Lala Lajpat Rai

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Lala Lajpat Rai

Born
Died
Organization
Political
movement
Religion

28 January 1865
Dhudike, Punjab, British India
17 November 1928 (age 63)
Lahore, Punjab, British India
Indian National Congress, Arya
Samaj
Indian Independence movement
Hinduism

Lala Lajpat Rai pronunciation (helpinfo), (28 January 1865 17 November 1928) was an
Indian author and politician who is chiefly remembered as a leader in the Indian fight for
independence from the British Raj. He was popularly known as Punjab Kesari meaning the
same and was part of the Lal Bal Pal trio.[1] He was also associated with activities of Punjab
National Bank and Lakshmi Insurance Company in their early stages. He sustained serious
injuries by the police when leading a non-violent protest against the Simon Commission and
died less than three weeks later. His death anniversary (November 17) is one of several days
celebrated as Martyrs' Day in India.

Contents

1 Early life

2 Travels to America

3 Partition of Punjab

4 Commission protests

5 Inspiration and memorial

6 Gulab Devi Chest Hospital

7 Works

8 References

9 External links

Early life
Lajpat Rai was born in Dhudike (now in Moga district, Punjab) on 28 January 1865.[2][3][4]
(The word 'Lala' is an honorific, applied to prominent Hindu men of the time.) His
grandfather was a Svetambara Jain while his father had great respect for Islam, and he even
fasted and prayed like Muslims, but did not embrace Islam largely due to his family's
attachment to the Hindu faith.[5] Rai had his initial education in Government Higher
Secondary School, Rewari (now in Haryana, previously in Punjab), in the late 1870s and
early 1880s, where his father, Radha Krishan, was an Urdu teacher. Rai was influenced by
Hinduism and Manusmriti and created a career of reforming Indian policy through politics
and writing.[6] (When studying law in Lahore, he continued to practice Hinduism. He became
a large believer in the idea that Hinduism, above nationality, was the pivotal point upon
which an Indian lifestyle must be based.) Hinduism, he believed, led to practices of peace to
humanity, and the idea that when nationalist ideas were added to this peaceful belief system,
a non-secular nation could be formed. His involvement with Hindu Mahasabha leaders
gathered criticism from the Bharat Sabha as the Mahasabhas were non-secular, which did not
conform with the system laid out by the Indian National Congress.[7] This focus on Hindu
practices in the subcontinent would ultimately lead him to the continuation of peaceful
movements to create successful demonstrations for Indian independence. He was a devotee of
Arya Samaj and was editor of Arya Gazette, which he set up during his student time.[8]
Graduates of the National College, which he founded inside the Bradlaugh Hall at Lahore as
an alternative to British institutions, included Bhagat Singh.[9] He was elected President of the
Congress party in the Calcutta Special Session of 1920.[10]

Travels to America
See also: Ghadr Party
Lajpat Rai travelled to the US in 1907, and then returned during World War I. He toured Sikh
communities along the US West Coast; visited Tuskegee University in Alabama; and met
with workers in the Philippines. His travelogue, The United States of America (1916), details
these travels and features extensive quotations from leading African American intellectuals,
including W.E.B. DuBois and Fredrick Douglass. The book also argues for the notion of
color-caste, suggesting sociological similarities between race in the US and caste in India.
During World War I, Lajpat Rai lived in the United States, but he returned to India in 1919
and in the following year led the special session of the Congress Party that launched the

noncooperation movement. Imprisoned from 1921 to 1923, he was elected to the legislative
assembly on his release. [11]

Partition of Punjab
He initiated the discussion on the partition of Punjab. Writing in The Tribune in NovemberDecember 1924, he penned,
My suggestion is that the Punjab should be partitioned into two provinces, the Western
Punjab with a large Muslim majority to be [a] Muslim-governed province; the Eastern Punjab
with a large Hindu-Sikh majority to be [a] non-Muslim-governed province.
He also proposed Muslim provinces to be set up in the North West Frontier Province, Sindh
and East Bengal.[12]

