Lala Jagat Narain

Lala Jagat Narain was born at Wazirabad, Gujranwala District (now in Pakistan) in 1899.[3] He graduated from D.A.V. College, Lahore in 1919, and joined the Law College, Lahore.

He left his studies in 1920 at the call of Mahatma Gandhi to join the Non-cooperation movement. He was sentenced to two and a half years imprisonment. In jail, he acted as Lala Lajpat Rai's personal secretary.

In 1924 he became the editor of Bhai Parmanand's weekly Hindi language paper Akashvani. He participated in the Satyagraha movement and was in jail for about nine years on different occasions. His wife was in jail for six months and his eldest son, Ramesh Chandra, was arrested during the Quit India movement.

Punjab Kesari, header with the founders Lala Jagat Narain & Romesh Chander)

Narain was President of the Lahore City Congress Committee for seven years, leader of the Congress Party in the Lahore Corporation, a member of the Punjab Provincial Congress Committee for more than thirty years and member of the All-India Congress Committee for about 30 years.

Lala Jagat Narain was detained under MISA during the Indira Gandhi's Emergency which was later on revoked on 4 January 1977.[4] Following this incident, he parted ways with the party.[5]

Narain had come to Jalandhar as a refugee from Lahore and started an Urdu daily, Hind Samachar in 1948. Urdu then was the language of the salaried urban men of Punjab, the people who could afford the time and money for a newspaper. But Urdu in independent India lacked government support. In the schools of Punjab, Punjabi and Hindi became the languages and Gurmukhi and Devanagari the scripts of instruction. In 1965, Jagat Narain founded Punjab Kesari, a Hindi daily.

Jagat Narain on a 2013 stamp of India

Jagat was a critic of the Khalistan movement and he had earlier survived an assassination attempt in January of 1981. However, on 9 September 1981, Narain was shot dead by a two-man team of assassins. Nachhatar Singh was arrested at the scene of crime. Dalbir Singh and Swaran Singh are two others accused in the case.[6]

Dilbir Singh, a companion of Bhindranwale, said that Bhindranwale ordered the killing of Jagat Narain.[7]

The White Paper issued by the government of India, mentioned that Narain was assassinated because of his criticism of Bhindrawale.[8] He was present during the clash that occurred between Nirankaris and Akhand Kirtani Jatha members, and stood witness at the Karnal trial against Bhindrawale.[9]

In 1981, Bhindranwale fortified inside Gurudwara Gurdarshan Parkash at Mehta Chowk, but was persuaded to surrender on 20 September 1981. For 25 days, violence exploded all over Punjab, while Bhindranwale was jailed in Circuit House.[10]

The hijackers of an Indian Airlines plane on 29 September 1981[11] claiming to be members of the Dal Khalsa[12] demanded the release of Bhindranwale, who had been arrested in connection with the murder of Lala Jagat Narain.[13]

India's Union Home Minister, Giani Zail Singh, announced to Parliament that there was no evidence that Bhindranwale was involved in Lala Jagat Narain's assassination, and was released on 15 October 1981.[10]

H.K. Dua, a former Editor-in-Chief of The Tribune, praised Narain's Hind Samachar Group for standing up against terrorism pointing out that 62 of his staff were gunned down over a period of time.[14]

A chair in the name of Narain was established at Kurukshetra University in 1998.

On 9 September 2013, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh released a postage stamp in memory of Jagat Narain.[15][16][17][18]

• juergensmeyer.com From Bhindranwale to Bin Laden: A search for understanding religious violence by Professor Mark Jurgensmeyer, California University