Kumari Lajjawati Rakhi letter to Bhagat Singh which was banned by British

Kumari Lajjawati was one of the leading freedom fighters and Congress activist of India. She was academician as well and was in faculty of Kanya Mahavidyalaya(KMV) College Jalandhar and its Principal for longtime. She was secretary of Bhagat Singh Defence committee and having a massive campaign to get Bhagat Singh-Rajguru-Sukhdev execution stopped. She was directly reporting her activities to Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and was regularly meeting Bhagat Singh in Lahore Jail Nehru Memorial Museum and Library(Teenmurthy) had her long interview recorded in its oral history cell, which throws light on her activities. Perhaps her place in Jalandhar even provided shelter to Bhagat Singh during his underground life. When Bhagat Singh was arrested on 8th April 1929 along with B K Dutt after throwing harmless bombs in Central Assembly Delhi. Lajjawati sent his Rakhi on that year's Raksha Bandhan festival, she wrote  a letter with Rakhi which was published by Hindi journal Swatantar from Calcutta. The British got the letter and got it translated in English and found it seditious, so proscribed the letter. Dr. Gurdev Singh Sidhu from Mohali, who is working on Banned literature on Bhagat Singh acquired its copy from National Archives in Delhi and published it in Punjabi Tribune by translating in Punjabi. This letter is produced here courtesy Dr. Gurdev Singh Sidhu and his Punjabi article is also attached in this post. 

Bhagat Singh trusted Lajjawati for his preserving his intellectual legacy, so he handed over his political writings to Kumari Lajjawati for afe custody,m so that she could handver the document to Bejoy Kumar Sinhs on his return from Jail. But Laajjawati took the papers to Lala Feroxe Chand, editor of Lala Lajpt Rai set up fortnightly The People. Feroe Chand was a socialist himself, so he appreciated Bhagat Singh, so he published two or three major writings from this collection. One was Letter of Harikishan trial, which apparently got lost or was made to lost, as it was critical of Advocate Asaf Ali for charging high fee from revolutionaries. Feroze Chand also published Bhagat Singh's most important essay-Why I am an Atheist. Extracts from Letter to young political workers were also reproduced, which established Bhagat Singh's prominence political and ideological position. Remaining writings of Bhagat Singh did reach Bejoy Kumar Sinha adter his release from imprisonment, but Bejoy Sinha could not protect thse valuable documents

Darling Bhagat Singh, the very life of the unhappy country.

            Today is the Rakhi (festival).

                        ***

            Today the entire country is bound in the chains of slavery. It is receiving the kicks of the boots of the foreigners. That is why calamity falls on the entire female community of this country. When the males of a country lose their independence, the consequence thereof has to be borne by their mothers and sisters; for, the honour of the mothers, sisters, daughters and daughters-in-law of those cowards who are incapable of protecting themselves is not safe in their hands. If any proof is required to support this statement of mine then, O Bhagat Singh! You had better interview once those unfortunate women of Manawala on whose faces the representatives of this bureaucracy dared to spit, by removing their veils, in 1919, when you were quite young. Make, a tour once – and once only – through the lanes of Amritsar, the sacred town of the Sikhs, and ascertain the number of those women who could not secure the help of a doctor or a midwife in their pain of delivery in 1919. Cast a glance on the files of the newspapers of Fiji or Mauritius of those days when coolies were being recruited in the country under the system f Indenture and prepare a list of those women who had to commit suicide, even in the very presence of their husbands in order to save their chastity. It happened only  yesterday; among the women who had to wait at the gate of the Lahore Central Jail, in the sun, for two hours and a half, one was aged 70 years while another had a child in her lap aged probably 6 months. At the gate, were standing those sons of the uncle of Miss Mayo who boasted of the bravery of her race. But no one made any arrangement for their sitting for the full 2.1/2 hours; for, they were the mothers of slave sons, sisters of slave brothers and wives of slave husbands.

            From the terrible aspect of the bureaucracy and the names form of the cowardice of the youths of the province which we saw in 1919, we had come to believe in our hearts that the slavery of the country and our humiliation would not come to an end till eternity. But all of a sudden, a ray of light flashed in the dark night to hopelessness in May last, when we happened to read the statement made by you in the Delhi Bomb Case. My head bowed down in reverence. I am a supporter of non-violence but I say it truly, O Bhagat Singh, that I became eager to place the dust of your feet on my forehead.

            From that day you have come to have the same position in my heart as Maharana Pratap, Chhatrapati Shivaji, Lokamanya Tilak and Mahatma Gandhi have.

            Therefore, on the sacred occasion of the Rakhi festival today, on behalf of all the women of the province in whose heats there is a feeling of hero-worship, who know to appreciate the feeling of self-sacrifice, to whose hearts the manacles and fetters of slavery cause unbeatable pain and who have a sincere desire to see this country free, I make a present of a Rakhi in the shape of this letter to you, the veritable Pratap and Shivaji of this time and the Mazzini of the young Punjab, out of reverence for your bravery, out of a feeling of devotion for your spirit of self-sacrifice, and becoming entranced by your immaculate patriotism.

May your sacrifice and self-denial generate true heroism in all the youths of the province.

May their blood boil up at seeing the humiliation of their mothers and sister at the hands of the bureaucracy.

May they jump into the field of action, becoming frenzied for Swaraj becoming mad like you – yes, just like you, and becoming fearless of jail, transportation and death.