Saquib Salim

September 28, 1871, the Town Hall of Calcutta was crowded with European and Indian officials as well as civilians. The crowd was so big that the Commissioner of Police was unable to control it. The event was a trial by Justice Paul of Abdullah, an Indian who had assassinated the Chief Justice, John Paxton Norman, eight days before. Till that time, Norman was the highest British official to have lost his life at the hands of an Indian.

Indians had been resisting the British rule for over a century. A few years ago in the summer of 1857, a widespread armed resistance led by the Indian sepoys of the English East India Company and Bahadur Shah Zafar had threatened the very existence of the British Empire in India. British authorities were alarmed and wanted to make sure that there would not be a repeat of 1857. 

One important aspect of 1857 was the fraternity and sense of unity Indians had displayed. People of religions, regions and castes rose in arms against the foreign rulers. The British authorities, after 1857, consciously developed and popularized a narrative that Indians since centuries were divided people. A sense of enmity was created between Hindus and Muslims by misinterpreting the historical narratives and through sponsoring loyalists who would spit venom against the other religion. 

With motives of spreading communal hate in India under a conscious divide and rule policy, the British started classifying Indians fighting against the empire by their religions, castes and regions. This is how when the Indian leader of revolutionaries was found to be Muslim the case would be reported in the press as Wahabi Trials (1862-1871) and when the leaders were Hindu the case would be reported as Hindu Conspiracy Case (1917). 

After 1857, Indians did not accept defeat and started preparing for another war against the British. In 1861, one such plot was unearthed by the British where the Indian Muslim leaders from Patna, Ambala, Peshawar and Lahore were linked to each other. The subsequent trials resulted in arrests and transportation of hundreds of Muslim clerics to the Andaman during the next decade. The British tried to brand this effort as Wahabi to discredit them in the eyes of the fellow countrymen and keep Hindus away from it. But, they succeeded only partially as Hindu leaders like Bipin Chandra Pal publicly acknowledged these acts of Muslims as the acts of nationalist resistance against the British.

In 1870, the British courts sentenced Amir Khan, an alleged Wahabi leader, for transportation to the Andaman. Thousands of Muslims revered him and saw a leader in him. The British had tried to serve a blow to the whole movement which infuriated the other Muslims, who were part of the movement. The judge who sentenced Amir Khan was John Norman and the Intelligence authorities had reported calls for revenge against his sentencing.

Abdullah, a Muslim from Punjab, reached Calcutta and started living in a mosque as its caretaker. The mosque was near the High Court. On 20 September 1871, Abdullah attacked Justice Norman on the stairs of the court. Norman died soon after and Abdullah was arrested.

During the interrogation, Abdullah did not disclose names of his comrades. He would reply to police questions with answers like, “elephant and dog are eating the wall.” 

In the court, Abdullah claimed that he had no comrades and the murder was an act of rage. The statement was never accepted by the court based on the police report. The police had already searched the mosque, where he lived, and traced his movements and investigation pointed towards a larger conspiracy. When the judge offered him a relaxation in the sentence if he revealed the name of his leaders and the whole plan, Abdullah remained silent.

In the final judgment, Justice Paul noted, “You are determined that the motive, whether it emanates from private personal revenge, or is the result of the instigation of others, or is the effect of vain delusions which prey on your mind, shall not be divulged by you and that your dark secret shall die with you. An opportunity was afforded to you to speak, so that you may make some sign of contrition, some symptom of repentance of the foul murder of which you have been guilty.

“But you have allowed this opportunity to pass by with an unbroken and remorseless silence. The pages of history which will chronicle the agonizing details of this foul murder will be ever read with horror and dismay, but in the absence of your recorded revelation they will fail to afford those who have outlived this tragedy and their successors any exact knowledge of who impulses that operate on a dark and ill-regulated mind, and of the working of a depraved heart, or of the causes which at times reduce men because of their wickedness to the low level.

“The time may come when the motives will be brought to light, and we must all hope that diligence, guided by intelligence, and directed by the restlessness of purpose, will do much towards unraveling the dark history of your life, and the motive of this last atrocity. If you committed this foul deed from mere personal revenge you will have to die for the gratification of a wretched and short life. If you are the hired assassin of others you will feel during the short time you have now to live, how dismal and deserted by all. You will realize the idea that those for whose benefit you may have committed this crime, are anxiously looking forward to your death, so that their secrets and their lives may be safe; and you will be satisfied, when you die, that your name will be a term of derision even amongst your instigators, and will be excreted by all mankind”

The judgment itself agrees that the court believed that a larger plot remained unearthed of which Abdullah was a part. The observation did not prove wrong when a few months after the incident, Sher Ali assassinated the Viceroy, Lord Mayo, and during the trial, Abdullah was my brother.

Abdullah was hanged the same day and authorities were ordered to keep an eye over his relatives and friends in Punjab. 

It is a tragedy that heroes who had laid their lives while fighting for the nation remained anonymous.

(Saquib Salim is a historian and a writer)