India News and Features Alliance (INFA)

(Shaheed Bhagat Singh and Batu Keshwar Dutta created revolutionary history on 8 April 1929 by hurling bombs on the floor of Central Assembly under the British Raj. On 23 March 1931, Bhagat Singh, Raj Guru and Sukhdev were hanged in Lahore Central Jail and their bodies secretly taken out and cremated on the banks of the Sutlej. Dutta was imprisoned for long years in Kala Pani Jail in the Andaman Islands.

(Reproduced below for the benefit of free India’s younger generation, courtesy the Lok Sevak Sangh, is the full text of the written statement filed by “accused Bhagat Singh and B.K. Dutta” in the Court of the British Sessions Judge, Delhi in response to charges under S.S. 307 of IPC and 3&4 of Explosive Substance Act. It provides authentic information about the motive of Bhagat Singh and Dutta in hurling bombs and nails many lies spread by the colonial rulers against the martyrs of India’s freedom struggle.)

1. We stand charged with serious offences and at this stage we must explain our conduct. The following questions arise:

2. To the first half of the first question our reply is an affirmative, but some of the so-called “eye-witnesses” have perjured themselves and since we are not denying our liability to the extent and such as it is let our statement about them be judged for what it is worth. By way of illustration, we may point out that the evidence of Sergeant Terry regarding the seizure of the pistol from one of us is a deliberate falsehood for neither of us had the pistol at the time we gave ourselves up.

Other witnesses who have deposed to having seen the bombs thrown by us have not scrupled to tell lies patent on the face of them. It has its own moral for those who aim at judicial purity and fair play. At the same time, we acknowledge the fairness of the Public Prosecutor and the judicial attitude of the Court so far.

3. In our reply to the next half of the first question, we are constrained to go into some detail to offer a full and frank explanation of our motive and the circumstances leading upto what has now become an historic event. When we were told by some of the Police Officers who visited us in jail that Lord Irwin in the address to a joint session of the two Houses after the event in question described it as an attack directed against no individual but against the institution itself, we readily recognized that the true significance of the incident had been correctly appreciated.

We are next to none in our love of humanity and so, far from having any malice against any individual, we hold human life sacred beyond words. We are neither the perpetrators of dastardly outrages and therefore a disgrace to the country as the pseudo-socialist Diwan Chaman Lal is reported to have described us, nor are we ‘lunatics’ as the Tribune of Lahore and some others would have it believed. We humbly claim to be no more than serious students of the history and conditions of our country and human aspirations, and we despise hypocrisy.

Our practical protest was against the institution which, since its birth, has eminently helped to display not only its worthlessness but its far-reaching power for mischief. The more we have pondered, the more deeply we have been convinced that it exists only to demonstrate to the world India’s humiliation and helplessness and it symbolizes the over-riding domination of an irresponsible and autocratic rule.

Time and again, the National demand has been pressed by the Peoples’ representatives only to find the waste-paper basket as its final destination. Solemn resolutions passed by the House have been contemptuously trampled under foot on the floor of the so-called Indian Parliament. Resolutions regarding the repeal of repressive and arbitrary measures have been treated with sublime contempt and Government’s measures and proposals rejected as unacceptable by elected members have been restored by a stroke of the pen.

In brief, inspite of earnest endeavour we have utterly failed to find any justification for the existence of an institution which, despite all the pomp and splendour organized with the hard-earned money of the sweating millions of India, is only a hollow show and a mischievous make-believe. And alike have we failed to comprehend the mentality of the public leaders who help to squander public time and money on so manifestly stage-managed an exhibition of India’s helpless subjection.

We had been ruminating upon all this, as also upon the wholesale arrests of leaders of the labour movement when the introduction of the Trade Disputes’ Bill brought us into the Assembly to watch its progress and the course of the debate only served to confirm our conviction that the labouring millions of India had nothing to expect from an institution that stood as a menacing monument to the strangling power of Exploiters and the serfdom of the helpless labourers.

Finally, the insult of what we considered an inhuman and barbarous measure was hurled on the devoted heads of the representatives of the entire country and the starving and struggling millions were deprived of their primary right and sole means of improving their economic welfare. None who has felt like us for the dumb-driven drudges of labourers could possibly witness this spectacle with equanimity. None whose heart bleeds for those who have given their life-blood in silence to the building up of the economic structure of the Exploiters, of whom the Government happens to be the biggest in this country, could repress the cry of soul-agonizing anguish which so ruthless a blow wrung out our hearts.

Consequently, bearing in mind the words of the late Mr. S.R. Das, once the Law Member of the Governor General’s Executive Council, which appeared in the famous letter he had addressed to his son to the effect that a bomb was necessary to awaken England from her dreams, we dropped the bombs on the floor of the Assembly Chamber to register our protest on behalf of those who had no other means left to give expression to their heart-rending agony. Our sole purpose was “to make the deaf hear”, and to give the heedless a timely warning.

Others have as keenly felt as we have done and from under the seeming stillness of the sea of Indian humanity a veritable storm is about to break out. We have only hoisted the “danger signal” to warn those who are speeding along without heeding the grave dangers ahead. We have only marked the end of the era of utopian non-violences of whose futility the rising generation has been convinced beyond the shadow of doubt. Out of our sincerest goodwill to and love of humanity have we adopted this method of warning to prevent the untold sufferings which we like millions of others clearly foresee.

