Outlook Bibliofile: In Conversation With Anita Anand, Author Of The Pateint Assassin
On this episode of Bibliofile, author Anita Anand discusses her book, The Pateint Assassin, the story and legend of Udham Singh.
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00:00 The year was 1919 and the place was Amritsar's Jallianwala Bagh where thousands of men, women
00:10 and children had gathered to celebrate the Sikh festival of Vaisakhi and to demonstrate
00:15 against the draconian British laws. But General Renigal Dyer had different plans altogether
00:19 for Indians. In his words, he wanted to teach them a lesson for having defied prohibitory
00:24 orders. Hence, he ordered his troops to open fire on a peaceful congregation, killing hundreds
00:29 and injuring thousands of others. Michael O'Dyer, the then Lieutenant Governor of Punjab,
00:34 endorsed General Dyer's actions and supported him enthusiastically. But do you know there
00:39 was an Indian who avenged those killings 21 years later? Today on this episode of Outlook
00:44 Bibliophile, through the book The Patient Assassin, authored by British broadcaster
00:49 and journalist Anita Anand, we are going to revisit the story of this Indian who we know
00:53 very little about.
00:54 Anita Anand, thank you so much for speaking to Outlook magazine. I was just recording
01:06 the introduction to this episode and I decided purposely not to mention the name of the patient
01:12 assassin. Oh cool. So we were wondering if you could just explain who this patient assassin
01:17 was and why does India know very little about him? That's an exciting thing to do. So
01:24 who is Udham Singh? It's such a good question because to the British at the time, he was
01:31 one of the most dangerous people who threatened to destabilize the country at a time of war.
01:36 So he was enemy number one. To the point where they recreated his image to discredit him
01:42 and turned him into a lone wolf lunatic. And because they had all the power and they had
01:47 all the records and they were in charge and it was World War II going on, that is the
01:52 only message that got out and reached India also. So that was the message that Gandhi
01:58 and Nehru and others propagated that he was a nutter who did a terrible thing and did
02:03 not help India's cause. However, even the Indian National Youth Congress didn't believe
02:10 it and they turned him into a hero. In fact, they turned him into the hero that you see
02:14 now hanging in rooms still in Punjab. You know, the avenging angel, the man who sprung
02:18 up covered in the blood of Jallianwala Bagh, the man who dedicated his life and hunted
02:24 down and if you look at some of the pages on the internet, Dyer and O'Dwyer, I mean
02:29 you know the one who killed Michael Dyer or Reginald O'Dwyer. You know the story has become
02:33 so conflated and so messy. The truth is in between those things and the truth is more
02:38 extraordinary than any of these two confected stories.
02:42 You just talked about how Gandhi reacted to Singh's act. He defined, in your book you
02:49 write, it as an act of insanity. Was it because of the inconvenience that it caused to the
02:54 narrative of India's peaceful independence movement driven by, largely driven by, the
03:02 message of Gandhi of non-violence?
03:03 So it was largely that. It was largely because it was seen that there were bigger fish to
03:08 fry in this game and that Jallianwala Bagh, as deplorable as it was, as awful as it was,
03:14 Udham Singh's reasoning as to why he had done this, that was all unimportant compared to
03:20 the bigger picture, which was emancipation of India. And so Nehru and Gandhi at that
03:25 time were at pains to tell the British that we are not savages, we are not natives, we
03:30 are capable of running our own affairs, there will not be a bloodbath and then this inconvenient
03:35 truth of a man who brazenly walks into, not just anywhere, Westminster, in the shadow
03:41 of the mother of all parliaments, at a time when Britain is feeling most vulnerable, where
03:45 Hitler's forces are making great pushes into territory that they should not be in. Here
03:52 is this man who makes Britain look weak. And so it's almost this, sort of, a dance of the
03:58 devil if you like. The British want to paint him as a lunatic because they don't want to
04:03 look weak, that this is a man who, he's a man who got lucky rather than a man who planned
04:08 his way in. So they start weaving and confecting this story and in the book I found lots of
04:12 documents that show them doing it. You know, that we must do this, we must paint it this
04:17 way, we must get Reuters not to report what he says, you know. This horrible allegiance
04:23 of rewriting a man's story. And in India there is not one finger raised by the Congress leadership
04:31 to do anything for him or to say anything on his behalf because it doesn't suit them
04:35 either. You know, because he is doing the savagery that they're trying to say we don't
04:38 do here. And so they repudiate him as a nutcase. In between, even then, in 1940, even then,
04:48 there are people in the Indian youth movement of Congress who said no, this man is a hero.
