Udham Singh’s Memorial Lacks Resources

On 13 Mar 1940, Udham Singh, a survivor of the 1919 Jallianala Bagh massacre, assassinated former Panjab Lieutenant Governor Michael O’Dwyer. On 31 Jul 1940, the British executed Singh at the Pentonville prison in London. Singh has since become an iconic figure in Panjab. Singh was born Sher Singh on 26 Dec 1899, in Sunam, Sangrur. In 1974, Singh’s remains were exhumed in the UK and repatriated to India and a formal cremation took place 2 Aug 1974. Singh’s one-room accommodation ancestral house in Sunam has been converted into a museum, now maintained by the archaeology department. It houses literature on him and other revolutionaries, along with a few of his photos. The city has a few of Singh’s statues but all of them depict a different face, a different gesture. Some have a gun in hand, some have a book, some have both. On 31 Oct 2021, a memorial for Singh was inaugurated in Sunam. Despite a dedicated space to keep the urns with Singh’s ashes, they are placed in the town’s college library and are brought to the memorial only when functions are held. Historian Rakesh Kumar, who has also written a book on Singh, says after the inauguration of the memorial, we have been seeking Singh’s letters from the Guru Nanak Dev University in Amritsar but nothing has been done. There has been a long-standing demand to bring back Singh’s pistol and other belongings from London. Last year, paying his tributes at the Udham Singh memorial, Panjab CM Mann said, ‘The government will make strenuous efforts to bring back the personal belongings from London.’ Singh’s 85^th death anniversary just passed but there has been no effort to bring his materials to his memorial.