Shaheed Udham Singh requested ‘Gutka Saheb’ in last communiqué from jail

Shaheed Udham Singh, the avenger of Jallianwala Bagh, who was hanged on July 31, 1940, at Brixton (Pentonville) Prison, UK, had requested “Gutka Saheb” (Sikh prayer book) in his last handwritten letter before his execution.

The letter, dated June 7, 1940, written three days after his trial began on June 4, contained a brief request for “Gutka Saheb”, an intended signal of how Udham Singh knew his fate and chose to embrace it with courage.

However, no one knows if his last wish was fulfilled.

Shaheed Udham Singh’s seven handwritten letters, his last from his time at the Brixton prison, are housed at Bhai Gurdas Library at Guru Nanak Dev University. The Rare Books and Manuscripts Section at the library has 19 historic documents, including seven letters penned by Shaheed Udham Singh, and access to these is on request. These letters are a correspondence between Udham Singh and Shiv Singh Jouhal, his friend and close aide in London at the time, who also remained custodian of these letters until 1972.

Eighty-six years on, these serve as an insight into the thoughts that went inside his head during his time of trial at the Brixton prison.

The last letter bears his prison number 1010, something that all these letters have in common and his initials signed as M Azad, a reference to Udham Singh’s now iconic adopted name Ram Mohammed Singh Azad.

The GNDU never allowed public access to these letters, although the university has preserved these and a book interpreting the contents of these letters, titled Udham Singh Diyan Chitthiyan, was published in 1974 by JS Grewal and Harish Puri, both former faculty of the GNDU. It was former Election Commissioner MS Gill, who convinced Shiv Singh Jauhal to donate these letters to university in 1972.

According to the book, his last letters reveal how Udham Singh spent his days in prison reading, which is why the contents of these letters mostly have him requesting for more books from Jauhal. In one, he requests Waris Shah’s Heer and these writings from prison also reflect Udham Singh’s profound connection with Bhagat Singh. In one, he refers to death as “getting married with execution”. He also mentions Bhagat Singh, in the same letter dated March 30, 1940, when he calls him his ‘best friend; and someone “who is waiting for him on 23rd”, hoping that he too would be hanged on the same date as Bhagat Singh.

These documents assume new relevance as the university has now announced to create digital archives of documents on all freedom fighters. “These are documents of historic importance and we don’t allow public access. These have been carefully preserved and we have also initiated creating digital archives and documentary project to preserve the documents of Udham Singh and other revolutionaries in digital format,” said VC Prof Karamjeet Singh.