander Singh, Udham Singh, op. cit. citing statement of Udham Singh alias Sher Singh Amritsar Kotwali statement 1927.

  21. Sikander Singh, Udham Singh, op. cit., interview with Bhajan Singh by the author, p. 85.

  22. Udham Singh alias Sher Singh Amritsar Kotwali statement 1927, cited in Sikander Singh, Udham Singh, op. cit., p. 85.

  23. Ibid.

  24. Ibid.

  25. Ibid.

  26. Ibid.

  Chapter 6

  1. Mahatma Gandhi, Young India, Vol. 10, Navajivan Publishing House, 1928, p. 338.

  2. Mahadev Haribhai Desai, Narahari Dvārakādāsa Parākha (ed.), Hemantkumar Gunabhai Nilkanth (trans.), Day to day with Gandhi: Secretary’s Diary, Vol. 1, Sarva Seva Sangh Prakashan, 1968, p. 111.

  3. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi: 26 April 1918 – April 1919 (CWGM), Vol. 15, Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Govt. of India, 1965, digitized 25 July 2011, p. 2.

  4. Ibid.

  5. CWMG, op. cit., Vol 14, p. 477.

  6. Ibid., pp. 474, 510.

  7. New York Times, 24 April 1918.

  8. Congress Party Inquiry 1919–1920, Delhi, 1996, first published 1920, pp. 24–5.

  9. Author interview with S. S. Gill, curator of the Udham Singh museum in Sunam: Shadeed Udham Singh Zadi Ghar, Sunam, 2016.

  10. O’Dwyer, India as I Knew it, op. cit., p. 236.

  11. The Amritsar Massacre, Nick Lloyd, op. cit., p. 70.

  12. Cited in Nick Lloyd, The Amritsar Massacre: The Untold Story of One Fateful Day, I. B. Tauris, 2011, p. 34.

  13. Evidence Taken Before the Disorders Inquiry Committee, vol. 1, Superintendent Government Printing, 1920, p. 125.

  14. Gandhi to V. S. Srinivasa Sastri, 9 Feb 1919, CWMG op. cit., Vol. 17, p. 280.

  15. Descendants of those who knew him in Sunam certainly remember him as a smuggler of seditious papers. In author interviews they describe him travelling to distant rural areas, drumming up support for the Amritsar actions. Since they are passing on what they heard from their own, long dead family members, there is no way of cross-examining these accounts, although their proliferation suggests veracity. Police would certainly arrest him in 1927 for possessing seditious literature with the aim of distribution.

  16. Bombay Chronicle quoted in Nick Lloyd, The Amritsar Massacre op. cit., p. 38.

  17. The Tribune, 12 April 1919.

  18. Ibid., 8 April 1919.

  19. Disorders Inquiry Committee, op. cit., Vol. 4, p. 137.

  20. O’Dwyer, India as I Knew it, op. cit., p. 269.

  Chapter 7

  1. Gandhi, Young India, op. cit., p. 378.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Report: Disorders Inquiry Committee 1919–1920, Committee on Disturbances in Bombay, Delhi, and the Punjab, Calcutta, 1920, pp. 12–13.

  4. Lloyd, The Amritsar Massacre, op. cit., p. 43.

  5. Ibid.

  6. Miles Irving to A. J. W. Kitchin, 8 April 1919, in Disorders Inquiry Committee, Vol. 6, Punjab Government and Sir Umar Hayat Khan, Calcutta, 1920, p. 3.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Ian Colvin, The Life of General Dyer, W. Blackwood & Sons Ltd., 1929, p. 144.

  9. Congress Punjab Inquiry, Evidence, p. 15.

  10. Report on the Events of April, 1919, Indian National Congress, p. 30.

  11. Evidence Taken Before the Disorders Inquiry Committee, op. cit., Vol. 3, p. 43.

  12. Report on the Events of April, 1919, op.cit., p. 31.

  13. Ibid.

  14. Ibid., p. 30.

  15. Ibid.

  16. O’Dwyer, India as I Knew it, op. cit., p. 275.

  17. Punjab Disturbances, April 1919, compiled from the Civil and Military Gazette, Vol. 1, p. 26.

  18. O’Dwyer, India as I Knew it, op. cit., p. 275.

  19. Colvin, Dyer, op. cit., p. 161.

  20. Ibid.

&nb
sp; 21. Ibid.

  22. Ibid., p. 162.

  23. Ibid., p. 163.

  24. Ibid., p. 162.

  Chapter 8

  1. Nigel Collett, The Butcher of Amritsar: General Reginald Dyer, Hambledon Continuum, 2005, p. 43.

  2. Colvin, Dyer, op. cit., p. 3.

  3. Ibid., p. 7.

  4. Ibid., pp. 5–6.

  5. The Congress Punjab Inquiry 1919–1920, op. cit., p. 29.

  6. In his own memoirs, Sir Michael acknowledges that though the telegraphic and telephonic communications were cut on 10 April, the railway telephone was still operational, and he was receiving reports, albeit ‘confused’, from the men on the ground. O’Dwyer, India as I Knew it, op. cit., p. 274.

  7. Disorders Inquiry Committee, op. cit., Vol. 3, p. 201.

  8. O’Dwyer, India as I Knew it, op. cit., p. 282.

  9. Conversations with the author’s father.

  10. The sons of Lala Ishwar Das Anand could not remember the names of the boys. His eldest son, Dharam Swarup Anand, knew details about them, but not what they were called. My own father wondered whether Ishwar Das could not bear to say their names.

  Chapter 9

  1. Disorders Inquiry Committee, op. cit., Vol. 3, p. 212.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Collett, Butcher, op. cit., p. 246, quoting The Times, 1924 transcript of the Sir Michael O’Dwyer v Sir C. Sankaran Nair trial, May 1924, evidence of Rup Lala Puri taken on commission in Punjab.

  5. Hunter Report, Evidence, Vol. 3, pp. 117 and 122. Evidence of Brigadier General Dyer.

  6. Indian National Congress, Punjab Subcommittee, Vol. 2, pp. 82–3.

  7. It has been alleged by some historians that Hans Raj was in league with the local police, particularly since he would later become ‘an approver’ for the British in a subsequent legal case, i.e. a witness for the prosecution against his own countrymen. I have found no hard evidence to substantiate this claim.

  8. Times Literary Supplement, 9 April 1964, quoting a letter from a British SNCO Sergeant Anderson to Rupert Furneaux; Collett, Butcher, op. cit., p. 260.

 

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