23/03/2022
It was on March 23, 1931 when great revolutionaries Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev Thapar and Shivram Hari Rajguru were hanged by the British in Lahore jail.
Dr Ambedkar wrote an editorial titled 'Three Victims' in his newspaper 'Janata' on 13 April 1931 commemorating the loss of three revolutionaries and friends; Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru.
Excerpts from the editorial written by Babasaheb Ambedkar
"Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru were eventually hanged. A special tribunal comprising three high court judges was appointed. It heard the case and unanimously awarded them the death penalty.
The issue of Bhagat Singh's death penalty might have arisen in negotiations that took place between Gandhi and Lord Irwin. Although Lord Irwin had not given any definitive assurance about saving Bhagat Singh's life, Gandhi's speech during the intervening period created a hope that Irwin would do everything within his power to save lives of these three youth. But all these hopes, predictions and appeals proved futile.
If the government thinks that people will be impressed by its display of devotion and strict obedience to the justice goddess and therefore they will approve of this killing, it is its utter naivetΓ©. The entire world, including the government, knows that it is not the devotion to justice goddess but the fear of the Conservative Party and public opinion back home in England that drove them to making this sacrifice.
The government of Lord Irwin hanged Bhagat Singh and his comrades β that too just two to four days before the Karachi conference of the Congress. Both the hanging of Bhagat Singh and his comrades, and its timing, were sufficient to puncture the Gandhi-Irwin Pact and to trash the efforts to bring it about. If Lord Irwin wanted to fail this pact, he would not have found a better way to do it.
In sum, merely not to incur the anger of the Conservatives in England, they sacrificed Bhagat Singh and his comrades. They ignored public opinion here with no concern for what would happen to the Gandhi-Irwin pact. The government must remember that it will never be able to hide this fact howsoever it tries to cover it up or polish it.β