Who was Lala Lajpat Rai? The firebrand freedom fighter who challenged British rule fearlessly

Lala Lajapat Rai, popularly known as the Punjab Kesari, was one of the legendary triumvirate- Lal-Bal-Pal. He was one of the most fearless leaders alongside Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Bipin Chandra Pal, who formed a radical, firebrand Indian nationalism which confronted British colonialism head-on. He dedicated his life to the selfless service of the nation.

Lala Lajpat Rai was born in an educated Aggarwal family of Punjab. He was drawn to a creative revivalist movement in India Arya Samaj, which tried to revive the Vedic teachings with the slogan "Go back to the Vedas". They were deeply disturbed by the inadequacy of the traditional “Moderate” politics, which they call “political mendicancy”. Lala Lajpat Rai founded the Dayanand Anglo-Vedicschool in Lahore, which later became the centre of the nationalist thought and cultural and social reform. According to historian RC Mazumdar, it was “the precursor of the Civil Disobedience Movement of Mahatma Gandhi.”

Challenging the British Authority

Lala Lajpat Rai rose to prominence during the anti-partition movement in Bengal of 1905. He then became a vocal critic of the British constitutional reform. To punish his growing involvement with the freedom movement, he was given the toughest prison sentence in Mandalay (now Myanmar) in 1907 without trial. In 1920, he was elected the President of the Indian National Congress and was later elected as the President of the All India Trade Union Congress.

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Later Life of Lala Lajpat Rai

After the failure of the Non-Cooperation movement and the communal violence that resulted in India, specifically the Kohat riot. Rai started to be actively involved in the Hindu Mahasabha. He was already part of the pressure group that supported the cause of Hindu nationalism. Rai's politics became more complex compared to the simplistic Savarkarite Hindutva. Historian Vanya Vaidehi Bhargav defines Rai’s politics as “the complex reasoning that can undergird an intellectual position which can imagine a ‘communal’ politics as an instrument to establish a ‘secular’ Indian nation, however risky this may be”. It was more in reaction to the Pan-Islam Caliphate movement, both of which saw Modern India not as an amalgam of two civilisations, but a failure of itself. However, in contrast to Savarkarite Hindutva, Rai was a pluralist who advocated for social reform and worked to protect the political and economic rights of Hindu from colonial and communal threats.

While leading a movement on October 30, 1928, in Lahore against the Simon Commission, the protesters were met with a violent crackdown, during which he was fatally injured. Despite being injured, he addressed a crowd that evening, famously stating: "I declare that the blows struck at me today will be the last nails in the coffin of British rule in India". He succumbed to the injuries 18 days later on November 17, 1928. However, his death radicalised the likes of Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, and Sukhdev and set off a chain of events, which led to the assassination of Assistant Superintendent John P. Saunders and the execution of Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, and Sukhdev.