He was believed to be the sole surviving eyewitness of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, which took place in Amritsar in April 1919. Yet, Bapu Shingara Singh, who passed away on Monday at the presumed age of 113 after a prolonged illness, received only chequered recognition to his claim.
In March 2003, the then presidentAPJ Abdul Kalam had honoured Shingara Singh during hisvisit to Amritsar and had suggested to the Punjab government to record his impressions about the massacre.
However, the government did not heed the president’s suggestion nor did it even recognise Shingara Singh as a freedom fighter. This is because a little earlier, it had set up a fact-finding committee, headed by Harish Sharma of the Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, which had concluded that Shingara was making false claims and that there was no evidence whatsoever to testify that he was a witness to the massacre.
Shingara’s grandson, Balraj Singh, however, said there was a bullet scar on his arm, where he had been hit when policemen were firing on the crowd gathered at Jallianwala Bagh. Balraj said his grandfather was at Jallianwala along with three friends, all of whom died in the firing while he managed to escape. Balraj said his grandfather had witnessed people jumping into the well to save themselves from the firing.
Singhara Singh, he said, had been running from pillar to post to record his memories of the massacre in a book, as promised by Kalam. “Bapu Shingara Singh had an important piece of history in his head but nobody bothered to record it despite the instructions given by the former president,” said Balraj.
Ironically, even as the state government refused to entertain Bapu Shingara Singh’s claims, Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal has acknowledged them. Expressing his grief at Shingara’s death, the chief minister described him as an icon of pre-Independence movement and the last surviving witness of the Jallianwala Bagh tragedy in 1919.
“The name of the grand old man of the national freedom struggle would go down in the annals of the history through his rich legacy of high ideals of patriotism and self-sacrifice,” said Badal in his tribute.
The Punjab government gave Shingara Rs25,000 after Kalam’s visit, buckling to demands by social groups. But it made no effort to record his history as he had seen it.
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