Bhagat Singh’s associates who faded into oblivion

Aparna Banerji

Tribune News Service

Jadla (Nawanshahr), March 25

“Enhna ne Subhas (Chandra Bose) nu nai pucheya, mennu ki puchange,” Amar Chand Jadla, a Ghadar party revolutionary and a close associate of Bhagat Singh, used to say when the subject of his obscurity would come up with his family in his last days.

At Jadla and Banga villages lie some little known facts of the martyr’s earlier days. Not many know about two close friends and neighbours of Bhagat Singh – Amar Chand and Karam Singh Mann.

Rajinder Lakhanpal, son of Amar Chand (who died in 1993) still has a letter written in Urdu by Bhagat Singh to his father, asking him to study well and seeking his uncle Ajit Singh’s whereabouts in the US.

After Bhagat Singh upped the ante against the British, he would often seek help from Amar Chand to send across his posts.

Amar Chand and Bhagat Singh used to study together at Chak Banga village primary school. Later, they went to Lyallpur college. Amar Chand was also his aide during the Jaito Morcha when the duo fed jathas. Rajinder Lakhanpal says: “Around that time, an arrest warrant was issued against the duo following which Bhagat Singh fled to Delhi and my father to Bombay.”

In 1925, Amar Chand moved to the US to his father Madho Ram and joined the Ghadar Movement. Madho Ram was jailed for aiding the escape of a revolutionary, but was acquitted. While Amar Chand died in 1993 in India, the last few years of his life were spent in penury.

His son says: “The Americans had offered him the post of lieutenant and asked him to spy for them, but he had refused. Even in India, he refused to work with the British and set up industrial units of his own. But after he lost his eyesight and incurred huge losses.” Madho Ram was given a pension of Rs 15 per month for being a “national sufferer” by the Partap Singh Kairon government. The family rues that the successive governments have failed to recognise his contribution to the freedom struggle.

Excerpts from martyr’s letter 

Karam Singh has gone abroad, his address is being sent. He has written that he will study law, but the expenses are too high. Veer meri videsh ja ke vidiya hasil karan di khwahish barbaad ho gai (brother my desire to go abroad to study has been destroyed)... if you get a chance, please take the trouble to send good books. America has a lot of literature…My post isn’t allowed to go through, letters are opened. I don’t know why they look at me with such suspicion. Khair bhai, akhir sachai satta te ayegi ate usdi jit hovegi (but brother, at last the truth will prevail).