Maia Ramnath - Decolonizing Anarchism.pdf - Libcom

Echoes and Intersections I 155
Singh to Josh, at whose house he had sought refuge when
escaping the crime scene-maybe not the right officer, but
a British officer nonetheless. While this sounds callous,
his point was that the true target was not the man but the
system. Accordingly, the next day a red leaflet was posted,
announcing that the HSRA had avenged Rai's murder:
Today the world has seen that the Indian people are
ever watchful of the interests of their country and
no cost is too great for them to defend its honour .
. . . We regret to have had to kill a person but he
was part and parcel of that inhuman and unjust order
which has to be destroyed. In him, an agent of
British rule has been done away with. Shedding of
human blood grieves us but blood shed at the altar
of revolution is unavoidable.os
The next major action was planned for April 8, 1929,
to take place in the central Legislative Assembly in Delhi,
where discussion was scheduled on the Public Safety and
Trades Disputes Bills. These were seen as direct attacks on
anticolonial dissent and labor organizing, respectively. A
majority in the House rejected the two bills, but the viceroy
had determined to go over its head and announce the
enactment of the bills in this assembly session.
When the president of the assembly rose to announce
the ruling, Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt threw two bombs
down from their vantage point in the public gallery. Amid
the smoke and fumes filling the hall, the two bombers
then scattered a flurry ofleaflets and shouts of "Inqilab