by Anita Anand
9. Collett, Butcher, op. cit., p. 261.
10. Ibid.
11. Report on the Events of April, 1919, op. cit., p. 86.
12. Kapil Deva Malaviya, Open Rebellion in the Punjab (with Special Reference to Amritsar), Abhudaya Press, 1919, p. 62.
13. Statement of eyewitness Mr Girdhari Lal, who happened to watch the scene from the window of his house overlooking the Jallianwala Bagh. Ref: Report of Commissioners, Vols. 1, 2, Bombay, 1920, reprinted 1976, pp. 10–11.
14. Ibid.
15. Interview with Bharpur Singh, survivor of the Amritsar massacre. BBC documentary, ‘Gandhi – Rise to Fame’, November 2009.
16. Evidence of Mohamed Ismail. India National Congress report, Vol. 2, pp. 70–1.
17. Estimates vary widely – the British at first put the number of fatalities at 200 but admitted the number of dead could well have been higher. Congress put the figure nearer 1,000 killed and 1,500 wounded. Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya collected the information for the party with a view to raising the issue in the Central Legislative Council.
18. Raja Ram, The Jallianwala Bagh Massacre: A premeditated plan, Publication Bureau Pujab University, 2002, p. 128. Appendix C: list of persons killed in Jallianwala Bagh on 13 April 1919, File-Pb. Govt. Home-Military – Part B – 1921 – No. 139.
19. Evidence of Ratan Devi from Report on the Events of April, 1919, op. cit., pp. 116–18.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid.
The Legend of Udham Singh
1 Legend has it that a young man was serving water to the crowds that day, a service he performed for the sake of the orphanage that raised him. There is no hard evidence to prove this, but as has been stated, the official lists of dead and wounded are unreliable. What we can say is that though the British had every reason to place him far from the scene and had better access to records than we ever will, they could state their certainty in no better terms than ‘We cannot say for certain that he was present.’
2 Author interview with Gurbachan Singh, London, and with family of Manjit Singh Kassid, Sunam. See also Interview with Sh. Ramji Dass Sunami, a close friend of Udham Singh by Sikander Singh, 15 December 1984, quoted in Sikander Singh, Udham Singh, op. cit., p. 86.
3 Letter from Reverend W. E. S. Holland to Secretary of State for India Leo Amery, 11 June 1940.
4 The Ghadar Directory of 1934, Punjab University Library, BK-003681.
5 Such is the pride of Sunam in its most famous son, suggesting he was not actually caught in Dyer’s firing is met with such hostility that my source has asked to remain nameless, and I am respecting that request.
Chapter 10
1. O’Dwyer, India as I Knew it, op. cit., p. 283.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Months later, on 29 October, the government of India would set up an official panel to consider Dyer’s actions and the events of April 1919. ‘The Disorders Inquiry Committee of 1919–1920’ was headed by Lord William Hunter, a senator of the College of Justice of Scotland. More commonly known as ‘The Hunter Commission’, the committee was made up of four British members and three Indians, who questioned witnesses and considered evidence over a period of forty-six weeks.
7. Evidence Taken Before the Disorders Inquiry Committee, op. cit., Vol. 3, p. 127.
8. O’Dwyer, India as I Knew it, op. cit., p. 285.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid., p. 286.
11. Ibid.
12. House of Commons Parliamentary Papers: 1909–1982, Vol. 14, H. M. Stationery Office, 1920, p. 48.
13. O’Dwyer, India as I Knew it, op. cit., p. 287; and Parliamentary Papers: 1909-1982, op. cit., p. 48.
14. O’Dwyer, India as I Knew it, op. cit., p. 70.
15. Statement of Brigadier General D. H. Drake-Brockman, Commanding Delhi Brigade. Disorders Inquiry Committee I: Delhi (Calcutta 1920), p. 172. Quoted in HoC Debate by B. C. Spoor MP, 8 July 1920, Hansard Vol. 131, cc. 1705-1819.
16. The Bombay Chronicle was owned by Pheorzshah Mehta, a wealthy Parsi with strong Nationalist sympathies.
17. Benjamin Guy Horniman, British Administration and the Amritsar Massacre, T. F. Unwin Ltd, 1920, p. 146.
18. Horniman, Massacre, op. cit., p. 148.
19. Horniman, Massacre, op. cit., p. 149.
20. Evidence of Mr Marsden. Report of the Commissioners Appointed by the Punjab Subcommittee of the Indian National Congress: 1920, Vol. 1, p. 100.
