The Patient Assassin
A true tale of massacre, revenge and the Raj
Anita Anand
Having read it
★★★★★
A compelling book that needs to be widely shared and read, certainly with young and old Britons alike and put forward as a contributory introduction to why empire, specifically the British one (even in the majority of its modern attitudes as well) was a thoroughly unprogressive and non-humanitarian form of civilisation.
A good passage
Others, no matter what their age or infirmity, were required to perform acts of pointless hard labour. Many were sent to the railway station and forced to lift heavy bales, carrying them from one end of the yard to the other for no particular gain. Those who were not up to the task were forced to skip on the spot, without break, or to ‘mark time’ by climbing up and down ladders. Educated prisoners were forced to write poems in praise of martial law and their British masters. All these fancy punishments, as they were called, were designed to debase and humiliate the Indian population.
A second good passage
New York in 1926 was not kind to newcomers, especially ones who looked like Udham Singh [the patient assassin]. The United States has passed a federal law two years earlier known as the Johnson-Reed Act. It introduced a raft of measures, including the National Origins Act and the Asian Exclusion Act, primarily aimed at decreasing immigration from southern Europe – countries with a Roman Catholic majority – Eastern Europe and Eastern European Jews. It also barred entry to all Arabs, East Indians and Asians; basically all non-white people from overseas. According to the US Department of State Office, the purpose of the act was ‘to preserve the ideal of American homogeneity’.
A third good passage
Many who fell that day had fought alongside the British during the war. ‘They had served in many campaigns in Flanders, in France, in Mesopotamia and in East Africa. Some of them at the risk of their own safety may have saved the lives of Englishmen who had been wounded. Now they were felled to the ground at the hands of English officials serving in the same Government which they themselves had served.’
Covered in his compatriots’ blood, what Diwan Singh saw that day turned him irreconcilably against the Raj. His participation in the protest marked him as a troublemaker as far as the British were concerned, rendering him unemployable in India. He was forced to leave, trying his luck in East Africa first and then moving to England in 1931: ‘I’m not sure why it occurred to him to come to England,’ his son would later muse.