04:53 This man has done what we have all wanted to do, which is punish these people who slaughtered
04:58 our people like animals that day in April. So you know, there is this whole strange real
05:05 politique going on around a man who is sitting in jail who knows he's going to die and who
05:12 for a little while doesn't know was it worth it or not and why has everyone forgotten.
05:16 You know, that thing that Christ does on the cross, "Ilai ilai namata bhakti, why have
05:20 you forsaken me?" He's saying this to himself, you know, why did I do this? Little does he
05:24 know that there are people all around who do believe in him and who will take his memory
05:29 forward, which they do.
05:31 Before we delve more into life and times of Udham Singh, I want to ask you what exactly
05:39 did the impact of the massacre have on India's independence movement? Basically, the massacre
05:45 happened in 1919. Did it in a way, gave, motivated rather, the independence movement, you know,
05:52 it gave a fresh stimulus to it? Did that happen?
05:55 It did. You know, there was a saying at the time and it rumbled around Westminster and
06:02 you know, British echelons of power that a thousand martyrs have been born this day.
06:06 They knew in Britain how heinous this thing was and how it would inflame and enrage Indians
06:13 to dedicate themselves to the overthrow of the British who, you know, they knew, the
06:17 British knew they were vastly outnumbered by Indians and if the Indians chose to rise
06:21 up as one, they were out. They knew that.
06:25 But also what it did was it made certain people in power in Britain doubt and question the
06:31 thing that they had been fed with their mother's milk, that Britain had a right to rule, that
06:36 Britain had moral superiority, that the British were better than these natives and needed
06:42 the, you know, sort of paternalism of the great white saviour to come because, you know,
06:47 they had shown themselves to be savage, to act like savages.
06:54 And it wasn't really just the massacre. You know, people, particularly last year at the
06:58 anniversary, it started driving me a little bit mad that people started talking about
07:02 the massacre as if it was something in isolation. And I write about this a lot in the book.
07:07 It was not one monstrous act, as Churchill very famously said. It was symptomatic of
07:12 a whole campaign of terror that took place after the massacre. So yes, it was a watershed
07:17 moment because it gave rocket fuel to the Quit India movement or those people who wanted
07:25 the British out. And also it started making people like the Secretary of State for India,
07:32 Samuel Montagu, like others who debated in the House of Lords, who are we? What are we?
07:37 What are we doing there? Questioned themselves. And that altogether, you know, history doesn't
07:43 turn on one pin, but a pin can puncture, slow puncture a balloon. And I think that's what
07:48 happened. It just really hastened the end of the Raj.
07:51 Coming back to Singh, I want to read something from the book. You write, "Singh took a handful
07:57 of blood-soaked earth in his hand and he saw a terrible vow. No matter how long it took,
08:01 no matter how far it took him, he would track down the dogs who did this to his people and
08:06 kill them." Do you know, there's a film that came in 2002, a Bollywood film, it was called
08:12 The Legend of Bhagat Singh. There is a character depicted in exactly the same way. And there's
08:19 no firm evidence of Udham Singh's presence at this spot. Do you want to shed some more
08:24 light on it?
