1943: Hemu Kalani, Sindh revolutionary
1 comment January 21st, 2011 Headsman
On this date in 1943, the British hanged India independence activist Hemu Kalani in Sukkur for attempting to sabotage a rail line.
You could say the Sindh youth was not cowed by the Empire’s suppression of the Quit India movement.
“In the face of this shameful capitulation of the ‘left’ leaders,” he raged of respectable pols prepared to accept office at the pleasure of the British during wholesale confinement of political prisoners, “what should the rank and file ‘leftists’ do?”
It is only by waging unremitting struggle against capitulation in every form, by fighting against dissolution of their own organizations, that they can seriously fight to attain the goal. Intransigent opposition to every capitulationist masquerading as a ‘leftist’!
As the British rounded up the Quit India leadership, less conciliatory young people like Kalani came to the fore (pdf) and then were further radicalized by British intransigence.
If you’re going to lock up Mr. Nonviolence himself, Mahatma Gandhi, you’re going to get to deal instead with the elements he keeps in check. That was certainly Gandhi’s argument: he refused to condemn violence, observing that the British themselves had called it up.
Mass protests gave way to more aggressive direct action; in Kalani’s case, that meant derailing a train bringing ammunition to the European forces occupying his native province.
Caught in the act, he refused under torture to shop his comrade, earning a hemp necktie from the occupiers and the tribute of posterity on the subcontinent.
Somewhat ironically, the relative intransigence of Quit India supporters during this period, as compared with the Muslim League‘s greater support for Britain’s immediate World War II exigencies, helped to cleave apart Pakistan and India when independence did come in the late 1940s … which is why the Hindu Kalani is most honored in India, even though his native soil is now in Pakistan.
On this day..
- 2014: Li Hao - 2020
- 1867: Ciosi and Agostini, at the Polygone of Vincennes - 2019
- 1716: Stefan Cantacuzino, Wallachian prince - 2018
- 1876: Marshall Crain, Bloody Williamson killer - 2017
- Daily Double: Saddam Hussein crushes a coup - 2016
- 1970: Twenty-two in Baghdad - 2016
- 1932: Two-Gun Crowley - 2015
- Feast Day of Saint Agnes - 2014
- 1535: Six Protestants for the Affair of the Placards - 2013
- 1880: Daniel Searles, the first hanging in Tioga County - 2012
- 1670: Claude Duval, gentleman highwayman - 2010
- 2001: Larry Keith Robison - 2009
- 1793: Louis XVI - 2008
Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Capital Punishment,Death Penalty,England,Execution,Hanged,History,India,Martyrs,Occupation and Colonialism,Pakistan,Power,Revolutionaries,Torture,Treason,Wartime Executions
Tags: 1940s, 1943, gandhi, hemu kalani, january 21, mahatma gandhi, mohandas gandhi, nationalism, partition of india, quit india, sukkur, world war ii
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