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Aparna Vaidik’s recent book Revolutionaries on Trial gives us a nuanced understanding of the colonial judiciary, its functions and faultlines through a vividly analytical narration of the Lahore Conspiracy Trial, which resulted in the hanging of India’s revolutionary icons: Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru. The book delves into great depth about how the British colonial administration used an efficient judiciary to get away with colonial violence inflicted to maintain an impression of social order. It also narrates in great detail how the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army (HSRA) used the trial for revolutionary propaganda, laying bare the farcical nature and colonial intentions of the British Indian judiciary. The book begins with a narration of the events — the HSRA avenging the death of Lala Lajpat Rai by shooting Saunders, and the Delhi Assembly bombing to “make the deaf hear” — and how the subsequent investigation and arrests led to the trial of the arrested revolutionaries. Vaidik analyses the colonial judiciary’s psyche, particularly its fear, with surgical precision: its need to present itself as the civilised and benevolent lawgiver at home; and most notably its use of judicial proceedings to conceal the violent nature of the colonial state and make the violence legal. The British colonial government’s use of arbitrary terms like sedition , conspiracy and violence, and its definition of sedition as “political disaffection,” gives us clarity about the administration’s self-image as the “treasured ruler”, as well as its prejudices against its distant colonial subjects. While we remember Bhagat Singh and his comrades as stellar icons of India’s revolutionary past, we often forget how that image came into existence. From being considered violent fringe elements of the national liberation struggle to being hailed as the country’s biggest heroes, the transformation was neither by chance nor sudden. The revolutionaries, as Vaidik shows us, had a clear plan to weaponise the trial as revolutionary propaganda, making sure the trial was delayed and had the dramatic effect needed to capture the attention of contemporary media. By constantly disrupting court proceedings and conducting hunger strikes in jail, they effectively brought about the farcical nature of the colonial courts as well as its capacity to perpetrate violence on its Indian subjects — even at the cost of HSRA member and revolutionary Jatin Das’s life. Another focal point of the book is the chaotic histories of renegades. Often pushed to the sidelines of nationalist historiography as defectors or traitors, the many narratives that the “King’s witnesses” bring with them often have a distortive effect. From casting a shadow on martyrs like Sukhdev to doubting the revolutionary vigour of the much-hailed figures, the renegades bring us different narratives of the same events. Such a Rashomon effect hints at the importance of listening to the multiple voices while recording convoluted histories. The book also analyses martyrdom and its impact on a colonial society. While the revolutionaries find it their chance to make a covenant with death and immortalise their memory, they also explain it as the final step of revolutionary propaganda. An act of self-sacrifice to not just prove their commitment to their ideals but also to push the ideology deeper into the society to bring more youth onto their paths. From being obsessed with the lives of the HSRA revolutionaries in prison to neglecting their fight against a colonial superpower, Indian media and the public have come a long way since the 1920s and ’30s. Like a post-1991 world that relegated leftist revolutions worldwide to be mere reference points in history, India’s view of its past also considers its revolutionary history as outbursts of nationalist fervour. This contrasts the ideals of pacifism that have found permanence in India’s political culture — at least in theory. A student of history taking a deep dive into the Lahore Conspiracy Trial might look for a question that the book has not dealt with. How decolonised has our judiciary been? While the recent criminal justice overhaul was celebrated by the government as an attempt to decolonise our legal system, how do we still deal with hotter topics such as sedition and the situation of undertrial prisoners? Attempting to reflect our pasts on the present, the lives of HSRA revolutionaries in prison also shed light at how activists in modern India are being treated. From a Parkinson’s patient who was denied a straw to a prisoner with 90 percent disability being denied bail to attend his mother’s funeral, the hints lie in plain sight. 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