Marking Revolutionary Freedom Fighter Bhagat Singh's Death Anniversary.

 

After being ruled by the British for almost 200 years, India got its independence on August 15, 1947, after years of revolts, struggle and freedom battles that entailed blood, sweat and sacrifices of numerous sons and daughters of the soil. Many names were recorded in the archives, many more were not. However, the country pays tribute to all those who martyred in the freedom struggle by observing Shaheed Diwas. or Martyrs’ Day is celebrated in India on seven different  occasions in a year. One of these occasion is on March 23 which marks the death anniversaries of revolutionary freedom fighters Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev Thapar and Shivaram Rajguru and their story of sacrifice is now considered to be one of the most inspirational chapters of the Indian freedom movement which has continued to inspire generations many years laters to fight for their rights. ..

Bhagat Singh who would become popularly known as Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat was born on September 28, 1907, in Banga village of Lyallpur district ,western Punjab, India  which is now in Pakistan to Kishan Singh and Vidyavati. At the time of his birth, his father Kishan Singh, uncles Ajit and Swaran Singh were in jail for demonstrations against the Colonization Bill implemented in 1906. His uncle, Sardar Ajit Singh, was a proponent of the movement and established the Indian Patriots' Association.

 Bhagat Singh attended Dayanand Anglo Vedic High School, which was operated by Arva Samai (a reform sect of modern Hinduism), and then National College, both located in Lahore.

Bhagat Singh’s  Sikh family was politically active and were advocates of independence. His father and his uncles Ajit Singh and Schwann Singh were active in progressive politics, taking part in the agitation around the Canal Colonization Bill in 1907, and later the Ghadar Movement of 1914–1915. The presence of such revolutionary people at home had a profound impact on Bhagat Singh.

The Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919 at Armistar when he was only 12  after a large peaceful crowd had gathered to protest against the arrest of pro-Indian independence leaders Dr. Saifuddin Kitchlew and Dr. Satya Pal. in which in response to the public gathering, the British Brigadier-General R. E. H. Dyer surrounded the Bagh with his soldiers and ordered his troops to open fire on the nationalist meeting brutally killing hundreds  and  the violence against unarmed Akali protestors at Nankana Sahib  in 1921 also all left a huge impact on the young Bhagat Singh and as a result of decided to join the freedom struggle in the fight against colonialism. 

He joined the non-violence movement of Mahatma Gandhi.but felt disillusioned with Gandhi's idea of non-violence as the latter called off the non-cooperation movement which was started after the Jallianwala Bagh incident. and as he was attracted to Marxist ideologies and also influenced by Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik Revolution in 1917.

In 1923, he joined the National College in Lahore, founded two years earlier by Lala Lajpat Rai in response to Mahatma Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement, which urged Indian students to shun schools and colleges subsidized by the British Indian government.

The following year Singh became a member of the Hindustan Republican Association, a revolutionary organization that believed in armed struggle against British colonial rule in India that was  started by Sachindranath Sanyal a year earlier. The main organizer of the Association was Chandra Shekhar Azad and Bhagat Singh became very close to him.

Initially, Bhagat Singh’s activities were limited to writing corrosive articles against the British Government, printing and distributing pamphlets outlining principles of a violent uprising, aimed at overthrowing the Government. Considering his influence on the youth, and his association with the Akali movement, he became a person of interest for the government.The police arrested him in a bombing case that took place in 1926 in Lahore. He was released 5 months later on a 60,000 rupees bond. 

In 1926, he founded the Naujawan Bharat Sabha, an organization that aimed to encourage revolution against British rule by rallying the peasants and workers.

He made contact with the ‘Workers and Peasants Party’ which brought out the monthly magazine Kirti in Punjabi. For the next year, Bhagat Singh worked on the editorial board of Kirti.

In 1928, he established the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) along with Sukhdev Thapar, Chandrashekhar Azad and others. However after Azad was shot dead in 1930.the HSRA collapsed.

Singh popularised the slogan "Inqilab Zindabad". which can be translated as “Long Live Revolution”  that became  one of the most famous slogans during the Indian freedom struggle. It was used by Shahid-e-Azam Bhagat Singh throughout his speeches and writings.The slogan was originally coined by the Urdu poet and Indian freedom fighter Maulana Hasrat Mohani in 1921. 

In October, 1928, the British government of India appointed the Simon Commission to enquire into the possibility of granting India the chance to rule itself. That this Commission had no Indian representative made it the focus of popular attack in Lahore. Lajpat Rai was at the head of a peaceful demonstration that was asking the Simon Commission to go back to England.

