Nineteen fixed points in fifty-four years

Every entry below is drawn from the documented record. Where a date is approximate or a claim is contested, it is described as such rather than presented as settled.

Span 1910 – 1965 Entries 19 Section 13 of 18

Plate 13.1 — The chronology

1910

Born in Bengal

Born on 18 November at Oari, in the Khandaghosh area of Burdwan district, Bengal Presidency — today Purba Bardhaman, West Bengal. His father was Goshtha Bihari Dutta.
Origins
1920s

Schooling in Kanpur

Raised and educated in Kanpur in the United Provinces, attending the Theosophical High School and P. P. N. High School, from which he graduated.
Origins
1924

Meets Bhagat Singh

Meets Bhagat Singh in Kanpur. The same year, the Hindustan Republican Association is founded, drawing revolutionaries from Bengal and the United Provinces.
Politics
1928

The HSRA is formed

The organisation is restructured and renamed the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association, committing itself to a socialist republic rather than only to the end of British rule.
Politics
1929

The Assembly, 8 April

With Bhagat Singh, throws two low-intensity bombs towards an empty section of the Central Legislative Assembly in Delhi, scatters HSRA leaflets and shouts Inquilab Zindabad. Nobody is killed. Neither man attempts to escape.
The action
1929

Sentenced, 12 June

Convicted in the Central Assembly Bomb Case under Section 307 IPC and Section 4 of the Explosive Substances Act. Sentenced to transportation for life. He is eighteen years old.
The action
1929

Hunger strike, 15 June

Begins a hunger strike in Lahore Central Jail over the treatment of Indian political prisoners. On 13 September, Jatindra Nath Das dies in the same jail on the sixty-third day of his fast. The strike is called off in October.
Prison
1930

Lahore Conspiracy Case

Among the accused in the Lahore Conspiracy Case proceedings, which conclude in October with death sentences for Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev Thapar and Shivaram Rajguru. Dutt is not sentenced to death.
Prison
1931

The executions, 23 March

Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev Thapar and Shivaram Rajguru are hanged at Lahore. Their cremation takes place at Hussainiwala, near Firozpur.
Prison
1930s

Cellular Jail

Transported to the Cellular Jail at Port Blair in the Andaman Islands — the Kala Pani. Large collective hunger strikes by the settlement’s political prisoners are documented in May 1933 and July 1937.
Prison
1937

Repatriation

Returned to the Indian mainland in deteriorating health, as part of the wider repatriation of political prisoners from the Andaman Islands.
Prison
1938

Released

Released from Bankipur Central Jail, Patna, on grounds of health. He has contracted tuberculosis. He is twenty-seven years old.
Prison
1942

Quit India

Joins the Quit India Movement and is arrested again. Imprisoned for four years at Motihari Jail in Champaran district, Bihar.
Prison
1945

Free

Released from Motihari Jail at the age of thirty-four, having spent roughly thirteen of the previous sixteen years in colonial custody.
Prison
1947

Independence and marriage

India becomes independent on 15 August. In November, Batukeshwar Dutt marries Anjali. The couple settle in Patna and have one daughter, Bharati.
After
1950s

Making a living

Works as an agent for a cigarette company, sells biscuits and bread, and at times works as a tourist guide. Accounts record that when he sought a bus permit he was asked to prove his credentials as a freedom fighter.
After
1964

Illness

Falls seriously ill and cannot obtain a hospital bed in Patna. After Chamanlal Azad writes to the President of India and the case reaches the press, the Punjab government offers aid and treatment. Admitted to Safdarjung Hospital, Delhi, on 22 November; later transferred to AIIMS.
After
1965

Death, 20 July

Dies in the early hours at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, aged fifty-four. Cremated at Hussainiwala, near Firozpur, beside the site where Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were cremated in 1931.
After
2010

A biography, at last

Around the centenary of his birth, the National Book Trust publishes Anil Verma’s Hindi biography — the first full-length book devoted to Batukeshwar Dutt in any language.
Memory

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Plate 13.2 — Reading it

What the shape of this chronology shows

Laid out in order, the life has a proportion that summaries of it never convey.

The famous part is very short. The Assembly action and the trial together occupy about two months of 1929. Nearly every published account of Batukeshwar Dutt is dominated by those two months.

The prisons are very long. From June 1929 to 1938, and again from 1942 to 1945: roughly thirteen years in custody out of the sixteen between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four. This is the largest single block of his adult life, and the least documented.

The independent years are longer still, and hardest to see. Eighteen years from 1947 to 1965, spent in poor health and financial difficulty, are compressed in most accounts into a sentence about neglect.

Recognition arrives after everything. The first full-length biography appeared around 2010 — forty-five years after his death and a century after his birth.

How these dates are established