4. We have used the expression utopian non-violence in the foregoing para, which requires some explanation. Force when aggressives are applied is “violence” and is therefore morally unjustifiable, but when it is used in furtherance of a legitimate cause it has its moral justification. The elimination of force at all costs is utopian and the new movement which has arisen in the country, and of which we have given the warning, is inspired by the ideals which guided Guru Gobind Singh & Shivaji, Kamal Pasha & Riza Khan, Washington & Garibaldi, Lafayette & Lenin. As both the alien Government and the Indian public leaders appeared to have shut their eyes and closed their ears against the existence and the voice of this movement, we felt it our duty to sound the warning where it could not go unheard.

5. We have so far dealt with the motive behind the incident in question and now we must define the extent of our intention.

It cannot be gainsaid that we bore no personal grudge or malice against any one of those who received slight injuries or against any other person in the Assembly. On the contrary, we repeat that we hold human lives sacred beyond words and would sooner lay down our own lives in the service of humanity than injure any one else. Unlike the mercenary soldiers of Imperialist Armies who are disciplined to kill without compunction, we respect and insofar as it lies in us attempt to save human life. And still we admit having deliberately dropped the bombs into the Assembly Chamber.

Facts, however, speak for themselves and our intention should be judged from the result of our action without drawing upon hypothetical circumstances and presumptions. Despite the evidence of the Government Expert, the bombs that were thrown in the Assembly Chamber resulted in some damage to furniture and a few slight abrasions in less than half a dozen cases. While the Government’s scientist ascribed this result as a miracle, we see nothing but a precisely scientific process in it all.

First two bombs exploded in vacant spaces within wooden barriers of desks and benches. Secondly, even those who were within even 2 feet of the explosion (for instance Mr. P.R. Rau, Mr. Shanker Rao and Sir George Schuster) were either not hurt or only slightly scratched. Bombs of the capacity desposed to by the Government Expert (though his estimate being imaginary is exaggerated) loaded with an effective charge of Pt. Chlorate and a sensitive Picrate would have smashed the barriers and laid many low within some yards of the explosion.

Again had they been loaded with some other high explosive with a charge of destructive pellets or darts they would have sufficed to wipe out the majority of the members of the Legislative Assembly. Still again, we could have flung them into the official box chokfull of people of note. And finally we could have ambushed Sir John Simon whose luckless Commission was loathed by all the responsible people and who was sitting in the President’s gallery at the time. All this, however, was beyond our intention and the bombs did no more than they were designed to do and the miracle consisted of no more than the deliberate aim which landed them in safe places. Similarly, the pistol was fired in the air, but by neither of us.

6. We then deliberately offered ourselves to bear the penalty for what we had done, and to let the Imperialist Exploiters know that by crushing individuals they cannot kill ideas. By crushing two insignificant units the nation cannot be crushed. We wanted to emphasise the historical lesson that letters de Cachets and Bastilles could not crush the Revolutionary movement in France. Gallows and Siberian Mines could not extinguish the Russian revolution. The Bloody Sundays and Black and Tans failed to strangle the movement of Irish freedom.

Can Ordinances and Safety Bills snuff out the flame of freedom in India? Conspiracy cases trumped up or discovered and incarceration of all the youngmen, who cherish the vision of a greater ideal, cannot check the march of the Revolution. But timely warning if not unheeded can help to prevent loss of life and general sufferings. We took it upon ourselves to provide this warning and our duty is done.

7. I, Bhagat Singh, was asked in the Lower Court as to what we meant by the word ‘Revolution’. In answer to that question, I would say that Revolution does not necessarily involve a sanguinery strife, nor is there any place in it for individual vendetta. It is not the cult of the bomb and the pistol. By Revolution we mean that the present order of things which is based on manifest injustice must change. The producers or the labourers, inspite of being the most necessary element of society, are robbed by their exploiters of the fruits of their labour and deprived of their elementary right.

On the one hand, the peasant who grows corn for all starves with his family; the weaver who supplies world markets with textile fabrics cannot find enough to cover his own and his children’s bodies; the masons, smiths and carpenters who rear magnificent palaces live and perish in slums; and on the other the capitalist exploiters, the parasites of Society squander millions on their whims. These terrible inequalities, and forced disparity of chances are heading towards chaos. This state of affairs cannot last; and it is obvious that the present order of Society is merry-making on the brink of a volcano and the innocent children of the Exploiters no less than millions of the exploited are walking on the edge of a dangerous precipice. The whole edifice of this civilization, if not saved in time, shall crumble. A radical change, therefore, is necessary; and it is the duty of those who realize this to reorganize Society on the Socialistic basis.

Unless this is done and the exploitation of man by man and of nations by nations, which goes masquerading as Imperialism, is brought to an end, the sufferings and carnage with which humanity is threatened today can not be prevented and all talk of ending wars and ushering in an era of universal peace is undisguised hypocrisy. By Revolution we mean the ultimate establishment of an order of society which may not be threatened by such a breakdown, and in which the sovereignty of the proletariat should be recognized, and as the result of which a world-federation should redeem humanity from the bondage of capitalism and the misery of Imperial wars.

8. This is our ideal; and with this ideology for our inspiration we have given a fair and loud enough warning. If, however, it goes unheeded and the present system of Government continues to be an impediment in the way of the natural forces that are welling up, grim struggle must ensure involving the overthrow of all obstacles, and the establishment of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat to pave the way for the consummation of the ideal of the Revolution.

Revolution is the inalienable right of mankind. Freedom is the imprescriptable birth-right of all. The labourer is the real sustainer of Society. The Sovereignty of the people is the ultimate destiny of the workers.

For these ideals, and for this faith, we shall welcome any suffering to which we may be condemned. To the altar of this Revolution, we have brought our youth at incense; for no sacrifice is too great for so magnificent a cause.