21. Ibid.
22 Hunter Report, op. cit., p. 85.
23. Ibid.
24. Indian National Congress. Commissioners Appointed by the Punjab Subcommittee 1920, p. 177.
25. Disorders Inquiry Committee, Vol. 4, p. 6.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid., p. 286.
28. Collett, Butcher, op. cit., p. 284.
29. Punjab Disturbances, 1919–20, op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 62.
30. Indian National Congress, Commissioners Appointed by the Punjab Subcommittee 1920, p. 167.
31. Horniman, Massacre, op. cit., p. 160.
Chapter 11
1. Interview with Sh. Ramji Dass Sunami by Sikander Singh, 15 December 1984, quoted in Sikander Singh, Udham Singh, op. cit., p. 86.
2. Interview with Jewan Deepak, a nephew of Manjit Singh Kassid.
3. Quoted in J. S. Grewal and H. S. Puri, Letters of Udham Singh, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amnistar, 1974, pp. 97–8; and also Navtej Singh, Hegemony op. cit., p. 54.
4. Even today many Indians believe Udham Singh assassinated Dyer. One of the top searches on Google when you enter his name is ‘When did Udham Singh kill Dyer’.
5. Statement of Udham Singh alias Sher Singh to Amritsar Kotwal, cited in Sikander Singh, Udham Singh, op. cit., p. 87.
6. Ibid.
7. O’Dwyer, India as I Knew it, op. cit., p. 264.
8. Collett, Butcher, op. cit., p. 276.
9. Udham Singh alias Sher Singh statement to Amritsar Kotwali 1927, cited in Sikander Singh, Udham Singh, op. cit., p. 88.
10. Ibid., op. cit., p. 89.
11. Ibid.
12. Report on Ude Singh, Udham Singh, Sher Singh, Frank Brazil, secret file from DIB shared with IPI, 11/10/37, IOP P&J (S) 466/36.
13. Christian Wolmar, Blood, Iron & Gold: How the Railways Transformed the World, Atlantic Books, 2009, p. 182.
14. Ronald Hardy, The Iron Snake, G. p. Putnam’s Sons, 1965, p. 13.
15. Author interview with the family of Jiwa Singh in Sunam, 2016.
16. Nazmi Durrani, Liberating Minds, Restoring Kenyan History: Anti-Imperialist Resistance by Progressive South Asian Kenyans 1884–1965, Vita Books, 2017, p. 101.
17. Ibid., p. 102.
18. Udham Singh alias Sher Singh, statement to Amritsar Kotwali 1927, cited in Sikander Singh, Udham Singh, op. cit., p. 89.
19. Ibid.
20. Memories of his motorcycle return. Sikander Singh interviews with Dr Bhajan Singh and Ramji Singh of Sunam, cited in Sikander Singh, Udham Singh, op. cit., p. 90; and Manjit Singh Kassid unpublished memoirs Sunam.
21. Udham Singh alias Sher Singh statement to Amritsar Kotwali 1927, cited in Sikander Singh, Udham Singh, op. cit., p. 90.
22. Ibid.
23. Bankimcandra Chatterji, Julius J. Lipner (trans.), Anandamath, or The Sacred Brotherhood, Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 76.
24. Sikander Singh, Udham Singh op. cit., p. 90.
25. Ibid., op. cit., p. 89; Gurcharan Singh, Shaheed Udham Singh, op. cit., p. 117.
26. From the statement of Sher Singh alias Ude Singh, 1927, Amritsar Kotwal, cited in Sikander Singh, Udham Singh, op. cit., p. 90.
Chapter 12
1. General Barrow, quoted in Collett, Butcher, op. cit., p. 333.
2. Hansard, 5th ser. (Commons), Vol. 131, cols. 1725, 1736.
3. Amritsar: Minutes of Evidence taken before the Hunter Committee, 1920, Parliamentary Archives, DAV/123.
&nb
sp; 4. Ibid.
5. O’Dwyer, India as I Knew it, op. cit., p. 329.
6. Letters to the Editor, The Times, quoted in Savita Narain, The Historiography of the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre, 1919, Spantech & Lancer, 1998, p. 45.
7. Wilson, quoted in Collett, Butcher, op. cit., p. 361.
8. Hansard, Army Council and General Dyer. HC Deb 08, July 1920, vol. 131 cols. 1705–1819
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Neil James Mitchell, Democracy’s Blameless Leaders: From Dresden to Abu Ghraib, how Leaders Evade Accountability for Abuse, Atrocity, and Killing, NYU Press, 2012, p. 62.
14. Papers Relating to the Application of the Principle of Dyarchy to the Government of India: To which are Appended the Report of the Joint Select Committee and the Government of India Act, 1919, Clarendon Press, 1920, p. 326.
15. Patrick French, Liberty or Death, Penguin, 2011, p. 35.
16. Sir Sigismund David Waley, Edwin Montagu: A Memoir and an Account of his Visits to India, Asia Publishing House, 1964, p. 230.
