Topics Covered:
Modern Indian history from about the middle of the eighteenth century until the present- significant events, personalities, issues
Who was Udham Singh?
What to study?
For Prelims and mains: Udham Singh- legacy.
Context: A BJP MP recently mentioned about Udham Singh in Parliament.
Who was Udham Singh?
- Born in Sunam in Punjab’s Sangrur district in 1899.
- He was a political activist who got associated with the Ghadar Party while in the US.
- In 1934, Singh made his way to London with the purpose of assassinating O’Dwyer, who in 1919 had been the Lieutenant Governor of Punjab and unsurprisingly, Singh considered O’Dwyer to be responsible for the massacre.
- Instead of Dyer, who instructed his men to open fire at the crowd gathered in Jallianwala Bagh, O’Dwyer is considered to be the actual perpetrator, since Dyer could not have executed it without his permission.
- On March 13, 1940 Singh shot O’Dwyer at a meeting of the East India Association and the Royal Central Asian Society at Caxton Hill.
- He was sentenced to death and was hanged on July 31, 1940 at Pentonville Prison.
What is Ghadar Party?
The multi-ethnic party was believed to have communist tendencies and was founded by Sohan Singh Bhakna in 1913.
Headquartered in California.
It was committed to the ouster of the British from India.
Sources: the Hindu.