08:25 So it's absolutely true. So that part of the book I've written in italics because it is
08:30 the thing that is said over and over again. And if you go to Janiyawala Bagh now, today,
08:36 you will see a statue of Udham Singh with his hand out here holding the clod of blood-soaked
08:41 earth. You cannot prove that he said it. The British, however, tried very, very hard. And
08:49 what saddens me is that India took this British line, hook, line, and sinker for so many years
08:54 without questioning it. They took this idea that he was a madman. They took this idea
08:58 he was a lone wolf. They took this idea that he got lucky and he stumbled into Caxton Hall
09:04 when he did. And they also took this notion that he wasn't even there because the British
09:10 wanted to separate him from Janiyawala Bagh. The reason why did they want to do it so much?
09:16 They had Indian soldiers fighting for them in World War II. They were stretched paper
09:21 thin to fight the Nazis. So if anything happened in India at this time, you know, people were
09:27 reminded of Janiyawala Bagh and the absolute horror of that and how that actually defined
09:33 what colonialism was in many ways to many people. That would destroy them. So instead,
09:40 you know, they try very, very hard and they have access to all records to prove he wasn't
09:44 there or to prove he wasn't in the country. You know what? They couldn't. The only thing
09:49 they could say in all of these records is, "We cannot say definitively if he was there."
09:54 So if they couldn't say it at the time and they were really trying to say he wasn't there,
09:57 nobody can say he was not there. You know, none of even the military records that I looked
10:01 at, some historians have said, "Oh, he was serving in Mesopotamia or he was serving in
10:05 Europe. That's not there." Or he was in Waziristan, somebody said. That is not there. They couldn't
10:10 say it. They didn't say it at the time. But neither can I say that he said those words.
10:15 So I put those things in context. You know, this is what they say. This is what I have
10:20 found because I try to be an honest broker in this because I just think you can tell
10:28 the story and leave the space because what is not in doubt is the massacre defined the
10:33 rest of this man's life. Absolutely. And that he was obsessed. He was patient. He did what
10:38 most human beings could never do, which is sacrifice all happiness, all chance of a family,
10:44 all chance of a life because he made this promise, which he then carries out in the
10:49 most dramatic operatic fashion. It's extraordinary what he did.
10:54 There's also a lot of confusion over General Dyer and Michael O'Dyer. People actually conflate
11:02 the two names. Well, I was sort of saying that. When you
11:03 go on the internet and you see what is it about Udham Singh, he killed Brigadier General
11:08 O'Dwyer, Michael Dyer. I mean, it has become this composite raksha, as they say in the
11:13 book. Yeah. Yeah. They were two very different people.
11:16 So if you could just distinguish between the two for our viewers because O'Dyer, who was
11:23 basically killed or gunned down by Singh, was the then Lieutenant Governor of Punjab
11:28 who endorsed General Dyer's actions. Who endorsed and arguably created a situation
11:33 whereby this would happen. It was only a matter of time. Was it going to happen in Jallianwala
11:38 Bagh or somewhere else? But this was a man who utterly believed that mutiny was on the
11:43 horizon and he was the man to stop it. He was the man who was going to save the Raj
11:49 and had a visceral dislike of Indians. He loved being an Indian.
11:56 I suppose that wasn't very different from all the other British officials.
11:59 No, because Dyer, Brigadier General Dyer, loved Indians. Indians adored him. He was
12:05 the Brigadier General. If anyone's watched the film Gandhi, it is the character of Edward
12:09 Fox who drives his vehicles to the entrance, can't get them in. All of that is true. It
12:14 wasn't Edward Fox, but Dyer could not get his vehicles in and he would have used the
12:18 machine guns on them if he could have done. But he is also a man who had the utter loyalty
12:24 of his Indian troops. They loved him. He spoke Hindi fluently. He was happier in India. India
12:31 was his country. He identified himself as Indian when he was sent back in disgrace after
12:36 the massacre. He was made the scapegoat for the whole thing. He died. Slowly you saw this
12:41 man implode because he was out of his country that he loved. It's this very weird thing.
12:48 I try in the book because all my life, and one thing I haven't admitted to is I have
12:53 a personal connection. My grandfather was in the garden on the day of the massacre.