17. Colvin, Dyer, op. cit., p. 7.
18. Ibid., p. 8.
19. Collet, op.cit, p.407
20. Mahatma Gandhi, Collected Works, Publications Division, Ministry of Information, GOI, 1965, Vol. 18, p. 45.
21. Letter to Pioneer Mail from ‘A. B.’, 2 July 1920, Pioneer Mail and Indian Weekly News.
22. Santdas Khushiram Kirpalani, Fifty Years with the British, Memoirs of an Indian Civil Servant, University of Nevada Press, 1993, p. 63.
23. ibid.
Chapter 13
1. US School Yearbooks, 1880–2012: The Michiganensian Yearbook, Year: 1926 – the entry for Pritam Singh (with picture) says he was born ‘in about 1906’.
2. Udham Singh alias Sher Singh, Amritsar Kotwali statement 1927, cited in Sikander Singh, Udham Singh, op. cit., p. 90.
3. Photo of Pritam Singh, US School Yearbooks, 1880–2012.
4. Udham Singh alias Sher Singh, Amritsar Kotwali statement 1927, cited in Sikanker Singh, Udham Singh, op. cit., p. 90.
5. Michigan Daily, 18 November 1924.
6. Udham Singh alias Sher Singh, Amritsar Kotwali statement 1927, cited in Sikander Singh, Udham Singh, op. cit., p. 90.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid., p. 91.
11. The Michigan Daily, 18 November 1924.
12. Henry Earle Riggs papers: 1911–1942, Bentley Historical Library, Michigan, Call number: 852137 Aa 2.
13. Ibid.
14. Udham Singh alias Sher Singh, Amritsar Kotwali statement 1927, cited in Sikander Singh, Udham Singh, op. cit., p. 91.
Chapter 14
1. http://immigrationtounitedstates.org/360-asian-indian-immigrants.html.
2. Vancouver Daily World, 13 August 1907.
3. Udham Singh alias Sher Singh, Amritsar Kotwali statement 1927, cited in Sikander Singh, Udham Singh, op. cit., p. 91.
4. Pritam Singh gave a number of interviews to the Michigan Daily in 1924 in which he described being stranded in Mexico for ten months. A record of border crossings from El Paso into Texas show Pritam was finally allowed in on 10 October 1924. The National Archives and Records Administration; Washington D.C.; Manifests of Alien Arrivals at Columbus, New Mexico, 1917–1954; NAI: 2843448; Record Group Title: Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1787–2004; Record Group Number 85; Microfilm Roll Number 6.
5. In his confession (Sikander Singh, Udham Singh, op. cit., p. 90) they ‘embarked on a French boat and landed at Tamples’. As with many foreign names in his 1927 confession at Amritsar Kotwal, the police officer taking notes appears to have made a stab at spelling places and names he was unfamiliar with.
6. Michigan Daily, 15 October 1924.
7. Ibid.
8. ‘Detroit Business Man offers to go Bond for Indian’, Michigan Daily, 18 November 1924.
9. Manifests of Alien Arrivals, op. cit., Record Group Number: 85; Microfilm Roll Number: 6 – Entry for Pritam Singh.
10. The Michigan Daily, 13 December 1924.
11. Though there is clear evidence that Pritam crossed the border from El Paso, and the Riggs letters and Pritam’s own account suggest he was languishing at the border, there is also a record of a Pritam Singh arriving in Michigan from India via an ocean crossing on November 1924. Either the student returned briefly to India after gaining entry (which is possible but seems unlikely since he was so short of funds) or somebody was using his identity to get others into the USA). National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Washington, D.C.; Manifests of Alien Arrivals at Port Huron, Michigan, February 1902–December 1954; Record Group 85, Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service; Microfilm Serial A3441; Microfilm Roll 8.
12. Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891–1924, Random House, 1997, p. 173.
13. Ghadar Directory op. cit.
14. F. C. Isemonger, and J. Slattery, An account of the Ghadr conspiracy 1913–1915, 1919, IOR/V/27/262/9.
15. Gurdev Singh Deol, The role of the Ghadar Party in the National Movement, Sterling Publishers, 1969, p. 194.
16. Udham Singh alias Sher Singh, Amritsar Kotwali statement 1927 cited in Sikander Singh, Udham Singh, op. cit., p. 92.
17. ibid.; Jawand Singh’s naturalisation records show that he lived in El Paso and census records show he also lived in Fresno for a time. A search under his wife, Josefina Torres, shows she was living in Pomona. The National Archives at Fort Worth; Fort Worth, Texas; Record Group Title: Records of District Courts of the United States, 1685–2009; Record Group Number 21.
