Security Breach

Parliament Intruders Associated With ‘Bhagat Singh Fan Club’ Media Page

As sleuths are proceeding with the parliament security breach incident, several details about the key accused are being revealed.

According to Police sources all the accused were associated with the social media page ‘Bhagat Singh Fan Club’. Everyone met in Mysuru about one and a half years ago. Sagar came from Lucknow in July but could not go inside the Parliament House. On December 10, one by one everyone reached Delhi from their respective states. Everyone met near India Gate where colored crackers were distributed to everyone. Police is continuously interrogating them to find out who is the mastermind behind them, as per initial investigation, main conspirator is someone else.

Sagar Sharma, a resident of Lucknow’s Manaknagar area, is said to be inspired by left-wing ideology and use to share and comment on similar posts using two Facebook accounts.

Both Facebook accounts of Sagar have not been active for several months. His Facebook pages revealed that Sagar was also in contact with many people from Kolkata, Rajasthan and Haryana via Facebook.

On the other hand, family members of Sagar have locked their house and gone to an undisclosed location. Sagar’s family includes his father, mother and younger sister. The family originally hails from Uttar Pradesh’s Unnao district and has lived here in Lucknow in rented accommodation for almost 20 years.

Himanshu, owner of the electric rickshaw that Sagar used to run, said that “one and a half months ago, he had taken my electric rickshaw on rent. He was a very nice boy and used to take e-rickshaw in morning and bring it out in the evening, just like any other driver. He used to keep himself within his work.”

Ahead of this, Sagar’s family said on Wednesday that Sagar left his home in Lucknow two days ago to take part in a “protest” in Delhi. However, the family said they were unaware of his involvement in the Parliament security breach.

Sagar’s maternal uncle has raised suspension on Sagar being framed in conspiracy and said, “I am shocked that he jumped into parliament; only God knows the truth. He has been pulled into it as per a conspiracy by someone who holds a big position; otherwise, he is a simple boy.”

Anuj Kumar Sharma Sagar’s fellow e-rickshaw driver said, “He also used to drive an e-rickshaw on rent; the boy is very good; he never quarrelled with anyone in the locality; whenever I used to come to the locality, I saw that he came, did his work and went away. He used to come and sit near my house and ask for work.”

On Wednesday, in a major security breach on the anniversary of the 2001 Parliament terror attack, two people–Sagar Sharma and Manoranjan D–jumped into the Lok Sabha chamber from the public gallery during Zero Hour, released yellow gas from canisters and shouted slogans before being overpowered by the MPs.

Meanwhile, the Delhi Police Special Cell has registered a case under sections of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act to probe into the security breech incident, while the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has ordered an inquiry. (ANI)

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Bhagat Singh's Relative Slams

Bhagat Singh’s Relative Slams Kejriwal For comparing Sisodia With Freedom Fighter

Slamming Arvind Kejriwal for comparing his deputy Manish Sisodia and minister Satyendar Jain with Bhagat Singh, a close relative of the freedom fighter, Harbhajan Singh Dhath, on Monday asked the Delhi Chief Minister to “fight his fights politically”.

Dhath also asked Kejriwal to refrain from “equating” criminals with freedom fighters and suggested that he “concentrate” on the “miserable” condition of Punjab, where the Aam Aadmi Party was voted to power earlier this year with a thumping majority.
Kejriwal on Sunday had equated Sisodia who is facing a probe in the alleged excise policy case, and jailed minister Jain, with Bhagat Singh. “Jail bars and hanging noose could not deter Bhagat Singh’s resolute intentions. This is the second fight for freedom. Manish and Satyendar are today’s, Bhagat Singh. After 75 years, the country got an education minister who gave good education to the poor and gave hope for a bright future,” he had tweeted.

Speaking to ANI, the relative of the freedom fighter lambasted the Delhi Chief Minister and asked “what political mileage did he want from it?”

“Why are criminals caught in corruption cases being compared with martyrs? What political mileage did he want from it? Whatever your fight, fight it politically. Do not equate them with the martyrs. It is not only about Bhagat Singh but also do not equate anybody with other freedom fighters,” Dhath said.

“It was never his (Bhagat Singh’s) mission to be elected to power or else he could have survived and would not have been hanged… They should concentrate on the condition Punjab is in today,” he added.

The freedom fighter’s relative asked Kejriwal to follow Bhagat Singh’s vision but not “equate anybody” with him.

