The chain of events started with the death of Lala Lajpat Rai while demonstrating

against the Simon Commission. Lalaji was injured in a lathicharge; he died on

November 17, 1928, probably owing to shock. This drew many youth closer to the
conclusion that violence is the only means to fight the British. In fact, inspired by
the success of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917, many militant groups
had been functioning in India. Bhagat Singh was a member of one such group
called the Ghadar Party. Some of these militants killed Assistant Superintendent of
Police John Poyantz Saunders , who was supposed to have beaten Lala Lajpat Rai.
Four months after Saunders was shot, that is, on April 8, 1929, two young men
were arrested for throwing bombs at the treasury benches of the Central Legislative
Assembly in Delhi. One of them was Bhagat Singh. It was possibly this incident
that prompted the police to suspect his involvement in the so-called Lahore
Conspiracy Case.
The case is famous because of the draconian provisions incorporated by the British
in this context in the otherwise reasonable laws of criminal procedure. Those
detained under the case resorted to hunger strikes and boycotts in jails. Many a
time the accused had to be brought to the courtroom on stretchers because of
physical weakness. It is believed that Jatin Das, a young man, died during an
attempt to feed him forcibly after he had completed 63 days of fasting. Bhagat
Singh is more in the public memory than many other martyrs probably because of
the attention this trial attracted.
The trial was discussed so much that the witnesses started turning hostile. Even a
British policeman refused to identify Bhagat Singh as a person present at the time
of the murder. As a result, the government came out with the Lahore Conspiracy
Case Ordinance, 1930, which dispensed with the need of defence counsel, defence
witnesses and the presence of the accused during the trial. After this new-style trial
that lasted five months, the judgment came on October 7, 1930. An appeal was
made to the Privy Council but to no avail. Some people feel that Bhagat Singh
could have been saved under the Gandhi-Irwin agreement, which evolved during
the same period. This feeling prevailed especially among the leftists who presumed
that Gandhiji did not attempt for amnesty because he hated violence.
It will be proper to sit in judgment on the matter only after knowing the
background of the Gandhi-Irwin pact. This first ever agreement between the Raj
and the Congress came after two years of turmoil in the country in the form of a
non-violent civil disobedience struggle. After the Congress passed its Poorna
Swaraj resolution in December 1929, Gandhiji devised the 450-kilometre Dandi
March to shake the rural people out of inaction and break the Salt Law, as a token
of disobedience. The chain of events that followed showed that the extent of
sacrifice needed for a non-violent struggle was no less than what was required for a
violent struggle. Apart from making monetary and career sacrifices, the
participants showed, in the face of police torture, a level of physical courage that
would have been required in a violent struggle. By December that year almost all
leaders, including Gandhiji, were rounded up and jails in the country were full.
Finally, thanks to the mediation of moderates like Tej Bahadur Sapru, the
government came forward to talk to the satyagrahis. As a precondition the leaders
were released in January 1931. Gandhiji stayed in Delhi where later he convened a
meeting of the Congress Working Committee.
Accounts of the parleys between the Congress and the government between
February 17 and March 5 indicate that frequently there were delicate moments of
stalemate, long arguments over a phrase or a word, objections from colleagues and
so on. Many a time Gandhiji was seen off by the Viceroy after midnight and the
former would walk down to his residence at Dr. Mukhtar Ahmad Ansari's house,
which was 8 km away. It was on this occasion that Winston Churchill made the
nasty remark describing Gandhiji as a half-naked fakir. Disturbed by the endless
discussions, he had said: "It is alarming and nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a
seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the
East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Viceregal Palace... to parley on equal
terms with the representative of the King Emperor."
The outcome of the talks was a mixed one. Each leader was unhappy about specific
parts of the pact. Subhas Chandra Bose, for example, told the leftists among
Congressmen: "Between us and the British lies an ocean of blood and a mountain
of corpses. Nothing on earth can induce us to accept this compromise which
Gandhiji had signed." On the whole, the Congress had to accept the pact because
the Working Committee was with Gandhiji at every stage of the discussions. But
the militants and their supporters would not have it. What is the use of a truce that
does not get amnesty for Bhagat Singh and his colleagues? Wherever Gandhiji
went, youngsters with red flags encountered him with questions; sometimes he was
even manhandled. At the All India Congress Committee (AICC) meeting in
Karachi they shouted: "Gandhi's truce sent Bhagat Singh to the gallows."
WHILE parading through history, it would be unfair to Gandhiji if one does not
record his efforts in this case. He was not a mere politician but a humanist at the
core. He got 90,000 political prisoners other than satyagrahis released under the
pretext of "relieving political tension". He did plead for the commutation of the
death sentence of the three heroes, Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev, also. But
he did not succeed because the Viceroy's moves were governed from England and
these three were a challenge to the Raj and thus were not thought fit for pardon. In
fact, he wrote a letter to the Viceroy on the day of their execution, pleading
fervently for commutation, not knowing that the letter would be too late.
A point to be placed on Gandhiji's side of the balance is that he was already weak
in the truce with the Raj, owing to incomprehensible reasons. Probably, Irwin was
a better bargainer than he; otherwise a leader who spearheaded a successful,
unique, non-violent agitation that attracted the attention of the press the world over
and drew millions, including women and children who showed a rare spirit of
sacrifice, need not have made so many concessions to the government. In such a
situation he could not have been expected to win on the major issue of
commutation of death sentences. He said in Karachi: "I might have done one more
thing, you say. I might have made the commutation a term of settlement. It could
not be done so. And to threaten withdrawal now would be a breach of faith." But
this should not be taken as a manifestation of a lukewarm feeling towards Bhagat
Singh.
Records are replete with Gandhiji's speeches commending the spirit of sacrifice of all
such youth and their nationalistic spirit. He once said: "I am not referring to the frothy
eloquence that passes muster for patriotism; I have in mind that secret, silent,
persevering band of young men and women who want to see their country free at any
cost." He differed with them only on the merit of their path. He said in Karachi: "If I
had an opportunity to speak to Bhagat Singh and his comrades, I should have told
them that the way they pursued was wrong and futile. We cannot win Swaraj for our
famishing millions by sword. The way of violence can only lead to disaster, perdition.
I shall explain to you why. Do you think that all women and children who covered
themselves with glory during the last campaign would have done so if we had pursued
the path of violence? Would our women known as the meekest on earth have done the
unique service they did, if we had violence in us? And our children - our Vanar Sena;
how could you have had these innocent ones who renounced their toys, their kites,
their crackers and joined as soldiers of Swaraj - how could you have enlisted them in a
violent struggle?"

