Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, and Sukhdev are three names that echo throughout modern Indian history as individuals who sacrificed their lives on the altar of our freedom. Convicted in the Lahore Conspiracy Case of 1929-30, the three were sentenced to death by hanging by a special tribunal comprising Justice J. Coldstream, who was also the president of the tribunal, Justice A.W. Hilton, and Justice Syed Agha Haider. Although rarely spoken about, Justice Haider etched his own place in history as the sole dissenting judge in the case, refusing to ratify the death sentence for the three. His personal vehicle at the time was a 1926 Oakland.
“This 1926 Oakland was brought into the country by Justice Agha Haider, the judge who refused to give a death sentence to Shahid Bhagat Singh. Now this has been confirmed by his grandson,” Dr. Shahamat Hussain tells us.
Astounded, we ask if he bought the car from the grandson. “Yes. From his great-grandson, actually. It was basically parked outside and left to rot.”
The car in question is a beautiful saloon with a 3035cc six-cylinder engine mated to a three-speed gearbox. Finished in a lovely blue and black dual-tone paint work, the car and its current owner, Dr. Hussain, are both busy picking up trophies at different events. The latest one was at The Statesman Vintage and Classic Car Rally in Delhi, where he picked up the trophy for his previous restoration. To get it to this point, however, took Dr. Hussain seven years.
“That's seven years’ worth of restoration. In between, there was COVID. So, take those two years out, it's still about four and a half years of restoration,” says the good doctor, whose tryst with automobiles and love for cars and bikes dates back to his childhood.
“My father was a tea planter. In 1953, he got his first car, which was a Land Rover. Then he got himself a Herald station wagon. Then he picked up a Landmaster.”
Hussain finished his schooling at the prestigious Scindia School before pursuing his medical degree in Srinagar. He finally settled in Gurgaon and has been a resident for over a quarter of a century. His childhood was mostly spent in Lucknow, where he was constantly exposed to cars. His mother bought a Fiat 500 at one point, then a Jonga, then a Jeep CJ-3B, and a Willy’s station wagon, to name a few. The Oakland, however, happened years later.
“I picked up the Oakland in 2016. It was in a deplorable condition when I picked it up because it had been parked in 1973 and then just left. The only good thing they had done was to park it on bricks,” he recounts. The car had some rather unusual aspects. “See, the car is made of wood. It's a white ash wood which has been imported from the UK mostly…The whole body is wooden. It's just got a steel plate covering the wood. If you see the dashboard, again made out of wood. There's a steel covering, that's all. Only the bonnet is made of steel.”
It also had accoutrements that would be associated with luxury automobiles at the time. It had curtain rods, an adjustable footrest at the rear, and a retractable quarter glass at the back. But having been left in the open, everything was in shambles when Dr. Hussain found the car. Some of the handles had been stolen, and everything had rotted.
“I got to know about this car from a dealer in Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh. At first, I did not know about its unique provenance. That I got to know later,” says Dr. Hussain. The initial draw was of the make and model of an extremely rare historic automobile. “I met Yusuf Haider, Justice Haider’s grandson, and asked him if he had any records, any photographs of Justice Haider with the car, but there was nothing.”
From there on Dr Hussain collected as much information as he could about this Oakland. Moreover, both his son Saadat and daughter Zara have been bitten by the bug. So the story of Dr Hussain’s 1926 Oakland is far from what might have been imagined when he first saw the dilapidated and decaying piece of machinery, propped up on bricks, somewhere in a town in UP.