Commission protests
In 1928, the British government set up the Commission, headed by Sir John Simon, to report
on the political situation in India. The Indian political parties boycotted the Commission,
because it did not include a single Indian in its membership, and it met with country-wide
protests. When the Commission visited Lahore on 30 October 1928, Lajpat Rai led a nonviolent protest against the Commission in a silent march, but the police responded with
violence. The superintendent of police, James A. Scott, ordered the police to lathi charge the
protesters and personally assaulted Rai, who was grievously injured. Rai could not recover
from the injuries and died on 17 November 1928 of a heart attack. It was obviously known
that Scott's blows had hastened his demise.[13] However, when the matter was raised in the
British Parliament, the British Government denied any role in Rai's death.[14] Although Bhagat
Singh did not witness the event,[15] he vowed to take revenge,[14] and joined other
revolutionaries, Shivaram Rajguru, Sukhdev Thapar and Chandrashekhar Azad, in a plot to
kill Scott.[16] However, in a case of mistaken identity, Bhagat Singh was signalled to shoot on
the appearance of John P. Saunders, an Assistant Superintendent of Police. He was shot by
Rajguru and Bhagat Singh while leaving the District Police Headquarters in Lahore on 17
December 1928.[17] Chanan Singh, a Head Constable who was chasing them, was fatally
injured by Azad's covering fire.[18]
This case of mistaken identity did not stop Bhagat Singh and his fellow-members of the
Hindustan Socialist Republican Association from claiming that retribution had been exacted.
[16]

Inspiration and memorial

The Lala Lajpat Rai Trust was formed in 1959 on the eve of his Centenary Birth Celebration,
to promote education. The trust was founded by a group of Punjabi philanthropists (including
R.P Gupta and B.M Grover) who have settled and prospered in the Indian State of
Maharashtra. The Lala Lajpat Rai University of Veterinary & Animal Sciences, in Hisar,
Haryana, is a state university was created in memory of Lajpat Rai. A statue of Lajpat Rai
stands at the central square in Shimla, India (having been originally erected in Lahore and
moved to Shimla in 1948). Lajpat Nagar and Lajpat Nagar Central Market in New Delhi,

Lajpat Rai Market in Chandani Chowk, Delhi; Lala Lajpat Rai Hall of Residence at Indian
Institutes of Technology (IIT) in Kanpur and Kharagpur; as well as the Lala Lajpat Rai
Institute of Engineering and Technology(LLRIET), Moga, are named in his honor. Also many
institutes, schools and libraries in his hometown of Jagraon, district Ludhiana are named after
him. The bus terminus in Jagraon, Punjab, India is named after Lala Lajpat Rai. Lala Lajpat
Rai Hospital, Kanpur is also named in his honor.
The Lala Lajpat Rai Institute of Management is a business school in Mumbai.

Gulab Devi Chest Hospital

Lala Lajpat Rai's mother, Gulab Devi, died of TB in Lahore. In order to perpetuate her
memory, Lala Lajpat Rai established a Trust in 1927 to build and run a TB Hospital for
women reportedly at the spot where she had died.[19]
The Trust purchased 40 acres of land in April 1930 from the then Government which gave a
free grant of an additional 10 acres on Ferozepur Road (the road is now called Sharah-eRoomi). Construction work was started in 1931 and completed in 1934 when the Hospital
gates were opened to TB patients.
A marble plaque bears witness to the opening of the Hospital on 17 July 1934 by Mahatma
Gandhi. On the migration of trustees to India in 1947, the Government invited Begum Raana
Liaquat Ali Khan, Syed Maratab Ali, Professor Dr.Amiruddin and some other notables and
philanthropists to become acting Trustees of the Hospital in July 1948. They constituted a
Managing Committee with Begum Raana in the Chair, for running the Gulab Devi Chest
Hospital.

Works

"England's Debt To India" at Hindustan Books

"Young India" at Hindustan Books

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE EDWIN SAMUEL

MONTAGUE : His Brittanic Majestys Secretary of State for India at Hindustan
Books

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE DAVID LLOYD GEORGE:

PRIME MINISTER OF GREAT BRITAIN at Hindustan Books