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Udham Singh
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Martyr

Udham Singh

ਊਧਮ ਸਿੰਘاودھم سنگھ

Shot Michael O'Dwyer, governor of Punjab at the time of Jallianwala Bagh, in London in 1940 and was hanged at Pentonville.

Udham Singh was born Sher Singh in 1899 at Sunam in Sangrur district. Orphaned young, he was brought up in the Central Khalsa Orphanage in Amritsar. He is said to have been in Amritsar on 13 April 1919, the day of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, and he swore revenge on those responsible.

He spent the next twenty years as a labourer, carpenter and revolutionary in Africa, America and Europe, joined the Ghadar Party, and was jailed in India for possessing arms. He called himself Ram Mohammad Singh Azad, a name joining Hindu, Muslim and Sikh.

On 13 March 1940, at a meeting in Caxton Hall in London, he shot dead Sir Michael O'Dwyer, who had been Lieutenant-Governor of Punjab in 1919 and had endorsed the shooting. At his trial he said he had waited twenty-one years for that moment. He was hanged at Pentonville Prison on 31 July 1940. His remains were returned to India in 1974 and cremated at Sunam.

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