“There could not be a more shameful thing than comparing Satyendar Jain with Bhagat Singh. He is lodged in jail for months and the court is denying him bail. And you compare him with Bhagat Singh. We do not have any problem if you follow his vision, but do not equate anybody with Bhagat Singh,” Dhath said.

Calling the condition of Punjab “miserable”, he said that the people who voted them to power can also remove them from the top position.

“People have brought you to power (in Punjab), but if they can bring you to power, they also know how to remove you. The condition of Punjab is miserable. It was unimaginable to think that you would do such a thing to Punjab after coming to power,” he said.

“We have seen it earlier also that they took his name before the elections. I want to ask Kejriwal why did you need it? People know Bhagat Singh, he does not need recognition from the political parties. People respect him across the country and consider him an idol,” Dhath added.

Kejriwal’s remarks had come after his deputy Manish Sisodia was issued summon by the CBI in the excise policy case, in which Sisodia is one of the accused. (ANI)

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India Pakistan World Cup Fixture

Why Peace Remains Elusive In Indo-Pak Relations

On Shaheed Bhagat Singh’s 115th birth anniversary last week, his life and death for an undivided India’s freedom, and that he is revered on both sides of the India-Pakistan divide were recalled. But save such sentiments shared by minuscule sections, little is left to work on building good-neighbourly relations.

One people for centuries, they became two adversarial ‘sides’ 75 years ago. Separation resolved nothing; it only deepened the crevices. Unwilling to forget the past, and unable to deal with the present, they are trapped in a cul-de-sac and unable to move forward to that goal.

The sad thing is that once you begin exploring prospects of improving the perennially tense relations, you run into innumerable obstacles and imponderables.

As one sees Pakistan posturing for peaceful ties in diplomatic forums, this is yet another moment. Everyone knows that the current government has neither the mandate nor the pull with the military, to smoke the peace pipe. The all-powerful force where the buck stops is clueless about how to resolve the problems it created by playing favourites, and has conceded space to the squabbling politicians.

Aware that this is the neighbour’s weak moment, India is simply not interested. That has long been its stance. For every Pakistani salvo on Kashmir, India returns the terrorism charge. To every charge of the ‘Hindutva’ campaign, India points to the ill-treatment of Pakistan’s minorities. India’s undeclared goal is to make hay while the sun is not shining on the neighbour.

Social media talks of a contrast. The 4,500-year old drainage system of Mohen Jo Daro in the Indus Valley efficiently disposed of the rain and flood waters when a third of Pakistan was under water. But three Chinese companies gather and dispose of garbage in modern-day Karachi, nicknamed ‘Venice of Sewage’.

What about the flooding of Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, and other Indian cities? Actually, we are sailing in the same boat that is stuck in sewage. Climate change is hurting both, but they are bogged down in old, divisive issues, unable to discuss such common threats and address them jointly.

Amidst constant diplomatic wrangling, there’s a déjà vu. Like it did in the 1980s, India has protested the $450 million US dole to Pakistan for the “sustainment and support” of the F-16 combat aircraft. It did not work then and it is unlikely to work now.

The sale in that Cold War era was meant to shore up Pakistan’s defences against India. That fig leaf is not available in the radically changed geopolitical situation. Instead, Washington now insists that the aircraft are meant for counter-terrorism. India’s S Jaishankar said: “At the end of the day, for someone to say I am doing it because it is for counterterrorism when you are talking of an aircraft of the capability of an F-16, everyone knows where they are deployed, what is its use, what is its capability. You are not fooling anybody by saying these things.”

Does Anthony Blinken really believe what he says? With changed equations, India sees itself as a bigger US ally, but the latter has always drawn the line at the India-Pakistan border. India is an ally against China only in East and Southeast Asia. That is unlikely to change since the US continues to woo Pakistan to keep it away from China.

ALSO READ: Naya Pakistan, Old Script, Chronic Crisis

Diplomacy can be brazen. Both India and Pakistan must now await its subtle strokes. Like earlier American administrations, particularly the Democratic one, Biden also wants India and Pakistan to talk. But the two are in no mood. In anticipation of this, like two boxers in the ring hitting out before the bell rings, there was no ‘adaab’ from Shehbaz Sharif, nor an extended hand from Narendra Modi at the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit. Unsurprisingly, while the two committed themselves to peace, the Kashmir-versus-terrorism drill also played out at the UN General Assembly.

India’s approach has unanimity – the political opposition is afraid to even utter the word Pakistan for fear of annoying the ultra-nationalists. Pakistan’s stance is also well-calibrated. Shehbaz listed Kashmir as the Number One issue — he can’t afford to miss. His brother Nawaz suffered when he skipped it at Sharm el-Sheikh in 2009.

Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari told a French TV network that India had not helped in fighting floods, “nor was there any expectation.” Surely, Modi telephoned Shehbaz to empathize but did not offer any help the way India does to countries far and near that are hit by natural calamities.

Doubly assuming that the offer was made and Pakistan accepted, it would have caused controversies. Modi would have been accused of feeding the ‘enemy’. Shehbaz had to be careful. Damned for having ‘surrendered’ to a “Hindutva driven” India, he would have gifted a missile to Imran Khan, who wants a snap poll, whatever happens to Pakistan. He has added ‘war’ to his set of issues that would not deter his campaign. War against whom?

There are always “fringe elements” thriving with official or tacit support from the powerful. Amidst global appeals for help and inviting the likes of UN Secretary-General and Angelina Jolie, tomatoes imported from Iran were destroyed by Sunni militants, in full public view, because they were ‘Shia’ produce.

Like ‘fringe’ elements in India shouting “go to Pakistan” to anyone they disagree with, the India angle is strong in Pakistan as well. Imran Khan – and he is not a “fringe element” – playing to the political gallery, has accused the Sharifs of trying to reach “a secret understanding” with India to “promote their business interest.”

Khan and Pakistan’s elite with farming backgrounds do not appreciate this, but there is something about the Sharifs that Indians find easier to work with. The Lahore summit and the unscheduled Modi visit at a Sharif event in 2015 indicate this.

How does one talk trade when that word is anathema? Pakistan Army chief General Javed Bajwa does not say it anymore. In March 2021, he stirred a debate by stressing geo-economics. Among other things, the “Bajwa Doctrine” recommended restoring peace within by putting down various internal insurgencies, reviving economic growth, and reconciling with the neighbours. Analysts thought this was a radical change in the Pakistan Army’s stance. Taking the cue, the commerce ministry decided to resume trade with India.

But the Khan Government annulled it. Sections of the business community saw a win-win situation in bilateral trade, even working to Pakistan’s advantage. But they have been ignored. Nobody in Pakistan has bothered to explain why the “Bajwa Doctrine” was junked, and India couldn’t care less.

Last but not the least, both have electoral compulsions – there will always be. Politicians on both sides indulge in this profitable pastime in the name of democracy, despite Covid, calamities, and constraints on the economy. And ‘war’, if you note Imran Khan’s resolve.

One of Pakistan’s most perceptive writers, F S Aijazuddin, writes: “… the funeral of the late Queen Elizabeth II has caused many to marvel at the plans made for it years in advance. That is not unusual. Pakistani politicians, too, have been planning each other’s funerals for years.” Isn’t it the same, across South Asia?

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Revenge Of A Revolutionary

Blood like water spilt in the dust… And, with the first light of morning, he saw the truth… He took a handful of blood-soaked earth in his hand, heavy and black, and rubbed it against his forehead… and he swore a terrible vow… No matter how long it took, no matter how it took him… he would track down the dogs who did this to his people and he would kill them…
The Patient Assassin: A True Tale of Massacre, Revenge and The Raj by Anita Anand (Simon and Schuster, UK, 2019)

Filmmaker Shoojit Sircar makes deeply meaningful films, which break the blurred lines between the parallel and mainstream cinema. He has made significant films like Vicky Donor, Gulabo Sitabo, October and Pink. His latest is an epic on a difficult and fascinating subject – Sardar Udham. The film is being premiered on October 16.

In the words of Sircar, ‘‘He was definitely an adventurer, and he was focussed. The film zooms into Udham’s mind. We have tried to understand what he was keeping to himself, that mysterious thing he was carrying; what was his belief system, his ideology; how did he travel, because there was a lookout notice on him and he could not take the sea route…Yet he did. He was a member of the Ghadar Party in America. He was a small-time actor, a mechanic. But he was not known at all till the news of the assassination broke out in 1940. There are many missing links. I have presented as much as I know, but I also don’t know everything.’’

The Jallianwala Bagh massacre was systematically executed on April 13, 1919, as thousands of peaceful protesters gathered in this sprawling and dusty walled space in Amritsar. No one could imagine or anticipate what would follow on that fateful and tragic day. The armed troops moved into the narrow lanes, took positions and started firing almost immediately, one round after another.

