Lala Lajpat Rai Was Beaten at a Lahore Barricade on 30 October 1928 and Died 18 Days Later. The Raj Held No Inquest, Told Parliament No Evidence Linked the Two, and Thirty Days After His Death Bhagat Singh's Party Shot a Police Officer

On the afternoon of 30 October 1928 a procession carrying black flags marked “Simon Go Back” stopped in Lahore at a barricade of barbed wire on strong wooden posts, about 200 yards from the main gate of the railway station. The Indian Annual Register, a yearly chronicle compiled from the press, put the marchers at several thousand, and the official account at 600 to 1,000 by the time they reached the station, where the Simon Commission had just arrived. In the front row stood Lala Lajpat Rai, 63, a former president of the Indian National Congress.

That evening he told a public meeting what had happened. In the version the Register printed, he said that “a Police officer, said to be the Superintendent of Police in Lahore, whose name was afterwards given as Scott, began to strike with lathis. He had a knobbed hunter in his hand. He gave me two blows and two of his constables gave me another two. One of these blows was aimed at my heart.”

Lajpat Rai died on 17 November, and nine days later Earl Winterton, the Under-Secretary of State for India, told the House of Commons that “no evidence has been produced to show that the death of Lala Lajpat Rai was due to blows received on that occasion.” This piece follows that sentence back to the barricade and forward to a poster on a Lahore wall, using the Raj’s own papers: Hansard, the Punjab Council and Assembly debates, and the inquiry report as read aloud in them. Bhagat Singh’s life is in tuput’s piece on his hanging at 23, and this one goes shorter there.

Deported in 1907, mover of the censure in 1928

Lajpat Rai was born on 28 January 1865 at Dhudike in Punjab, the son of a schoolteacher, according to the Servants of the People Society, the body he founded. He practised law, joined the Arya Samaj in his teens and helped Lala Hansraj found the Dayanand Anglo-Vedic College at Lahore. Punjab National Bank’s own history says he circulated the appeal for an Indian-owned joint stock bank and was the first to open an account when it opened at Lahore on 12 April 1895.

In 1907 the Government of India deported him to Mandalay without trial under the State Prisoners Regulation of 1818, which let it detain a man with no court involved. Asked in the Commons on 18 June 1907 what he was accused of, the Secretary of State, John Morley, said “the reason for his arrest and deportation was to preserve a portion of His Majesty’s dominions from internal commotion.”

Lord Birkenhead, Secretary of State for India, named the seven members of the Statutory Commission that would review India’s constitution, led by Sir John Simon, on 8 November 1927. No Indian was among them. When it landed at Bombay on 3 February 1928 the Register records a hartal, a general shutdown, and crowds with black flags shouting “Simon, go back.”

Lajpat Rai moved a resolution in the Central Legislative Assembly on 16 February 1928 conveying “entire lack of confidence in the Parliamentary Commission,” and it passed by 68 votes to 62.

The barricade at Landa Bazar

Three accounts of 30 October exist, and they agree on very little. Lajpat Rai’s own statement, as the Register prints it, says the procession “made no attempt to cross or rush” the barricade. He told the meeting that none of his companions had done anything “which deserved this cowardly treatment from the police.” His press statement the same day said the attack was “led by the Superintendent of Police himself, as I am told.”

Raizada Hans Raj, a Punjab Council member who stood beside him, gave a witness’s account to the Assembly on 15 February 1929. After about 15 minutes, he said, “Mr. Scott came through the opening and, without any explanation, gave Lalaji two hard blows with his stick.” Hans Raj raised his left hand to ward them off and “received three blows on my hand, two from Mr. Scott and one from his assistant.”

Beside Lajpat Rai’s statement the Register prints the official version, which said a stone had hit a European sergeant and part of the crowd had tried to push through a gap in the barricade. “The police used lathies on those agitators whom they could reach,” it said. “It is certain that Lala Lajpat Rai’s umbrella was broken and it is believed that he and one or two other persons near the barricade were struck by lathies. It is not believed that they received injuries.”

Lajpat Rai answered in print: “The official version is full of lies,” he said. “I challenge its author to bring a suit against me for libel so that I may get an opportunity to expose the doings of the police in a court of justice.” The Punjab Government’s communique of 7 November allowed that a few blows might have been given but denied any general use of lathis, Munshi Iswar Saran told the Assembly, and it announced a second inquiry.

The sentence that circulates in four wordings

His most quoted sentence from that evening exists in at least four wordings, and tuput found no 1928 newspaper text of the speech to settle between them. The Servants of the People Society prints “Every blow hurled at me will prove a nail in the coffin of the British Empire.” Feroz Chand, who wrote Lajpat Rai’s life for the Government of India’s Publications Division in 1978, has “Every blow that they hurled at us drove one more nail into the coffin of the Empire.” Chaman Lal’s 2011 article in The Tribune has “Every blow on my body will prove to be the last kneel in the coffin of British rule in India,” the odd word as printed. Oldest of all is an indirect report. Dr Muhammad Alam told the Punjab Council on 30 November 1928 that Lajpat Rai “had said in a public meeting” that the blows were nails in the coffin of the British Empire, as the Register summarises him.