18. Udham Singh alias Sher Singh, Amritsar Kotwali statement 1927, cited in Sikander Singh, Udham Singh, op. cit., p. 92; Passenger lists for Sudagar Singh show he travelled from Yokohama to Berkley in 1921. There is no further record of Sudagar on passenger exit lists, border crossing lists, census reports or electoral rolls. It is as if he disappeared. Like Udham, he left a barely perceptible footprint in American bureaucracy. Like Udham, it is likely he changed his name, once, or perhaps multiple times.
19. Navtej Singh, Hegemony, op. cit., p. 65.
20. Udham Singh alias Sher Singh, Amritsar Kotwali statement 1927, cited in Sikanker Singh, Udham Singh, op. cit., p. 92.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
23. Josefina Torres married to Jawand Singh. The National Archives at Fort Worth; Fort Worth, Texas; Record Group Title: Records of District Courts of the United States, 1685–2009; Record Group Number 21.
24. Udham Singh alias Sher Singh, Amritsar Kotwali statement 1927, cited in Sikander Singh, Udham Singh, op. cit., p. 92.
25. Ibid; The spelling is ‘Lloope’ in the confession at Amritsar Kotwal in 1927 produced here, but Lupe is the correct spelling for that Hispanic name. Unfamiliar names to the Indian ear are often variant in this confession.
26. Texas Department of State Health Services; Austin, Texas, USA , Death Certificates, 1903–1982.
27. Udham Singh alias Sher Singh, Amritsar Kotwali statement 1927, cited in Sikander Singh, Udham Singh, op. cit., p. 93.
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid.
32. In his Kotwali confession he merely called it the Aeroplane Department, however the Douglas plant was the only one fully operational by the mid-1920s.
33. National Archives at San Francisco; San Bruno, California; NAI Number 605504; Record Group Number RG 21; Record Group Title: Records of District Courts of the United States, 1685–2009.
34. Ghadar pamphlet, 1914, printed by the Yugantar Ashram, Ghadar headquarters, San Francisco, Desh Bhagat Yaadgar collection Jalandar, Punjab.
35. Ibid.
36. Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving at New York, New York, 1820–1897. Microfilm Publication M237, 675 rolls. NAI: 6256867. Records of the US Customs Service, Record Group 36. National Archives at Washington, D.C. - Microfilm Roll
: Roll 3665; Line: 12; p. Number: 80.
37. Ibid., Microfilm Roll: Roll 3697; Line 62; p. Number: 87.
38. Ibid., Microfilm Roll: Roll 3710; Line 63; p. Number: 107.
39. Ibid., Microfilm Roll: Roll 3723; Line 9; p. Number: 144.
40. Ibid., Microfilm Roll: Roll 3743; Line 4; p. Number: 108.
41. Udham Singh alias Sher Singh, Amritsar Kotwali statement 1927, cited in Sikander Singh, Udham Singh, op. cit., p. 93.
42. A photo of Pritam Singh appears in the entry for the Hindustan Club. The Michiganensian Yearbook, Year 1927.
43. Udham Singh alias Sher Singh, Amritsar Kotwali statement 1927, cited in Sikander Singh, Udham Singh, op. cit., p. 95.
44. Ibid.
45. Year: 1920; Census Place: Highland Park, Wayne, Michigan; Roll T625_801; Page 5B; Enumeration District: 705 Pyem N. Mathur appears on the digital archive, but examining the document itself, one can see the handwriting of the entry below has looped over the name.
46. Entry in the Ghadar Directory for Prem Singh, op. cit.
47. Udham Singh alias Sher Singh, Amritsar Kotwali statement 1927, cited in Sikander Singh, Udham Singh, op. cit., p. 96; he claimed he ‘had got two sons from that wife.’
48. https://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/immigration-act
49. Udham Singh alias Sher Singh, Amritsar Kotwali statement 1927, cited in Sikanker Singh, Udham Singh, op. cit., p. 96.
50. Ibid.
51. Ibid.
52. Umberto Esposito. The National Archives and Records Administration; Washington, D.C.; Petitions for Naturalization from the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, 1897–1944; Series: M1972; Roll 308.
53. Umberto Esposito, petition number 64266, 1926 entry in the New York Index to Petitions for Naturalization, filed in New York City 1792–1989.
54. Udham Singh alias Sher Singh, Amritsar Kotwali statement 1927, cited in Sikanker Singh, Udham Singh op. cit., p. 97.
55. Author interview with Lord Indarjit Singh, who knew Udham Singh as a child and has very fond memories of playing with him.
Chapter 15
1. O’Dwyer, India as I Knew it, op. cit., p. 332.
2. Sir C. Sankaran Nair, Gandhi and Anarchy ‘Indore’, Holkar State printing press, 1922, p. 47.