People fell soaked with blood. People ran and fell, dead and half-dead. People were buried under the dead, some still alive and bleeding. No one was spared, not even children. This was perhaps one of the most cold-blooded massacre to ever happen in the history of the colonised world.

The firing was executed with single-minded motivation by Brigadier General Reginald ‘Rex’ Dyer. He was following the orders of Lieutenant Governor Michael O’Dwyer, who had by then established himself as one of the most ruthless and racist administrators in British Punjab. Both expressed no regrets for this mass murder ever in their life.

The massacre led to outrage across India. It created waves of protests. Revolutionaries moved across the landscape spreading the idea of revolution. There were intelligence reports of entire Punjab being up in flames and spontaneous violence against the British was being anticipated.

In retaliation one village was bombed. Soldiers shot dead farmers returning from the fields and inside their homes from an aircraft. Youngsters were flogged in public places in Amritsar for no rhyme or reason. Others were compelled to lie flat on the ground on their chest and crawl for long distances, while being whipped and kicked. There was no time for mourning and shared grief. One wave of vengeance and violence followed another wave under the brutish regime of Michael ‘O Dwyer.

This is where the true and mythical story of Udham Singh begins, as depicted with great historical detail in a classically lucid and wonderfully penned book on his life and times by Anita Anand. Her grandfather was present in Jallianwala Bagh moments before the killings began. Her book is a painstakingly researched narrative across several countries, including from the nooks and corners of Punjab.

The new film would therefore be a great leap of imagination, with cinematic possibilities. This is simply because so little is known about the many fascinating layers which makes the character of Udham Singh. It would be an epical task to measure and map the kaleidoscopic spectrum of the life of this colourful, brilliant, non-conformist and totally unconventional revolutionary who worked for years with the underground Ghadar Party, literally, across the world.

Udham Singh was born as Sher Singh in a poor family in a village in British Punjab. His mother died very young. His starving and hardworking father too died on the way while walking on a long trek with his little sons, Sher and Sadhu Singh, to Amritsar. According to Anita Anand, some priests who were passing by picked up the children and handed him over to a distant relative, who, then, put them up in an orphanage in Amritsar run by a kind and generous Sikh.

ALSO READ: An Idea Cannot Be Jailed

No one really knows for sure the whereabouts of Udham Singh when the Jallianwala Bagh massacre happened. Among the many narratives bordering on mythology involving his life, it is said that he was on the spot when the massacre was executed by the ‘butcher of Jallianwala Bagh’. And he survived.

He thereby picked up a fistful of blood-soaked earth from the ground, and vowed to kill the man responsible for the massacre. And then he waited, schemed and planned. From a poor and homeless orphan, and a jobless, starving youth, his life is truly a classic epic of struggle, resilience and flight of imagination.

From a lowly worker in the Ugandan Railway Company to Basra and Baghdad, from Mexico to the United States of America, crossing illegally across the border, from travelling across the length and breadth of American states to land up in New York, and then travelling across Europe, and, finally, to London, it was an eventful journey for Udham Singh. He changed his name and identity several times, even while working overground and underground as a Ghadarite, transporting revolutionaries across borders, funding armed networks, procuring arms and ammunition, distributing incendiary literature against the British. In between he was arrested in Amritsar with guns and ammunition in his possession. He was brutally beaten up and kept in solitary confinement because he would campaign among the prisoners against the British. Then he was transported to Mianwali Jail (now in Pakistan’s Punjab).

This is where he met and came to know another legend and intellectual: Bhagat Singh. Clearly, when Bhagat Singh was hanged, it shocked Udham Singh to the core of his heart. Himself an illiterate, henceforth, he called Bhagat Singh, many years younger to him, as his Guru.

Despite this incredible full-time revolutionary work, interspersed with a marriage with perhaps a Mexican woman in America and a regular family life for a short spell, he finally fulfilled his pledge to himself, to the murdered people in Jallianwala Bagh, and to his country’s freedom. It was a long wait.

In a meeting organised by the East India Association in London, Udham Singh pumped several bullets inside the body of Michael ‘O Dwyer at the dias on March 13, 1940. He had taken his revenge after 21 years. During interrogation, he said his name was Mohammad Singh Azad – a secular pluralist revolutionary celebrating the freedom of his country from the yoke of colonialism.

The murder of ‘O Dwyer created waves of celebration across India and among Ghadarites, revolutionaries and freedom fighters. To stop the message to spread through a public trial, the British acted swiftly. Udham Singh was hanged on July 31, 1940, at Bradbury, England. His remains have been preserved at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar.