Why did Gandhiji allowed the british officers to give permission to hang to death to Bhagat Singh?
Answers
Today, on his 109th birth anniversary of Shaheed Bhagat Singh, the revolutionary icon of the freedom struggle who attained martyrdom at the young age of 23, The Quint is reposting a tribute from its archives.
Alongwith Sukhdev and Rajguru, Bhagat Singh was hanged to death less than a week before the commencement of the Karachi session of the Indian National Congress, on March 29, 1931, a landmark event of India’s freedom struggle in which economic freedom was equated with political freedom.
The year 1928 was marked by an anti-Simon Commission upsurge everywhere in India. On 30 October 1928, the Simon Commission faced a huge hostile crowd led by Lala Lajpat Rai at Lahore Station. Lala was severely beaten by the Police under JA Scot, British SP and he later succumbed to his head injury.
The whole nation was stunned by this savagery. As news of the attack on Lajpat Rai spread, the country reacted with anger.
Bhagat Singh was appalled. He could not believe that a white man could dare take a stick in hand and set upon Lajpat Rai. The HSRA (Hindustan Socialist Republic Army) decided to undertake retaliatory action. On 17 December, Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, Sukhdev and Chandra Shekhar Azad mistook the ASP, JP Scot for Saunders, as they pounced on him and shot him dead.
A few months later, on 8 April 1929, Bhagat Singh and Batukeswar Datta threw a bomb in the Central Legislative Assembly Hall in Delhi. It was hurled from the midst of a packed gallery, not aimed at anybody, but to draw the attention of the House, the Indian people and the British rulers in India.
As Bhagat Singh and Batukeswar Dutt had planned not to escape after throwing the bomb, they were arrested. While Dutt was sentenced to transportation for life in the Assembly Bomb Case, Bhagat Singh, along with Rajguru and Sukhdev, was sentenced to death for the murder of Saunders in what became famous as the Lahore conspiracy case.