100 years of Dwarka Das Library that shaped revolutionaries

Sarika Sharma

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My Dear Jaidev,” Bhagat Singh — lodged at Lahore Central Jail — wrote to his friend, “Please take following books in my name from Dwarkadas (sic) Library and send them through Kulvir on Sunday.” The letter dated July 24, 1930 lists a host of books, which Bhagat Singh wanted to read in jail. An accused in the Lahore Conspiracy Case along with his comrades, the library, “the only library which fostered patriots then”, was his sanctuary.

The library was founded by Lala Lajpat Rai in 1920 and he named it after Dwarka Dass, an educationist and a former colleague of his from Dayanand Anglo-Vedic College in Lahore. He had initially contributed 7,000 books from his own library. It was a rich collection, considering that he had lived in the UK and America for eight years. Most books would later come from Ram Kishan and Sons, a bookstore in Lahore. A major chunk of these was revolutionary and socialist books.

Lala Lajpat Rai had wanted the library to be the go-to place for students of economics and politics. And it turned out to be just that. Since it was surrounded by colleges, youngsters visited it in large numbers.

In his memoirs, its librarian Raja Ram Shastri, who worked at the library from 1926 to 1931 and was also a comrade of Lala Lajpat Rai and Bhagat Singh, writes that he would arrange a lot of socialist text for the youth to read. The library, he mentions, was frequented by Bhagat Singh and his comrade Sukhdev and shares several stories of Bhagat Singh and the library. During the Lahore Conspiracy Case trial, the police had seized records of the library too.

Raja Ram writes that Bhagat Singh would mostly read biographies of revolutionaries and socialist theory. “But he sometimes missed revolutionary novels and I would then go looking for them.” Some of the novels that he read include Maxim Gorky’s Mother, Victor Hugo’s Ninety-Three and Les Miserables and Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. His other favourites included Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, Boston and King Coal.

Bhagat Singh was very keen that the library reaches out to the youth. Since it was

located around colleges, he wanted to take to the hostels texts like An Appeal to the Young by Peter Kropotkin.

On April 8, 1929, Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt had bombed the Central Legislative Assembly and famously said during the trial: “If the deaf are to hear, the sound has to be very loud.” The formula for making the bomb, says Raja Ram, came from one of the books at Dwarka Das Library.  “He asked me one day whether I could get him a book that teaches how to make a bomb. I said it wasn’t my subject but would try nonetheless. I kept trying for three days, only to fail, but on the fourth day, I succeeded. It was a huge book. I think it was Encyclopedia Britannica. It had the method in detail. He asked me if he could take the book home. I told him it was against the library’s policy. He then returned to note it down the next day.”

The library shifted from Lahore to Shimla during Partition and then came to Chandigarh in 1966. It is now housed at Lala Lajpat Rai Bhawan in Sector 15. Portraits of Lala Lajpat Rai, Bhagat Singh and other revolutionaries hang from the walls. Old books are regularly fumigated. The ones Bhagat Singh borrowed have a special place.

Dwarka Das Library remained a source of books for Bhagat Singh and his comrades even when they were lodged in jail. Given a two-year jail term for giving a seditious speech during the Salt Satyagrah, Raja Ram met Bhagat Singh in jail. “He told me he had been wondering why he hadn’t been receiving books from Dwarka Das Library. He said he now knew. He hugged me. We both had tears in our eyes,” he writes.

This was towards the end of 1930. That was to be Raja Ram and Bhagat Singh’s last meeting. The martyrs were a few months away from the gallows. Raja Ram told him: “You practised in real life the books we read at Dwarka Das and debated all night. Along with you, the name of the library would be immortalised too.”

A forgotten chapter

Lala Lajpat Rai wanted the library to be a nursery of political thought and this is what attracted the revolutionaries to it. Today, however, it is frequented only by aspirants of civil services and competitive exams. Alka, librarian at Dwarka Das Library since 2008, says that, with time, the profile of members has changed too. “We have a lot of young students coming here. Most of them are those pursuing competitive exams,” she says. Prof Chaman Lal, editor of The Bhagat Singh Reader, says this was the first library in India to procure books and magazines related to socialism and Marxism from all over the world. “It is a collective heritage of the country and is of monumental value. Unfortunately, the library that played a vital role in giving a new turn to the freedom movement is in a shambles. It needs to be saved,” he says.