BY BISWARAJ PATNAIK, December 31, 2015 : Lord Jagannath and His siblings will be forced to remain awake the whole night today to keep in good humour self-styled dignitaries including ministers, administrators and countless petty politicians in swan white clothes bee-lining at the 12th century shrine, just after 12 am, imagining New Year has rushed in when it’s actually dark midnight only. The temple administration doesn’t dare alert the ignorantly arrogant ego-inflated persons that the ‘Lord and Lady Deities’ would take offence for this is not Their New Year and more particularly because Madam Lakshmi, who prepares and serves food, is away at her parent’s abode on annual leave. Instead, they keep struggling so that the ‘larger than life’ creatures are not kept waiting for long. No wonder, greedy servitors, to execute grand robbery from foolish pilgrims, force the Deities to remain awake without rest and make hay as the sun is still sleeping.

December is fairly eventful in history. Great revolutionaries including Chandra Sekhar Azad, Sukhdev, Rajguru and many others have slipped into oblivion.

Born on 26 December, 1899, Udham Singh is one of the rarest freedom fighters who was hanged and buried in England. The Jallianwala Bagh tragedy had occurred on the April 13, 1919. Nearly 15,000 men, women, children- Hindu, Muslim and Sikh had gathered at a famous garden near the Harminder Sahib in Amritsar on Vaisakhi, the Punjabi new year. Around 5.30 pm, General Dyer arrived with sixty five Gurkha and twenty five notoriously ruthless Baluchi soldiers who had 50 rifles and two armoured cars with machine guns. The vehicles were parked at the wide gates to block escapepassage.

Without warning once to disperse, Dyer ordered to open fire indiscriminately in the direction of the densest sections of the congregation to cause maximum casualties. Firing stopped only when ammunition ran out. People died of bullet injuries, stampede, trauma and from jumping into a deep well to avoid being killed by bullets. 120 badly wounded people were pulled out of the well but were left to die there without medical help. The rest died helplessly as night set in. A subsequent enquiry reported only 379 dead though more than one thousand had died on the spot.

Surprisingly, the details of the massacre were not known in Britain till December 1919. But after learning, both Churchill and Asquith had openly condemned the action. They had called the act “monstrous and one of the worst outrages in the whole of our history”. What most people do not seem to know is the fact that the Lieutenant Governor of Punjab, Michael Francis O’ Dwyer was the mastermind behind the massacre. He had convinced General Dyer that killing people alone would scare the revolutionaries away. O’ Dwyer and General Dyer were two different persons. Nick- named later “The butcher of Amritsar”; Reginald Edward Harry Dyer was born on October 9, 1864 in Muree, now in Pakistan, to a family of brewers. But after the Jallianwalabag killing, he went back to Britain and died a natural death on July 24, 1927 at Long Ashton, Someset. Even Lord Chelmsford had believed O’Dwyer was right in having organized the massacre in the larger interest of the empire.

Incidentally, Bhagat Singh was so shattered by the killing of Lala Lajpat Rai on the streets of Lahore that he shot a Deputy Superintendent of Police called J P Saunders in retaliation. Bhagat Singh was hanged after a summary trial along with Sukhdev and Rajguru, while Udham Singh was in jail for subversive activities against the British. His only aim in life was to avenge the Jalianwalabag massacre and the hanging of friends.

Udham was born into a very poor farmer Sikh family in Shahpur Kalan village under the Sunam tehsil of Sangrur district of the Punjab on December 26, 1899. The patriarch of the family Sardar Tehal Singh worked as a watchman at a railway level crossing in Upalli. Udham’s mother died in 1901 and the father in 1907 leaving him and elder brother Mukta as orphans. One Bhai Kishen Singh Ragi put them in the Central Khalsa Orphanage called Putlighar in Amritsar, on October 24, 1907. Udham managed to pass matriculation and became a known revolutionary in 1919. He kept landing in jail off and on until released on October 23, 1931. He named himself Ram Mohammad Singh Azad and began a sign-board painting shop in Amritsar to evade police surveillance. Later he went away to Kashmir in 1933, duped police personnel and slipped out to Germany. From there he reached Britain and managed to get a residence on the Adler Street in east London in 1934. A six-round revolver was acquired with six bullets. Like the wise, patient vulture, he waited for his prey to appear at a vantage location where he could use his revolver.

A joint meeting of the East India Association and the Central Asian Society (now Royal society for Asian Affairs) was to be held at the Caxton Hall in London on March 13, 1940. Dwyer, then 75, was invited as a speaker to the event. As the former civil servant with deep ‘India experience’ rose to speak, Udham walked up to him and shot from a pointblank range. He had managed to carry the gun in a book cut fittingly between the covers to accommodate the weapon. Two bullets hit Dwyer killing him instantly. Udham did not try to escape. He was tried, convicted and hanged in the Pentonville prison in the UK on July 31, 1940.

At the trial, he had told the prosecutor, “I have taken revenge. He killed a thousand innocent people. I am content and proud that after struggling for twenty years, my mission is over. My
people are starving to death at homewhile the British masters are leading a luxurious life all around us. I feel honoured that I am dying happy that I will be dying after exterminating a most merciless colonial exploiter.”His revolver, a knife, his personal diary and a salvaged slug from the gun are on display at the Black Museum of the Scotland Yard in the UK even today. Among great martyrs, only Bhagat Singh lives on perhaps due to a couple of movies made on him. Udham, his avenger who trailed O’Dwyer for twenty long years across continents under most difficult circumstances, is a completely forgotten name in India today.

Just as the news of O’Dwyer brokeout, the Congress controlled English-language press in India condemned Udham’s action as violent and unforgiveable. Mahatma Gandhi too condemned it saying “the Caxton Hall outrage has caused me deep pain. I regard it as an act of insanity. I hope this will not be allowed to affect political judgment.” Nehru wrote in his own ‘National Herald’, “Assassination is regretted and it is earnestly hoped that it will not have far-reaching repercussions on the political future of India.” But the ‘Amrit Bazaar Patrika’ and the ‘New Statesman’ on their March 18, 1940 issue wrote, “O’ Dwyer’s name is linked to the grave Punjab massacre incident, which India cannot ever forget.” It was only Subhash Bose who hailed Udham’s revenge-taking action as absolutely correct. Interestingly, most of the world press too held O’ Dwyer responsible for the grave Jallianwallabagh massacre. Even the Times of London had written, “An expression of pent-up fury of the down-trodden Indian people.”

Today’s politicians, wealthy business people, wealthy writers, movie stars, cricketers et al do not even seem to know who all sacrificed, at what young age and with what courage!
Among other notable December events in India, the most horrible was on 31 December 1999 the release of three dreaded terrorists to save some Indian lives aboard a plane hijackedfrom Nepal and kept in Kandahar. The move then was not appreciated by the world community because India then did merrily the easier wrong than the harder right.

In late December this year, the Delhi chief minister Kejriwal alleged that Arun Jaitley, chief of the Delhi cricket body for 13 years, is guilty of fake deals, conflict of interest, fudged accounts and forgery.Jaitley has sued Kejriwal for criminaldefamation. Prime Minister Modi has deprived millionaires of cooking gas subsidy. Paupers earning 0.9999 million rupees per annum can avail the LPG subsidy. Sounds crazy. Anyone earning more than 0.3 million should lose subsidy. The million rupee subsidy deprivation is only a laughing stock. More than seventy five per cent Indians earn less than Rs 50,000 a year.

The woman mayor of Cuttack has been caught with a ration card meant for the poor. BJD has been put to shame because of her greed-driven crime. The party will not carry the dirt baggage. Lady mayor would be tossed out for sure.

Good news is the Jagannath temple administration has sought support from the government to make wide roads around the great temple to facilitate pilgrims circling the shrine in divine comfort.But planning of hotels on temple property would be sin, as theage old culture of providing the poor with free lodging facilities would be gone forever. In ancient times, the poor were given free Mahaprasad too. ‘Hundi collection’ can take care of the poor pilgrims.

The best pilgrim-friendly decision is to scrap the hereditary rights of servitors who have far outgrown the required number causing havoc on all occasions, especially after the car festival went live on television to falsely glorify a few sects of servitors who have now turned arm-twisting blackmailers for money they don’t deserve at all. Further, the temple administration ignores criminally the dangerous use of plastic bags in the temple. The traditional eco-friendly palm leaf containers are gone. So are the palm trees and the magnificent weaving skills commonly seen among the women of backward servitor communities that saved the environment in myriad ways. What our law and decision makers may not know at all is that Italy banned use of plastic bags on 31st December 2010when annual per capita use had hit a whopping three hundred toxin-spreading bags.

Lord Jagannath celebrates New Year on April 14, which is around the same time as Baisakhi in Punjab. Jallianwalabagh massacre had happened on this day 96 years ago. The incident had turned Udham Singh a great revolutionary who laid down his life for the dignity of the Indian race.
The conscious nation salutes Udham a million times!
Happy calendar New Year.