Despite the non-violent nature of the demonstration, the Superintendent of Police, James A Scott, ordered the police to use batons to disperse the protesters.and Lala Lajpat Rai sustained fatal injuries during the clash.The revolutionaries although great critics of Lajpat Rai and his politics, were determined to avenge his death. The Assistant Superintendent of Police, J.P. Saunders who is believed to have hit Lala Lajpat Rai directly, was assassinated by Bhagat Singh, and his associates Sukhdev Thapar and Shivaram Rajguru..

On the next day in Lahore, there were public notices put up in the name of the Indian Socialist Democratic Army. One such notice declared, 'We regret having killed a human being but this man was a part of that unmerciful and unjust system that must be destroyed... Sometimes it is important to shed blood for a Revolution. The Revolution we envisage is one where the exploitation of man by man will finish... Inquilab Zindabad.'

The murder was condemned as a retrograde action by Mahatma Gandhi, but Jawaharlal Nehru  later wrote:

“Bhagat Singh did not become popular because of his act of terrorism but because he seemed to vindicate, for the moment, the honor of Lala Lajpat Rai, and through him of the nation. He became a symbol, the act was forgotten, the symbol remained, and within a few months each town and village of Punjab, and to a lesser extent in the rest of northern India, resounded with his name. Innumerable songs grew about him and the popularity that the man achieved was something amazing.”

In March 1928, the government introduced the Public Safely Bill in the Legislative Assembly. The Indian members rejected the Bill and in 1929, the Viceroy attempted to pass it as an ordinance. The Naujawan Bharat Sabha passed resolutions opposing this and the Trade Dispute Bill and it finally decided to intervene directly. On 8th April, 1929, Bhagat Singh and B.K. Dutt threw a small explosive in the Assembly and stayed in the visitors' gallery till they were arrested. On 7th May, Bhagat Singh's trial began and in the statement made in court on 6th June, Bhagat Singh and B.K. Dutt, representing the HSRA declared, 'we dropped the bomb on the floor of the Assembly Chamber to register our protest on behalf of those who had no other means left to give expression to their heart-rending agony. Our sole purpose was to make the deaf hear and to give the heedless a timely warning... from under the seeming stillness of the sea of humanity, a veritable storm is about to break out' 

On the 12th June, Bhagat Singh whose revolutionary ideas were becoming immensely popular during the freedom struggle, and seen as a threat by the empire, was sentenced to transportation in the Assembly Bomb case.

Singh considered  himself a political prisoner along with others, noted the discrimination between the European and the Indian prisoners. The political prisoners demanded equality in food standards, clothing, toiletries, and other hygienic necessities, as well as access to books and a daily newspaper.

 Singh along with other prisoners underwent a hunger strike. Failed attempts were made to break the strike by the government. With the nationwide popularity of the hunger strike, the government decided to advance the Lahore Conspiracy Case and Singh was transported to Bostal Jail in Lahore and the trial needless to say, which was one-sided started on 10 July 1929 and ended on the 7th of October, 1930 with a death sentence which was widely opposed and many attempts were made to challenge the decision.

When Bhagat Singh’s mother went to visit him in jail, he was believed to be laughing loudly. Everyone around him was shocked. Most of them considered that he was close to death. Reports suggest that the revolutionary leader was smiling  when he was was hanged along with his comrades Sukhdev Thapar and Shivaram Rajguru on March 23, 1931, at the age of 23 and it is said that the trio proceeded quite cheerfully towards the gallows while chanting their favourite slogans like “Inquilab Zindabad” and “Down with British Imperialism”. Singh and his peers were cremated at Hussainiwala on the banks of Sutlej River.

Despite his short life, Bhagat Singh's death had the effect that he desired and he inspired thousands of youths to assist the reminder of the Indian Independence movement. After his hanging, youths in regions around Northern India rioted in protest against the British Raj and also against the indifference of the congress. To this day he is revered by many as a symbol of resistance to British colonialism in India, and his example continues to inspire new generations of activists worldwide.  

Apart from being a freedom fighter,participating in various acts of resistance against British rule in India. Bhagat Singh was also a great speaker, reader, writer and journalist.for Punjabi and Urdu language newspapers. He was moulded and guided by not only the political situation in India but also by the situation in Asia, Europe and America. The Russian revolution and Marxist writings and literature on the Soviet Union captured his imagination when he was in his teens. By the time he was 20, Bhagat Singh had devoured books on the theories of socialism, economics and revolution in European countries.

According to historian J.N. Sanyal, Bhagat Singh was an extremely well-read man and his special sphere of study was socialism and the economic experiment in Russia under the Bolshevik regime that  greatly interested him.But he was equally alive to the importance of national language and literature in bringing about an awakening and national integration among the masses.

Although he often quoted from the writings of Guru Gobind Singh, Swami Ram Tirath and Swami Vivekananda, Bhagat Singh was totally against using religion for political ends. He believed that the failure of earlier revolutionaries lay in their divided loyalty to their nation and their religion.An atheist as well as being a socialist, Bhagat Singh was also attracted to communist and anarchist causes.