It is worth pondering over these words. It is the mass support that decides the success
or failure of a method of struggle. The people of India chose non-violent means over
violent ones so clearly that even after this controversy, whenever Gandhiji gave a call
he had millions responding to it. Perhaps it was this mass support to Gandhiji that
made prominent Left-leaning youth like M.R. Masani, Ram Manohar Lohia and
Jayaprakash Narayan to stay in his company. In any case, a violent struggle for
Independence could have succeeded only with external armed help, which came as
late as 1942 with Subhas Bose's efforts; by then independence had already been
conceded in principle.

It may take too long to discuss the Mahatma's arguments and compare the merits and
demerits of violent and non-violent means of struggle, but it would suffice to note that
it was not his creed of ahimsa that would turn to violence even "to punish a dacoit, or
even a murderer". Perhaps the following words of Lord Irwin himself might explain
why Gandhiji must have failed to persuade him to commute the sentence: "As I
listened to Mr. Gandhi putting the case for commutation before me, I reflected first on
what significance it surely was that the apostle of non-violence should so earnestly be
pleading the cause of the devotees of a creed so fundamentally opposed to his own,
but I should regard it as wholly wrong to allow my judgment to be influenced by
purely political considerations. I could not imagine a case in which under the law,
penalty had been more directly deserved." He has referred to Gandhiji's personal visit
to meet him on March 19. Interestingly enough, on the same day, Bhagat Singh and
two others had sent off a letter to the Viceroy because their friends coaxed them to do
so. But in that letter they had not asked for clemency. Instead they asked the Viceroy
to treat them as prisoners of war and hence to shoot them rather than hang them. With
this letter now available, it is no use lamenting on Gandhiji's stand, whatever that was,
because Bhagat Singh did not relish the idea of asking for a pardon. This is evident
from the fact that a friend of his (Prannath Mehta) visited him in the jail on March 20
with a draft letter for clemency but he declined to sign it.

Four days later the three were executed in Lahore, on the eve of the AICC session in Karachi. On
hearing the news, Gandhiji said that the sudden execution under the circumstances was like
cutting the ground underneath his feet, however technically unconnected it might be with the
terms of the truce. It probably was a cunning move by the Raj to order the execution just a night
before the Karachi session. It was done in the knowledge that the emotiveness of the issue would
put Gandhiji and the Congress in an awkward position at the AICC as the heat was anyway
directed against them. Indeed, that was what happened.
No doubt, it was a queer combination of circumstances that two streams of the freedom struggle
should thus meet in one incident, namely, the Gandhi-Irwin Pact. But queerer yet is the fact that
people who never believed in satyagraha as a tool to achieve freedom should be irked at the
withdrawal of satyagraha by those who started it.