In the Register’s own account of the speech, built from press reports, there is no coffin sentence. All four wordings carry one meaning, that the blows would hasten the end of British rule. Feroz Chand adds a sentence found in none of the contemporary reports tuput read: that if Lajpat Rai died and the young men he had held back chose another course, his spirit would bless whatever they thought fit to do.

The inquiry he would not attend

Earl Winterton described the two inquiries to the Commons: “the first held departmentally immediately after the occurrence, and the second, a public inquiry held in the Town Hall, Lahore, by the Commissioner of the Rawalpindi Division.” That officer was named Boyd. His report, as Pandit Dwarka Prasad Misra read it to the Assembly, said: “I think that the undue sensitiveness of the politicians in the front rank of the crowd is at the bottom of the fuss which has been made over a very ordinary incident.”

Boyd’s report also puts both officers at the barricade. Misra quoted it: “Mr. Saunders says that they were rapped on the hands with a cane by the Senior Superintendent of Police and himself. These raps may have accounted for some of the injuries complained of. The Senior Superintendent of Police did not mention this incident as his evidence related entirely to the subsequent scuffle which occurred about ten minutes later.” Lajpat Rai and Hans Raj named Scott, the Senior Superintendent, while Chaman Lal’s 2011 article says Saunders struck the blows on Scott’s order, and Boyd’s report does not settle it.

Sir George Rainy put the Government’s real argument to the Assembly. He asked whether it lay “in the mouths of those who refused to have anything to do with the public inquiry held by a high official of the Punjab Government” to say that the Government was burking an inquiry. Boyd’s report bears him out on the facts: “Lala Lajpat Rai and Dr. Muhammad Alam refused my invitation to make a statement.” Iswar Saran gave the leaders’ reply: they wanted a judicial inquiry in which witnesses could be cross-examined. When Rainy called Boyd’s inquiry public, Madan Mohan Malaviya cut in: “An executive officer.”

Eighteen days

Feroz Chand narrates the last two days in the present tense, and his book is a sympathetic one. He writes that Lajpat Rai’s doctor, Dharmavir, noticed that an exhaustion which used to pass with rest “has since October 30 become rather persistent.” On the evening of 16 November Dharmavir found pain on the right side of the chest and near the spine, and no disturbance “in the heart or the pulse.” At 6:30 the next morning Lajpat Rai’s grandson heard him say the pain was increasing. “Before 6-45 when the two stood by his bed the end had already come,” Feroz Chand writes. Dharmavir, Gopi Chand and other medical friends “had no doubt that the physical and psychological injuries” of 30 October “had contributed their sinister share.”

At the time the death was put down to heart failure. A chairman reported the death to the Andhra Provincial Conference that day as one “from heart failure,” and Haroon Khalid wrote in Scroll in 2017 that the doctors declared a heart attack. tuput found no post-mortem report. Asked in the Commons whether there had been an inquest, Winterton answered: “No. Under Indian law there is no necessity to hold an inquest.” Medical evidence in the debates amounts to doctors’ opinions relayed by politicians. Malaviya told the Assembly: “I cannot undertake to say that that blow caused his death, but two doctors who attended him have stated it as their opinion that it accelerated his death.”

Government speakers argued that the bruises were slight. A member named Cowan told the Punjab Council on 3 December, in the Register’s summary, that Lajpat Rai had been left only with superficial bruises and had taken part in public activities until the day he died. The Home Member, Crerar, later told the Assembly that an inquiry into the cause of death held out “no prospect that any concrete conclusions beyond surmise and speculation could possibly emerge.”

What Winterton told the Commons

On 26 November the Labour member Wellock asked about Lajpat Rai’s statement that he “received two blows from a police officer who refused to give his name,” and Colonel Wedgwood asked for an inquiry. Winterton conceded that “the charge has been freely made in the Indian Press and at public meetings that his death was due to this incident.” Then came the Government’s account. Pressure from the crowd, he said, had made the police use some force and had led to “some slight injury to the persons in the front ranks of the crowd (a position occupied by the late Lala),” but “there was no deliberate or unprovoked attack by the police, and no individual was singled out for assault.”

Wedgwood asked whether the Punjab Government had expressed regret. Winterton replied that “no Government, when it has been found necessary to use force to restrain crowds, is justified in making apologies to any particular individual or to the relatives of any particular individual.” The incident, he added, “arose out of an illegal procession, forbidden by the police,” and the police “used the force necessary, and only the force necessary, to restrain the crowd from doing further mischief.”

