Punjab ex-minister seeks memorial for martyr Madan Lal Dhingra

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, August 16

A day ahead of the state-level function to mark the martyrdom day of Shaheed Madan Lal Dhingra, former Punjab Cabinet minister Laxmi Kanta Chawla has demanded that the state government should construct a befitting memorial in the memory of the martyr, who hailed from Amritsar.

Earlier, there was a demand to convert his ancestral residence at Katra Sher Singh into a memorial, but the government failed to acquire it as it had already been sold by his kin.

She said the son of the soil was the first Indian to be martyred overseas in England. However, a section of locals rue that the government failed to prevent demolition of his ancestral house in the walled city and turn it into a memorial.

Chawla said all efforts to save his ancestral house came to naught as the government did not back the concept of preserving his house. She said the government was raising a war memorial even acknowledging the Indian martyrs, who had fought for the British crown.

As promised by the state government to take up the matter to bring handwritten documents of the martyr, lying in the British Library, to his home district had also not seen any meaningful progress, she added.

The senior BJP leader said, besides the announcement of an ordinance to be brought up in the Cabinet to make biography of Saheed Madan Lal Dhingra a part of school syllabus had also not been delivered.

The SAD-BJP government was in no mood to raise a memorial in the memory of Dhingra, who was perhaps the first Indian to have been executed in London on August 17, 1909, at the age of 26, she added.

She demanded that a memorial offering entire information regarding his life sketch, upbringing, education and sacrifice at London must be raised within the walled city so that maximum people from the country could visit the place.

Meanwhile, a state-level function to recall the martyr will be held at BBK DAV College, which will be presided over by Cabinet Minister Anil Joshi, tomorrow. Besides, members of the Shaheed Madan Lal Dhingra Smarak Samiti will pay tributes to the martyr at his statue at Town Hall tomorrow.