On March 23rd 1931 Bhagat Singh, the revolutionary icon of the liberation struggle was assassinated through the gallows in the Lahore jail by the British imperialists. In the official and the unofficial historiographies the real facts of the people’s struggles and the folklore heroes who fought are expediently suppressed. Bhagat Singh’s legacy has been the victim of such censorship.
Inspite of these sanctions and distortions Bhagat Singh’s struggle and message have continued to inspire millions throughout the subcontinent. His revolutionary struggle became so potent that it even threatened the leadership of the native bourgeois leaders. The orders of his execution by the Viceroy of India at the time, Lord Irving had a tacit approval of Ghandi.
A few days later the Indian masses were inflicted with the harrowing corollaries of the Ghandi -Irving Pact. Bhagat Singh’s legacy is tarnished and distorted on both sides of the Radcliff line by the reactionary politicians and intelligentsia to mould the history to distract the toiling classes from treading the path of his revolutionary legacy.
In Pakistan the religious and conservative right condemn Bhagat Singh as a kaafir and a terrorist. His Sikh ancestry is abused and ideological convictions deprecated to undermine his inspirational struggle for successive generations. What these obscurantist masters of our ethics and morality forget is the historical harmony of the ordinary people with different faith backgrounds in the subcontinent for ages. There are innumerable anecdotes that exhibit this affinity.
A moving example was of the fifth Sikh Guru Arjun waiting impatiently in Amritsar for Mian Mir to arrive from Lahore and lay the foundation stone of the Golden temple. The right wing analysts reject any role of Bhagat Singh in the struggle against imperialists not only because it is a source of unity of the people of across religious divisions but also because of there volutionary conclusions of lifelong struggle that socialist ideas were the only way-out from this exploitative system imposed by the Raj.
In India the portrayal of Bhagat Singh is no less incongruous. The Sikh fundamentalist Khalsa’s have turned him in to turban wearing devout Sikh and the reactionary fundamentalist Hindutva of BJP used his iconic figure to justify their nationalist chauvinism. Weeks before the 2014 election Narindera Modi, was invited to launch a book on Bhagat Singh. Modi’s invitation for the book’s inauguration was only made possible by the manipulation and bribery of Singh’s far relatives. Political parties representing diverse sections of the reactionary Indian bourgeois employ Bhagat Singh’s out of context quotes for their own vested interests.
It is true that Bhagat Singh began his struggle as a revolutionary nationalist fighting British imperialists. However his ideological evolution in the heat of struggle brought him to the conclusion that without a socialist revolution there can be no genuine independence for the masses.
Bhagat was profoundly inspired by the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 in Russia. He diligently studied the works of Marxism, Lenin and contemporary revolutionaries. In his writings, Bhagat rejected class collaboration. He wrote in ‘Outlines of a Revolutionary Programme: A Letter to Young Political Activists’. “If you are planning to approach the workers and peasants for active participation, then I would like to tell you that they couldn’t be fooled through some sort of sentimental rhetoric. They will clearly ask you what your revolution would give them, for which you are demanding sacrifice from them. If in place of Lord Reading, Sir Purushottam Das Thakur becomes the representative of the government, how would this affect people? How would a peasant be affected if Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru comes in place of Lord Irwin? The appeal to nationalist sentiments is a farce.”
He also laid bare the real role of Ghandi and the Congress, “What is the motive of Congress? I said that the present movement would end in some sort of compromise or total failure. The real revolutionary forces have not been invited to join the movement. It is being conducted only on the basis of a few middle class shopkeepers and a few capitalists. Both of these classes, specifically the capitalists, cannot venture to endanger their property. The real armies of the revolution are in villages and factories, the peasants and workers. But our bourgeois leaders don’t dare take them along, nor can they do so. These sleeping tigers, once they wake up from their slumber, are not going to stop even after the accomplishment of the mission of our leaders.”
The message that Bhagat Singh and B.K. Dutt sent to the Punjab Students Conference on October 19, 1929 symbolised their maturing revolutionary clarity. “Today we cannot ask the youth to take to pistols and bombs… The youth will have to bear a great burden in this difficult time in the history of the nation… They have to awaken the millions and millions of slum-dwellers of the industrial areas and villagers living in worn-out cottages…”
On February 2, 1931 writing of the turning point in his revolutionary career, Bhagat Singh stated, “I began to study, my previous faith and convictions underwent a remarkable modification.
The romance of the violent methods, alone which was so prominent among our predecessors, was replaced by serious ideas. No more mysticism, no more blind faith. The revolutionaries know better than anybody else that the socialist society is the only destiny for human emancipation.”
Bhagat Singh along with his comrades in arms Sukhdev and Raj Guru were hanged, their bodies mutilated and later burnt in the wee hours of that tragic March night at the Central Jail in Lahore. The Central Jail was demolished and no memorial or commemorative plaques of these valiant revolutionaries exists at the site. Yet their revolutionary message
lives on.
It could not be wiped out from transcending generations. Bhagat Singh was voted the “Greatest Indian” in a poll by the India’s leading magazine India Today in 2008, ahead of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and Mohandas Gandhi. There are rich lessons to be learnt and courage attained from Bhagat Singh’s heroic legacy of struggle in life and death by those striving today to transform this system of drudgery, tyranny and misery.
The writer is the editor of Asian Marxist Review and International Secretary of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign. He can be reached at [email protected]