Jallianwala bagh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuYgICoMer8

Frank Brazil pays tribute to Indian revolutionary Udham Singh who was executed at London’s Pentonville Prison on 31 July 1940. It follows the 21 years of Udham Singh’s life following the Jallianwallah Bagh massacre in 1919, leading up to the assassination of Michael O’Dwyer and his execution in Pentonville Prison shortly after.

Music and lyrics by The Ska Vengers

India travel to Africa
Africa …travel to America
America link the Gaddar Party 
Try and do things far away form home

One day
Travel down to Germany
Italy France and ina Switzerland
1934 I reach England
and get ready for assassination

Judge won’t you hear my plea
Before you open up the court
I don’t care If I spend 99 years in jail
Or you send me to the electric chair

Travel the planet and endure some hardship 
Walk the path to meifumado ready to endure hardship
Pan patroll stroll intro my target
One question before we get started
You know what a one way ticket to the morgue is

Body bags stacked up ina cold storage
Crush my culture and said it was garbage
Rule by the cruel rule of the free market
Ask some cracker grandpa what a cat o nine tail scar is

Judge won’t you hear my plea
Before you open up the court
I don’t care If I spend 99 years in jail
Or you send me to the 'lectric chair

Now we combust
Bredrin stay focused and conscious
Company rule is so unjust
Feel the tension of my ancestors in my muscle fiber and now I'm ready to crush

Shot him with my 6 chamber
Zetland by his side
Stood there looking at him 
While he wallowed down and died
Now I'm on my journey to a Brixton prison cell
Tell the judge and jury that I did my time well

Judge, judge, lordy judge
Send me to the 'lectric chair

Burn burn

Read further:

Anita Anand, The Patient Assassin: A True Tale of Massacre, Revenge and the Raj (Simon & Schuster, 2020).

David Clark. “Recollections of resistance: Udham Singh and the I WA.” Race & Class 17, no. 1 (1975): 75-77.

Louis Fenech, “Contested Nationalisms; Negotiated Terrains: The Way Sikhs Remember Udham Singh ‘Shahid’ (1899–1940)”. Modern Asian Studies. (2002) 36 (4): 827–870. doi:10.1017/s0026749x02004031

Navtej Singh. “Reinterpreting Shaheed Udham Singh.” Economic and Political Weekly (2007): 21-23.

Vaisakh is traditionally the month of crop-harvesting in the Punjab region, in both India and Pakistan. Different permutations also exist in the rest of the countries. It is usually around 13^th April that farmers around Punjab will start harvesting their crops and so the month is accompanied with many festivities. Harvesting wheat is the traditional crop that has come to symbolise the month of Vaisakh. The festival of Vaisakhi is an ancient tradition of the Punjab region and while it used to be celebrated throughout undivided Punjabi with village melas or fairs, it is now mostly associated with the Sikh community. For the Sikhs, it marks the birth of the Khalsa, when the 10^th Guru, Gobind Singh, laid the foundation of the Khalsa Panth and asked for the five Sikhs to be the first that were formally initiated and baptised into the faith in 1699.

Another important historical event that coincided with Vaiskahi was the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. Thousands of people were gathered in the Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar to celebrate the holiday and festivities of Vaisakhi. However, in the political volatile climate there was also a curfew and so General Dyer and his troops opened fire on the crowd who were effectively trapped in the public garden complex that only had one exit. Officially 379 people died, unofficially it was closer to 1000 casualties. This is often seen as the beginning of the end of the British Empire in India.

While the month of Vaisakh is still culturally significant on both sides of the border, the religious association means that it has lost some of its importance in Pakistan. The pictures above were taken during a trip to Sahiwal where harvesting wheat was in full flow.