Passports for Ajit Singh, Udham Singh

What is the meaning of the word ‘passport’? The English dictionary describes it as a document that is at once an identity card and a travel permit, a doorway and a key. But in the colonial folk psychology of Punjab, the word conjured a much more imaginative range of meanings. It was a taveez (talisman) which ensured safe journeys across the “black waters” under the watchful eye of Khwaja Khizar, the patron saint of water. It was also an udankhatola, the flying vehicle of Indian mythology.

In 1915, the British government introduced a mandatory ‘paper passport’ for any kind of travel across the seven seas. Suddenly, several distinct political subjects — soldiers in the British army, workers and peasants in the Americas, and fugitive militants in exile — were bound together in their pursuit of this document.

At the time, the passport was a single sheet of foolscap-size paper, folded out with both a photograph and a signature or thumbprint of the bearer. The women’s passport did not carry any photograph. Instead, it carried a handwritten note in a lined box meant for a photograph: “Lady in Purdah”.

Five years later, the format was updated. In 1921, a blue-coloured passport was issued for the first time in the format of a 32-page booklet.

These two passport photographs are from the archival collection of the British Library. They depict the famous anti-colonial heroes of Punjab: Ajit Singh and Udham Singh. During his 30-year-long self-imposed exile, Ajit Singh had acquired a Brazilian passport, which served him well in Europe and Latin America. But the British authorities refused to allow Ajit Singh to travel to India on his Brazilian passport.

In September 1938, he finally met Jawaharlal Nehru in Geneva to get his passport application attested. Nehru, a professional barrister at the time, obligingly attested the documents. On the back of the photograph, Nehru scribbled: “I certify that this photograph is a true likeness of Mr Ajit Singh — Jawaharlal Nehru Sept 20, 1938.”

Ajit Singh duly attached this attested photograph with his application. As for the “purpose” of his travel, he wrote: “Going home to India”. Yet, the application was rejected outright by the British officials. One of the officials scribbled a terse note in pencil in the margins: “After all, he is the uncle of Bhagat Singh who threw bomb in the Assembly Hall.”

Ajit Singh had to wait for eight more years before he could finally return to India. A few months before India gained Independence, Nehru, in his capacity as the interim Prime Minister, finally sent for Ajit Singh. Arriving from London, Ajit Singh landed at the Karachi airport on March 12, 1947. Ironically, Ajit Singh took his last breath in Dalhousie during the first hours of Independence: the midnight of August 15, 1947.

If Ajit Singh was still able to return in time for Indian Independence, Udham Singh could never make the return journey. The passport issued to him in the city of Lahore in 1933 was fated to be a one-way document. But, Udham Singh’s martyrdom demands of archivists a new leap of imagination. On his passport, Udham Singh’s profession reads “Business”. It should read, instead, “Revolution”. His height should read “Sky High”. The visible distinguishing mark should read “Scars inflicted by the shackles”. And the colour of his eyes? “Red with anguish”.

— The writer is a poet based in the UK

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