CHAPTER 9
THE ASSEMBLY BOMB OUTRAGE (Contd.)
As the Assembly Bomb Outrage is the most important event not only in the life of Sardar Bhagat Singh, but also in the history of Revolutionary India, it needs to be discussed and explained in fuller detail. What we have explained in the foregoing chapter is a matter of common history. But it is necessary to relate the things that happened behind the screen so that one may arrive at a proper historical perspective.
The Central Committee of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association, while planning the murder of Mr. Scott, thought not only of the punishment they would inflict on the person who was responsible for the ignominious lathi blows on the great national leader, but they laid greater stress on the fight that they anticipated. They built up in their imagination a picture of Bhagat Singh, riddled with police bullets, captured after a gallant fight. Regarding this picture as an inevitable consequence, they had planned that Bhagat Singh would make a bold statement, enunciating the principles of the revolutionary party, reiterating the revolutionary faith, and with one step in the gallows, would send forth an appeal to the youths of the country. They believed that such an appeal would have immense effect in furthering the cause of the revolutionary party.
When these anticipated consequences did not come about, they began to think of something else. At this time the Labour Unions of Bombay were engaged in a strenuous struggle with the mill-owners. Suddenly the Government of India launched a campaign against the socialist workers and a number of them were arrested at different parts of the country. Soon it became known that the authorities wanted to prosecute them in what is known as the Meerut Conspiracy Case.
Hardly had the agitation in connexion with these arrests subsided when the Government brought in the Trades Dispute Bill. The labourites perceived that this bill, if passed would have disastrous effects on Trade Union movement.
The revolutionary party was eager .for such an opportunity. At the headquarter of the H. S. R. A. at Agra there was discussion every day, and Bhagat Singh urged the party to take such action by which they could show the solidarity of the H. S. R. A. with the labour and peasant movements. Subsequently, at a meeting of the party held at Delhi, it was decided that B. K. Dutt and another person should go and attack the official benches in the Legislative Assembly with bombs.
We reproduce below portions from the statement of Hansraj Vora, an approver in the Lahore Conspiracy Case as recorded in the proceedings in the Magistrate's court on 26th of November 1929. These, will clearly explain the whole thing.
“Two or three days after the Assembly Bomb Outrage, Sukhdeva again met witness ( Hansraj, approver) near the canal. At that time Sukhdeva showed him the photographs of Bhagat Singh and B. K. Dutt, and informed him that the party, at its Delhi meeting, had decided that Bhagat Singh and Dutt were to surrender themselves to the police so that they might be able to expound there by the revolutionary creed and philosophy by means of a statement in the court. According to Sukhdeva, the object of throwing bombs in the Assembly, was that they might be able to show their 'protest' against the unjustifiable provisions of the Trades Dispute Bill and the Public Safety Bill. But they had no intention of killing anybody. The bombs were deliberately kept weak, so that even if their explosion did some harm to the Government benches, no harm might come to the Congress leaders."
As stated above, Bhagat Singh was not the person chosen to accompany B. K. Dutt in the Assembly Outrage. But a very great personal friend of Bhagat Singh urged him to do so, stating that Bhagat Singh would be the fittest person to do it. The reply that he wrote, giving his consent to the proposal, reveals a softer side of his character. To outward appearance Bhagat Singh seemed somewhat unemotional, as if devoid of feelings. But the letter that he wrote to this lifelong companion breathes a rare feeling of love and emotion. Sure of a permanent parting, Bhagat Singh poured out the innermost feelings of his heart in that jewel of a letter. As, while writing the letter, he himself felt submerged in a feeling of love, he saw a vision of the task that lay before him, and thus he must have felt the conflict of his feeling of love and his sense of duty. In the letter he dilates upon the theme and quotes instances from Stepniak's Career of a Nihilist, one of his favourite books. In the letter he reiterates his conviction that love is incompatible for the life of a revolutionary. Unfortunately, this valuable letter was seized by the police at the Mozang House Bomb Factory at Lahore and is now in their possession.
{ This letter of Shahid Bhagat Singh can be read at http://www.shahidbhagatsingh.org/index.asp?link=april5 : Editor}
By Bhagat Singh's genius, the trial of the Assembly Bomb Case was fully utilized to further the cause of the party. It was Bhagat Singh and Dutt who for the first time raised shouts of "Long Live Revolution," "Long Live Proletariat" in the open court of Delhi for which both of them were kept handcuffed in the 'court as long as the trial lasted. Moreover, they took up the bold stand of declaring themselves to be members of the revolutionary party, and boldly sent out their message by a statement in the court that the Indians should devote themselves to the organization of labour and peasant parties so that a real .Swaraj for the masses might be brought about.
The important statement made in the Court of Sessions was very cleverly managed. Even before they had made that historic statement, typed copies of it were broadcast to all the important newspapers, and without going through the telegraph office, where it must have been curtailed and mutilated, the full statement was simultaneously published in all the leading newspapers of India. Nay, it was sent outside India also, and important extracts were published in some newspapers in Ireland, in La;Humanite of Paris and Pravda of Russia.
The effect of this statement on the youth and the public was electrical. The very public leaders who had condemned the outrage before now began to modify their statements. These were not a few papers and public men who began to. appreciate the motive of the youths.
Soon the Nau Jawan Bharat Sabha,. founded by Bhagat Singh himself, took up the cause of publicity work for the Assembly Bomb Outrage Case. The statement made by Bhagat Singh, and Dutt was printed in hundreds of thousands, with the familiar pictures of the two youths, and distributed all over India. Short biographies with printed copies of their photos were supplied free to a few leading newspapers that gladly undertook to circulate them. In short, the Assembly action completely fulfilled the intentions of the perpetrators and the Central Committee of the Hindusthan Socialist Republican Association; it created the prestige of the two representatives of the H. S. R. A. ; the party came into prominence, and the whole affair roused the imagination of the youth.
In view of the importance of the statement we have given some important extracts from it in the Appendix. We have also given there Bhagat Singh's rejoinder to the Modern Review which criticized the cry of "Long Live Revolution" as nonsensical.