1929: Ilm Deen, blasphemy avenger
October 31st, 2019 Headsman
On this date in 1929, the Punjabi Muslim youth Ilm Deen was hanged for murdering a blasphemous publisher.
The Rangila Rasul is a pamphlet-length send-up satirizing the “widely experienced”, chortle chortle, Prophet Muhammad for his many wives; Muslim fury at its publication brought the Raj to legislate against “outraging the religious feelings of any class” — a law that’s still on the books in India.
However, there was no such law at the time of the naughty screed’s publication, and as a result the Hindu publisher, Mahashe Rajpal of Lahore, was acquitted of any charge in 1929.
‘Twas a temporary exoneration, for Ilm Deen (or Ilm-ud-din, or Ilmuddin), a 20-year-old carpenter, delivered his verdict extrajudicially by daggering Rajpal in the chest in a Lahore bazaar on April 6, 1929.
The assassin’s speedy trip to the Raj’s gallows thereafter only cinched his place as a sectarian, and later (for Pakistan) national, martyr; the poet Allama Iqbal exclaimed at the young man’s funeral that “this uneducated young man has surpassed us, the educated ones!” To this day, Ilm Deen’s solemn tomb is a place of pilgrimage and veneration.
The case remains a fraught precedent for latter-day sectarian tension, as well as a ready vein of propaganda as with Ghazi Ilam Din Shaheed, a 1978 film released under the Pakistani military government after overthrowing Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
On this day..
- Triskaidekaphobia: Executed Today's 13th Annual Report - 2020
- 1904: Wang Weiqin, by lingchi - 2020
- Striking Midnight: Executed Today's 12th Annual Report - 2019
- Eleventh Hour: Executed Today's (cursory) 11th annual report - 2018
- 1926: Anteo Zamboni, Mussolini near-assassin, lynched - 2018
- Decimated: Executed Today's Tenth Annual Report - 2017
- 1860: Johannes Nathan, the last ordinary execution in the Netherlands - 2017
- 1862: Thomas Sanders, rapist - 2016
- Deathed Up to the Nines: Executed Today's Ninth Annual Report - 2016
- The Eight Pains: Executed Today's Eighth annual report - 2015
- 1460: Tiburzio di Maso, Roman brigand - 2015
- Seven-Out: Executed Today's Seventh Annual Report - 2014
- 1814: Private John McMillan, deserter - 2014
- Six Years Under: Executed Today's Sixth Annual Report - 2013
- 1698: The last Streltsy executed in October - 2013
- Executed Today's Fifth Annual Report: Hang Five - 2012
- 1907: Evstolia Ragozinnikova - 2012
- Executed Today's Fourth Annual Report: Wrung, Wan and Quartered - 2011
- 1893: Bertha Zillmann, completely prostrate - 2011
- Executed Today's Third Annual Report: Third Time Lucky - 2010
- 1492: Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington, Nearly Headless Nick - 2010
- 1938: The terrified John Deering - 2009
- Executed Today's Second Annual Report: Once Bitten, Twice Die - 2009
- Executed Today's First Annual Report: One Year of Dying Languorously - 2008
- 1793: The Girondists - 2008
- 1589: Peter Stubbe, Sybil Stubbe and Katharina Trump - 2007
Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Arts and Literature,Assassins,Capital Punishment,Death Penalty,England,Execution,Famous,God,Hanged,History,India,Martyrs,Murder,Occupation and Colonialism,Pakistan,Religious Figures
Tags: 1920s, 1929, cinema, ilm deen, islam, lahore, october 31
