New Delhi, January 25
Sixty years after it became a Republic, India is about to share with its people the first authenticated list of martyrs, who helped it realise the dream of freedom. The list would, for the first time, cover the martyrs of 1857, recognised now as the watershed in the struggle for India’s Independence.
Also, the list’s focus would be the nation to avoid accusations that the existing works on martyrs are heavily tilted in favour of the North.
So long, the country has no National Register of Martyrs which can be taken as the basis of future historical research on the subject. Names that do exist in scattered works, including “Who’s Who of Indian Martyrs’ published by the Education Ministry in 1969, are the ones that figured in the national movements of the late 19th and 20th centuries.
They altogether ignored 1857. Moreover, the existing names of martyrs lack historical referencing and can be dismissed as claims unless proved otherwise by evidence in primary sources like judicial records and jail files.
Even the two available lists --- one official and the other prepared by the All India Congress Committee --- on the martyrs of Jallianwala Bagh massacre have yet to stand the test of history.
But now, thanks to experts under the Indian Council of Historical Research which is in charge of the project, India will soon have its first historically-tested list of martyrs of the Jallianwala tragedy which claimed 381 lives according to British records and over 1,000 according to the AICC.
“Both the lists are deceptive. But we are now authenticating the existing information on martyrs of this massacre and others starting from 1857. We are digging into primary sources to create a real historical record,” KL. Tuteja, senior fellow at Nehru Memorial Museum and Library and an expert on the project told The Tribune. He is heading the team researching the martyrs from Punjab, Haryana, Delhi and Himachal.
The Punjab-Delhi-Haryana list would be the first to be printed this February, with experts confirming to The Tribune the discovery of “never-before-heard” martyrs. “Our teams are hitting gold. We are unearthing new names and verifying old ones. Though we don’t intend to recommend deletions from old lists, we will test the veracity of claims to create an unchallengeable record,” Prabhat Shukla, former secretary, ICHR, told TNS, adding that the 1969 work edited by P.N. Chopra lacks information on the movements of South India, especially Andhra, Bengal and Tamil Nadu.
Even in Punjab, now, the experts will extensively cover the Akali movement for the liberation of gurdwaras, Guru ka Bagh, Jaiton Morcha and any other movement which was an offshoot of the national freedom struggle. Peasant, trade union and labour movements would also be looked at.
“Anyone, who fought the British or suffered due to their atrocity because he was conscious of the difference between British imperialism and Indian identity, would be covered,” Tuteja said of the project commissioned by the government. The exercise would, however, not include Kukas as historians have not found evidence of their being part of the liberation movement.
Important, however, is the fact that the government has reworked the definition of a martyr for the prestigious project. The 1969 work defined martyrs as patriots who were hanged or killed in the freedom struggle.
The new one defines them as “those arrested and executed or transported for life, while fighting for freedom. The definition would include people who died in tragedies like the Jallianwala massacre due to the police or the Army action, even if they were
denied arrest.