12:59 I've been raised to fear those names, Dyer, Edwire. To have to unpick that fear and say,
13:04 "No, no, no. We're not going to talk about this Rakshas. But there are two men here who
13:09 were once two boys, who once had two lives. What makes a person capable of doing this?"
13:16 And that's what I hope to have done. And what I found was you had one man, Dyer, who was
13:20 the Brigadier General, who is consumed by doubt and dies a horrible death of natural
13:26 causes. And Michael Edwire, the Lieutenant Governor, who proudly says he did the right
13:31 thing, the massacre was important, it saved the Raj and he never lost a night's sleep
13:37 in his life about it. Who is then gunned down and dies in Westminster in a pool of his own
13:42 blood, like so many of those people died in Jallianwala Bagh. The symmetry, if I presented
13:47 it to a fiction editor, they'd say, "Go away and write something more convincing. This
13:50 is ridiculous." But it's true.
13:53 It's true. Yeah. Yeah. Singh's trial, correct me if I'm wrong, lasted two days.
14:00 Two days.
14:01 Did he say anything in his defense?
14:03 He rambled away. And he rambled all sorts of kind of strange things at the police station.
14:10 He said one thing on the scene of the crime, because we have those contemporaneous notes
14:13 taken by the police officer, "I have seen the book in which he wrote. I have seen the
14:17 way in which things are crossed out." So you see those things. And in the court, he pretty
14:23 much withdrew, except just to mess things about a bit, because what he was trying to
14:29 do was string out the case as much as he could, cause maybe a plea of insanity just to wait
14:35 out what his conviction was, was that if the Germans win the war, they'll set me free.
14:41 So there could be a long wait to the noose. What he didn't realize is that they were fast-tracking
14:45 that man to execution. So he had no hope.
14:48 So by the time the trial comes around, he's pretty much not interested in it. He speaks
14:52 at the end, though. When he's given that death sentence, so when he knows or he's found guilty,
14:59 he does this extraordinary speech, which we only know about because Special Branch took
15:05 notes. The media never reported it because they were not allowed to report it, and they
15:09 were all complicit. Reuters was utterly complicit, shameful, actually, in not reporting anything
15:14 that he said. And his notes that he wrote were ripped up and thrown into the air, which
15:19 the police then glued together. And you can see those in archives still. And that is a
15:24 fiery call upon Indians to unite and overthrow the British. He calls to Gandhi that you need
15:33 to do this. You need to be our savior, directly to Gandhi. He calls the British dirty dogs
15:39 and worse. And it is an explosion of rage. And we also know that he spat at the court
15:47 as he was let out. And then as soon as he's out of view, what happened in the courts in
15:51 those days is the judge takes out a piece of black silk, puts it on his wig, and says
15:56 this man is going to hang. And it is beginning to end very, very quick and very fast. I saw
16:02 the plot of land they threw his body into around the back of Pentonville Prison. I walked
16:06 near it. It is the most miserable little scrubby bit of land where prisoners were thrown in.
16:14 And because there was such a small space, but so many people were hanged over the years,
16:18 they used to bury them not side by side, but one on top of each other. And the only way
16:23 you knew where one ended and one began was they would sprinkle lime and chalk over the
16:28 top. So if anyone's burying, they dig until they reach the line of chalk because you don't
16:32 want to go through the next body. He was thrown in there, and he and they, the British, must
16:37 have thought he would be forgotten forever. Well, hopefully not the case.
16:41 Well, Ms. Anand, thank you so much for speaking to us.
16:44 Oh, thank you so much. It was fascinating.
16:45 I have read about 70% of it already, but I have gone through the reviews, so I know a
16:52 fair bit of how it ends.
16:53 I just blew the ending for you.
16:56 But thank you so much again. It was absolutely a pleasure talking to you.
16:59 Oh, no, really lovely to meet you. Thank you very much.
17:00 Pleasure, pleasure talking to you.
17:01 Thank you.
17:01 Bye.
17:02 Bye.
17:02 Bye.
17:03 Bye.
17:04 Bye.
17:05 Bye.
17:05 (upbeat music)