Harking Back: A renovated Bradlaugh Hall: A rethink of our past

A fortnight ago the current Punjab chief minister, as also other relevant persons and bureaucrats met to agree on future Lahore conservation and restoration projects over the next five years. Among the projects mentioned was the Bradlaugh Hall on Rattigan Road.

Over the last many years this column has been advocating the saving of this unique crumbling structure. In this piece let us explore its historic importance to how the independence movement unfolded, then to what happened in 1947, to its current state, and lastly, what should now, if the hall is restored, will be its role in our national life.

In a way this decision to conserve and restore the Bradlaugh Hall is a turning point on how we will view our history, distorted as it is currently by communal considerations. So like all good narrations let us start from the beginning. From Pakistan’s point of view we know that Allama Iqbal, Quaid-i-Azam, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Maulana Zafar Ali Khan, Malik Barkat Ali and every Muslim leader of note delivered fiery speeches at this hall, for it was the centre from where Indian support for the Khilafat Movement in the 1920s was planned.

But then those were secular days and the over-riding consideration was the freedom from the British rule. In a way it was always considered the very symbol of the anti-colonial movement. In the west was the Punjab and to the east Bengal, the people and places in between looked towards these two centres, and once the movement acquired a communal twist, they remained still the most important places, which determined the fate of Pakistan.

But then where did the movement get its formal shape. In 1893 the Indian National Congress held its meeting in Lahore. In those days meetings were held either in Lahore’s town hall, or in the Montgomery Hall in the Lawrence Gardens, originally called Company Bagh, then Lawrence and then Jinnah, depending on the influence of power. The Congress session was held in the office of ‘The Tribune’ which later became ‘The Pakistan Times’, a progressive newspaper that was forced to close by the then military government.

The name of Charles Bradlaugh, a member of the British Parliament, came up as he kept tabling resolutions demanding that India be given its freedom. So at the Congress session funds were collected and in 1893 land next to the house of Prof. Ruchi Ram Sahni, that genius Government College professor, was purchased and construction started and it was resolved that the name of Bradlaugh be used. The record tells us that Iqbal, Gandhi, Jinnah and Nehru (senior) all thought it was an excellent idea, and so the name was formally given.

Bradlaugh was so popular in India that he was often referred to in newspapers as ‘the Member for India’. So under Congress care this hall was completed and inaugurated in the year 1900. Immediately it started attracting every progressive and liberal politician. The famous Ghadar Party of the Kamagata Maru incident fame had an office here. Earlier, the peasant and labour movements of the Punjab all seem to head towards Bradlaugh Hall. Most famous was the ‘Pagri Sambhal Jatta’ movement which had an office of sorts here in 1905.

In the 1920s Lala Lajpat Rai set up the National College here and funds were collected for the ‘Non-co-operation Movement’ of Gandhi. The famous Punjabi revolutionary Bhagat Singh studying in the DAV School (now Muslim High School 2) joined the National College and studied here for four years. Here the revolutionary group of Yesh Pal, Sukhdev, Ram Krishna and Bhagat Singh was formed in 1926. The assassination of the British police officer was planned in this hall, and the famous plot was executed nearby outside the office of the now SP Lahore’s office.

Very quickly this hall became a cultural meeting point, where ‘mushairas’ and debates and meetings of every ilk were held. It was always a very secular place. Most importantly it was at this place that the Total Independence Resolution of India was put forward on the 19th of December, 1929, and was passed by the congress on 26th of January, 1930, with the Indian proposed flag being planted in the River Ravi. Even today Bharat celebrates their Independence Day on this day.

Once the Congress refused to accept Jinnah’s proposal of ‘proportional representation’ for Muslims, it was Allama Iqbal who suggested a separate homeland, and on the 22nd of March, 1940, ten years after the Indian Freedom Resolution, the Pakistan Resolution was tabled, which was formally passed on the 24th of March, 1940. The debate and acceptance was completed on the 23rd of March. Amazingly, a lot of the office work, so the record tells us, was undertaken in a room of Bradlaugh Hall.

So here we have a beautiful hall dedicated to the freedom of the people of our land. Our communal mindset has seen it being ignored, forgetting that the idea of a separate Muslim homeland came almost 40 years later. But then the question arises just what should be the future of this amazingly beautiful historic hall, built with the freedom of our homeland in mind.

Within seven years of the Pakistan Resolution, passed just near the hall in the open Minto Park, now Iqbal Park and originally called Parade Ground, the two resolutions turned into a bloodbath that resulted in the greatest exodus in human history. Over a million persons on both sides were slaughtered as they moved to a new homeland. Shockingly, our children today know almost nothing about that Partition. In a way our country is built on the sacrifices of those very victims, unknown and unrecognised. That is what we as a people have degenerated into.

But the conservation and restoration of the 121-year old Bradlaugh Hall provides us with the unique opportunity to teach our people and children just how our dear country came about. All over the world scholars are researching ‘Partition Stories’, and it has become an important subject in world history. Yours truly had the honour of visiting the ‘1947 Partition Archives’ project at a US university campus at Berkeley, where a line of scholars are recording interviews from all over the world.

That is why there is immense pressure to convert the Bradlaugh Hall - the very centre of the freedom movement for almost half a century – into the ‘Lahore Partition Museum’. A group of scholars are in the process of forming the ‘Lahore Partition Research Group’, which might as well very soon be a non-profit organisation. The university at Berkeley is quite willing to assist in every way possible.

But before Bradlaugh Hall’s restoration is complete, the government will have to move fast and effectively to remove all illegal structures that have come about thanks to the ‘doings’ of the Evacuee Property Board. Shops and small illegal houses exist on the land of the hall. That is what must first be undertaken, hopefully without much fuss. The Partition Museum surely will be the beginning of a new way in which we should, and must, analyse our past and present, what to speak of our future.