17 December and the pink posters

At Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi, on 8 and 9 September 1928, the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association was formed. According to Noorani, whose book The Trial of Bhagat Singh sets out the Special Tribunal’s findings, it was the old Hindustan Republican Association of the Kakori train action with one word added, “Socialist,” on Bhagat Singh’s insistence. Noorani’s account, drawn from the Special Tribunal’s judgment and the testimony of two members who turned approvers, says Bhagat Singh wrote posters in pink headed “Hindustan Socialist Republican Army” and announcing “Scott is dead,” and showed them to those two men on 15 December.

At about 4 p.m. on 17 December, the judgment says, Assistant Superintendent Saunders, a 21-year-old probationer, came out of the police office with Head Constable Chanan Singh and started his motorcycle. Shivaram Rajguru fired first. Bhagat Singh ran up and fired several shots as Saunders lay with one leg under the machine. Chanan Singh chased them and was shot in the groin, “probably by Panditji,” the judgment says, meaning Chandrashekhar Azad, whose later life tuput has told. Chanan Singh died about an hour later at Mayo Hospital.

The posters were corrected to carry Saunders’s name in place of Scott’s, Noorani writes. The notice, dated 18 December and signed “Balraj,” opens with the line “J.P. Sunders is dead; Lala Lajpat Rai is avenged.” The hand of “an ordinary Police Official, J.P. Saunders,” it says, had dared to touch “in such an insulting way the body of one so old, so revered and so loved by 300 millions of people of Hindustan.” Then comes the warning “Beware, Ye Tyrants ; Beware,” and the close: “Sorry for the death of a man. But in this man has died the representative of an institution which is so cruel, lowly and so base that it must be abolished.”

Noorani adds a fact the notice leaves out. Bhagat Singh had denounced Lajpat Rai publicly over what Noorani calls a markedly communal turn in his politics in the mid-1920s, and, citing the historian Bipan Chandra, printed Browning’s poem “The Lost Leader” as a pamphlet with Lajpat Rai’s photograph on the cover.

Later in December the Congress met at Calcutta under Motilal Nehru’s presidency and resolved that it “condemns the attack by the Lahore police on Lala Lajpat Rai” as “deliberate and unprovoked” and “believes that the death of Lalaji was accelerated by the injuries he received at the hands of the police.” The Register reports the mover, Sardul Singh, saying that the Government had connected the killing of Saunders with Lalaji’s death.

15 February 1929 in the Assembly

Misra moved in the Central Assembly on 15 February 1929 that the House believed Lajpat Rai’s death “was accelerated by the injury he received at the hands of the police” and that the Boyd inquiry was “unreal.” Both Governments, Misra said, “knew in their heart of hearts that their hands were red with the blood of Lala Lajpat Rai.”

Crerar, the Home Member, entered “a very grave protest against the manner in which the Honourable the Mover of this Resolution referred throughout his speech to the ‘murder’ of Lala Lajpat Rai.” Lajpat Rai’s statement and Hans Raj’s were honest, Crerar accepted, but they were impressions received on “a tumultuous and disorderly occasion” that “may very well be incorrect,” and he refused any inquiry. Muhammad Ali Jinnah answered him. “If you shirk this inquiry,” Jinnah said, “the only conclusion that we on this side of the House will come to is that you dare not face the inquiry.”

Motilal Nehru said he had “not the slightest hesitation in saying that if the facts are as they are stated to be, it was nothing but murder,” though he accused no particular person. Rainy answered that in that case “there is the judicial tribunal available” to the Opposition. Jinnah replied that “no prosecution on a charge of murder can be initiated by any private individual. It can only be done by the Government on behalf of the Crown.”

Iswar Saran’s amendment, asking for a committee of the Home Member himself, Motilal Nehru, Malaviya, Sir Purshotamdas Thakurdas and others to inquire into the assault and “its effect in causing or hastening his death,” carried by 57 votes to 45. Gaya Prasad Singh, a member, asked on 6 March what the Government had done. Crerar answered: “The Governor General in Council has been unable to accept the recommendation contained in the Resolution.” Asked whether the Government had cabled the Secretary of State about it, he said: “No, Sir.”

From the Assembly floor to the gallows

Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt threw two bombs in the chamber of the Central Legislative Assembly on 8 April 1929, seven weeks after that House voted on the Lajpat Rai resolution (tuput’s piece on the Assembly bomb tells that story). Their pamphlet said they were protesting against the Public Safety and Trade Disputes Bills “and the callous murder of Lala Lajpat Rai.” It was signed “Balraj, Commander-in-Chief,” the name that closes the notice of 18 December. The Special Tribunal sentenced Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru to death for the murder of Saunders on 7 October 1930. They were hanged inside Lahore jail at 7:15 p.m. on 23 March 1931, Noorani writes.