Ex-MP wants Master Tara Singh’s portrait back in Parliament hall

NEW DELHI: On a day when Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the tribute-paying ceremony in the memory of Hindutva ideologue and freedom fighter Vinayak Damodar Savarkar at the Central Hall of Parliament, a demand was made to install the portrait of another prominent revolutionary Master Tara Singh in the coveted chamber.

Speaker Sumitra Mahajan and Union ministers Rajnath Singh and Arun Jaitley pay floral tribute to Vinayak Damodar Savarkar on his birth anniversary at Parliament House on Thursday. PTI

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 28

On a day when Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the tribute-paying ceremony in the memory of Hindutva ideologue and freedom fighter Vinayak Damodar Savarkar at the Central Hall of Parliament, a demand was made to install the portrait of another prominent revolutionary Master Tara Singh in the coveted chamber.

Former Chairman of National Commission for Minorities and former Rajya Sabha MP Tarlochan Singh made this demand in a letter to Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Majahan, reminding her of how Master Tara Singh had arranged the entire defence of Savarkar after the latter was arrested and tried in the wake of Mahatma Gandhi's assassination. Savarkar was later acquitted.

The portrait of Master Tara Singh, the man credited with getting half of Punjab integrated into India post Partition, was installed in the Central Hall of Parliament in 2002 under the then Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA regime. However, the portrait, after garlanding, was shifted out of the central hall and is currently placed in the Parliament Library.

Tarlochan Singh, who attended the ceremony in the hall to mark Veer Savarkar's birth anniversary today, told the top BJP leadership gathered there, including External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj how Tara Singh paid for the advocates who defended Savarkar.

"Today when you and other national leaders honoured the legendary Veer Savarkar on his birthday in the Central Hall of Parliament, I mentioned a historical fact that Master Tara Singh organised his defence and paid for the advocates and himself used to sit in the court room in support of Veer Savarkar,” Tarlochan Singh wrote in his letter to Speaker.

He also reminded the Speaker that Master Tara Singh played a historic role for India by working on Punjab's integration with India. Master Tara Singh was the leader of the Akali Dal and got half of the earstwhile Punjab (now Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh) integrated into India.

He was born in a Hindu family in Haryal village, near Rawalpindi, on June 24, 1885. Nanak Chand, as he was then known, got converted to Sikhism at the age of 14 and was baptised by amrit. He was given the name Tara Singh.