BHAGAT
SINGH - MODERN HISTORY
News: Getting it right: a historian’s effort
to document the life of Bhagat Singh
What's
in the news?
●
India has been slow to appreciate the
genius of Bhagat Singh. Generations of students have grown up with a little
more than passing mention of Bhagat Singh in history textbooks.
●
Often clubbed with Sukhdev and Rajguru and
the three revolutionaries’ hanging on March 23, 1931, Bhagat Singh, the man who
wanted to “sow guns” as a child, deserves better.
Key
takeaways:
●
Martyred at 23 years on March 23, 1931,
Bhagat Singh was fiercely anti-imperialist with a deep and unwavering
commitment to India.
●
However, his ideas often did not fit the
template of a freedom struggle based on ahimsa and satyagraha.
Bhagat
Singh:
Early
Life:
●
Born as Bhaganwala on the 26th September,
1907, Bhagat Singh grew up in a petty-bourgeois family of Sandhu Jats settled
in the Jullundur Doab district of the Punjab.
●
He belonged to a generation that was to
intervene between two decisive phases of the Indian national movement – the
phase of the ‘Extremism’ of Lal-Bal-Pal
and the Gandhian phase of nonviolent mass action.
Role
in Freedom Struggle:
●
In 1923, Bhagat Singh joined the National College, Lahore which was founded and managed by Lala Lajpat Rai and
Bhai Parmanand.
●
The College was set up as an alternative
to the institutions run by the Government, bringing to the field of education
the idea of Swadeshi.
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In 1924 in Kanpur, he became a member of
the Hindustan Republican Association,
started by Sachindranath Sanyal a
year earlier. The main organiser of the Association was Chandra Shekhar Azad and Bhagat Singh became very close to him.
●
It was as a member of the HRA that Bhagat
Singh began to take seriously the philosophy
of the Bomb.
●
Revolutionary
Bhagwati Charan Vohra wrote the famous article philosophy
of the Bomb. Including the philosophy of bomb he authored three important
political documents; the other two were Manifesto of Naujawan Sabha and
Manifesto of HSRA.
●
Armed
revolution was understood to be the only weapon with which to
fight British imperialism.
●
In 1925,
Bhagat Singh returned to Lahore and within the next year he and his colleagues
started a militant youth organisation called the Naujawan Bharat Sabha.
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In April 1926, Bhagat Singh established
contact with Sohan Singh Josh and
through him the ‘Workers and Peasants
Party’ which brought out the monthly magazine Kirti in Punjabi.
●
For the next year Bhagat Singh worked with
Josh and joined the editorial board of Kirti.
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In 1927, he was first arrested on charges
of association with the Kakori Case,
accused for an article written under the pseudonym
Vidrohi (Rebel). He was also accused of being responsible for a bomb explosion at Lahore during the
Dussehra fair.
●
In 1928, Bhagat Singh changed the name of Hindustan Republican Association to
Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA). In 1930, when Azad was shot,
the HSRA collapsed.
●
Naujawan Bharat Sabha replaced HSRA in
Punjab.
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His time in the prison was spent
protesting, seeking better living conditions for inmates. During this time, he
gained the sympathy of the public, especially when he joined fellow defendant
Jatin Das in a hunger strike.
●
The strike ended with Das death from
starvation in September 1929. Two years later, Singh was convicted and hanged
at the age of 23.
●
Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, and Rajguru were
given the order to be hanged on 24th
March 1931.
●
However, the sentence was done a day
earlier in the Lahore prison. After their death sentence, their dead bodies
were cremated in secrecy.
●
It is believed that Singh cried 'Down with British imperialism' at the
time of his death.
●
This execution resulted in strong
reactions from several Indian people, specifically the youngsters, and thus so
many people were motivated to fight the freedom struggle. The date 23rd March is considered as 'Martyrs' Day'
or' Sarvodaya Day' or 'Shaheed Diwas' in honor of Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, and
Rajguru.
Ideology
of Bhagat Singh:
●
Bhagat Singh came from the family who were
involved in the Ghadar movement. The
movement aimed at the armed overthrow of the colonial state. Thus the seeds of
armed overthrow and revolution were deeply sowed in his mind during his early
years.
●
After
the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, he become anti-colonialist and anti-capitalist.
●
His readings of Italian philosopher Mazzini and the works of Resorgimento made him realize the importance of ideology
and the organization for any movement.
●
After the suspension of the
Non-cooperation movement after the Chauri-chaura incident, he was deeply
saddened. Thereby, in the backdrop of religious riots and cacophony, he took
recourse to reason and leftist Revolutionary movement by joining Hindustan
Republican Association.
●
He earlier considered himself an idealist revolutionary. However, the flux
during those years led him to go for extreme actions. He was later active in
HSRA. The death of Lala Lajpat Rai devastated him and he vowed to take revenge.
●
He took recourse to the individual revolutionary route i.e. for propaganda
by deed rather than leading the mass movement himself.
●
He was ardently opposed to communalism, advocated social ownership of national
assets and his ideology was directly or indirectly reflected in Karachi Resolution of 1931 which had happened
following his hanging.
●
However, his writings in jail show that
the individual terrorism was futile rather, he called for revolutionary
consciousness in the masses.
●
He abjured
capitalism, superstition and overt belief in God. Rather he promoted reason,
Atheism, free-thinking, adherence to Marxism, Leninism and followed Trotsky.
These show that he was never in the path of Stalinism or even Fascism.
●
He believed that deaf need loud voices to
hear and masses need to be stirred by dramatic examples for which he chose
himself as the protagonist.
●
Before his hanging, he wrote “Why am an Atheist” to emphasize the
importance of reason for a revolutionary. His pleading for “firing squad”
instead of hanging shows he wanted to propagate his ideas through deeds. He
wanted to be considered as a political prisoner rather than a criminal.