Shaheed Diwas 2022 is being observed all around India on Wednesday, 23 March 2022. Also known as Martyrs' Day, the day is observed every year on 23 March to mark the day when the British hanged Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev, India's three young revolutionaries, in the year 1931.
In December 1928, Bhagat Singh and an associate, Shivaram Rajguru, both members of a small revolutionary group, the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (also Army, or HSRA), shot dead a 21-year-old British police officer, John Saunders, in Lahore, Punjab, in what is today Pakistan, mistaking Saunders, who was still on probation, for the British senior police superintendent, James Scott, whom they had intended to assassinate.
They held Scott responsible for the death of a popular Indian nationalist leader Lala Lajpat Rai for having ordered a lathi (baton) charge in which Rai was injured and two weeks thereafter died of a heart attack. As Saunders exited a police station on a motorcycle, he was felled by a single bullet fired from across the street by Rajguru, a marksman.
As he lay injured, he was shot at close range several times by Singh, the postmortem report showing eight bullet wounds. Another associate of Singh, Chandra Shekhar Azad, shot dead an Indian police head constable, Channan Singh, who attempted to give chase as Singh and Rajguru fled.
After killing Saunders, the group escaped through the D.A.V. College entrance, across the road from the District Police Headquarters. Chanan Singh, a Head Constable who was chasing them, was shot dead by Chandrashekhar Azad.
They threw bombs in the Central Assembly on April 8, 1929 and shouted ‘Inqilab Zindabad’. Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were charged with the murder of Saunders and were sentenced to death. The date of execution was fixed on March 24, but Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were hanged on March 23, 1931 in Lahore jail.
The executions were reported widely by the press, especially as they took place on the eve of the annual convention of the Congress party at Karachi. Gandhi faced black flag demonstrations by angry youths who shouted "Down with Gandhi".
The New York Times reported: "A reign of terror in the city of Cawnpore in the United Provinces and an attack on Mahatma Gandhi by a youth outside Karachi were among the answers of the Indian extremists today to the hanging of Bhagat Singh and two fellow-assassins."
In the leaflet he threw in the Central Assembly on 8 April 1929, he stated: "It is easy to kill individuals but you cannot kill the ideas. Great empires crumbled, while the ideas survived."
While in prison, Singh and two others had written a letter to Lord Irwin, wherein they asked to be treated as prisoners of war and consequently to be executed by firing squad and not by hanging.
Subhas Chandra Bose said that: "Bhagat Singh had become the symbol of the new awakening among the youths."
Jawaharlal Nehru acknowledged that Bhagat Singh's popularity was leading to a new national awakening, saying: "He was a clean fighter who faced his enemy in the open field ... he was like a spark that became a flame in a short time and spread from one end of the country to the other dispelling the prevailing darkness everywhere".
Four years after Singh's hanging, the Director of the Intelligence Bureau, Sir Horace Williamson, wrote: "His photograph was on sale in every city and township and for a time rivaled in popularity even that of Mr. Gandhi himself".
These revolutionaries dedicated their lives to India's freedom and their ideas were immensely popular popular among the masses.