He wrote a series of articles on anarchism, wanting to fight against mainstream misconceptions of the word in the Punjabi periodical Kirti  and explainrd his interest in anarchist ideology and express his concern over misunderstanding of the concept of anarchism among the public. Singh tried to eradicate the misconception among people about anarchism. He wrote, “The people are scared of the word anarchism. The word anarchism has been abused so much that even in India revolutionaries have been called anarchist to make them unpopular.” As anarchism means absence of ruler and abolition of state, not absence of order, Singh explained, “I think in India the idea of universal brotherhood, the Sanskrit sentence vasudhaiva kutumbakam etc., has the same meaning.” He wrote about the growth of anarchism,”the first man to explicitly propagate the theory of Anarchism was Proudhon and that is why he is called the founder of Anarchism. After him a Russian, Bakunin, worked hard to spread the doctrine. He was followed by Prince Kropotkin etc.”

Singh explained anarchism by writing :

The ultimate goal of Anarchism is complete independence, according to which no one will be obsessed with God or religion, nor will anybody be crazy for money or other worldly desires. There will be no chains on the body or control by the state. This means that they want to eliminate: the Church, God and Religion; the state; Private property.

In ‘To Young Political Workers,’ his last testament before his death, he called for a “socialist order” and a reconstruction of society on a “new, i.e, Marxist basis.” He considered the government “a weapon in the hand of the ruling class”, which is reflected in his belief that Gandhian philosophy only meant the “replacement of one set of exploiters for another.”

Bhagat Singh is often admired and celebrated for his dedication to the cause of liberation. However his socialist, communist and anarchist beliefs were suppressed by the successive governments in Independent India, who saw a revolutionary who had the potential to inspire, unite and motivate the growing population of a spectrum of activists all over India, in direct response to the fast-spreading divisiveness and intolerance in the country, often patronised by the groups and organizations professing a right-wing fascist ideology.

Writing the introduction to Bhagat Singh’s remarkable essay Why I am an Atheist in 1979,the late Bipan Chandra described the Marxist leaning of Bhagat Singh and his associates in the following way; “Bhagat Singh was not only one of India’s greatest freedom fighters and revolutionary socialists, but also one of its early Marxist thinkers and ideologues. Unfortunately, this last aspect is relatively unknown with the result that all sorts of reactionaries, obscurantists and communalists have been wrongly and dishonestly trying to utilise for their own politics and ideologies the name and fame of Bhagat Singh and his comrades such as Chandra Shekhar Azad.”

Bhagat Singh’s dreams of a new social order live on, not just in his writings, but also reflected in the hearts of every activist, protester, and dissenting citizen.The fight for freedom,revolution, Inquilab, may have changed in meaning, but it is far from over. Bhagat Singh remains  one of the most influential, revolutionary figures in the Indian history and continues to serve as a tremendous source of inspiration for every generation.

The inspiration that Bhagat Singh still ignites within the soul of Indians can be felt in the popularity of the films and theatrical adaptations on his life. Several films like “Shaheed” (1965) and “The Legend of Bhagat Singh” (2002) were made on the life of 23-year old revolutionary. Popular songs like the “Mohe rang de basanti chola” and “Sarfaroshiki Tamanna” associated with Bhagat Singh are still relevant in inspiring patriotic emotions in the Indians. Numerous books, articles and papers have been written about his life, ideologies and legacy. 

Today is marked as Bhagat Singh Jayanti and is celebrated all over India to remember his courageous sacrifice that ignited the spark of patriotism among countless people. To commemorate Shaheed Diwas, people observe a two-minute silence to remember these three freedom fighters and all the other martyrs who laid down their lives for the nation. revisit their work in art and history, from singing songs that defined their time, to reading the lessons passed down by Bhagat Singh in his essays  and diaries.

The President, the Vice-President, and the Prime Minister of India pay tribute to these great freedom fighters at their respective memorials in Delhi. Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid tributes to revolutionaries Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru on Martyrs’ Day on Thursday. Modi tweeted, "India will always remember the sacrifice of Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru. These are greats who made an unparalleled contribution to our freedom struggle."
There is also a tradition of organizing processions, marches and rallies on this day in various parts of the country and schools and colleges hold special programs to commemorate the occasion. The day is a reminder to the people of India about the value of freedom and the sacrifices made by the freedom fighters for the country..

“They may kill me, but they cannot kill my ideas. They can crush my body, but they will not be able to crush my spirit.”

 

"Revolution is an inalienable right of mankind. Freedom is an imperishable birthright of all. Labour is the real sustainer of society"

 

- Shaheed Bhagat Singh