- In a major security breach on the 22nd anniversary of the attack on Parliament, two men jumped into the Lok Sabha chamber from the visitors’ gallery on Wednesday afternoon, carrying canisters emitting yellow smoke.
- In a major security breach on the 22nd anniversary of the attack on Parliament, two men jumped into the Lok Sabha chamber from the visitors’ gallery on Wednesday afternoon, carrying canisters emitting yellow smoke.
Bhagat Singh bomb: 94 years ago
- ‘To make the Deaf Hear’ was the famous pamphlet thrown by Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt while hurling bombs at the Central Legislative Assembly situated in the Central Delhi district of the National Capital Territory of Delhi.
- They Inspired by the ideas of French anarchist Auguste Valiant who bombed the French Chamber of Deputies in 1893, Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt, in the similar act of defiance, bombed the Central State Assembly and showered it with the pamphlet of Hindustan Socialist Republican Association.
- On 23rd March 1931 Bhagat Singh was hanged in the Lahore jail at the age of 23.
The ‘Indian Parliament’ in 1929
- The Montague-Chelmsford Reforms of 1919 had not yielded the autonomy that the Indian nationalists demanded — while Indians sat in the legislature, they wielded little power. For revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh this was exactly why one could not ‘negotiate’ with the British in good faith.
- The Government is thrusting upon us new repressive measures like the Public Safety and the Trade Disputes Bill,” the HSRA pamphlets thrown onto the House by Bhagat Singh stated.
The fateful day: April 8, 1929
- On that fateful day, the Viceroy Lord Irwin was set to make a proclamation, enacting the Public Safety and the Trade Disputes Bills, even though the majority of members in the Assembly had opposed them, and both had been rejected earlier.
- The revolutionaries’ actions in the House were well-planned.
- The police report stated that both Singh and Dutt had carried out “preliminary reconnaissance” two days prior.
- On that day, they were dressed in khaki shirts and shorts, and seated in the visitor’s gallery overlooking the chamber of the House.
- “Two bombs were thrown in quick succession to land behind the Home Member, James Crerar. Pandemonium broke loose on the Official Benches,” the legal scholar A G Noorani wrote in The Trial of Bhagat Singh (1996).
- After lobbing the two bombs, Singh also fired two unaimed shots from a pistol, all while Dutt showered the chamber with the HSRA pamphlets. Both shouted “Inquilab Zindabad” (Long live the Revolution) and “Down with British Imperialism”.
- As planned, both Dutt and Singh made no attempt to escape, and were easily arrested.
The punishment: life in prison
- Following criticism of their action, Bhagat Singh and Dutt responded: “We hold human life sacred beyond words. We are neither perpetrator of dastardly outrages … nor are we ‘lunatics’… Force when aggressively applied is ‘violence’ and is, therefore, morally unjustifiable, but when it is used in the furtherance of a legitimate cause, it has its moral justification.”
- Bhagwati Charan Vohra-The Philosophy of Bomb on June 12 that year, both revolutionaries were sentenced to life in prison.
- Bhagat Singh would later also face charges relating to the murder of British police officer John Saunders, in Lahore in 1928 — which would get him a death sentence.
- He was hanged in Lahore Central Jail on March 23, 1931.
- However, his ideas continued to inspire individuals to sacrifice themselves for their motherland.