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Bhagat Singh: The Eternal
Rebel
The book consists of 17 chapters. In 14 of these, the author has sought to describe the ‘roots’, ‘making’ and ‘work’ of Bhagat Singh, plus his martyrdom. The last three chapters, which, I think, should have entitled, technically speaking, as appendices, cover some proscribed literature and some specimens of writings of Bhagat Singh. There is at the end ‘Chronology’, followed by ‘Bibliography’. There are a number of useful pictures and illustrations. Amartya Sen has said that we have a sort of natural tendency towards loquacity. We can, in other words, expound extensively that we know absolutely nothing about. Charles Churchill (not Winston) perhaps had said this after having experienced some such exercises: "So loud each tongue and so empty was each head/So much they talked, so very little said". I am tempted to apply Churchill’s label to several writings on Bhagat Singh done in the centenary year except the study under review, for it is a work with a difference. The author has worked hard for several years to collect his facts. He has, unlike most others, has given his facts liberty to speak for themselves. He doesn’t foist his views or opinions unnecessarily on them to make them speak the author’s favoured ‘conclusions’. Readers are left free here to draw their own inferences. I, for instance, drew this that our own tradition played equally, if not greater, important role as foreign sources in shaping Bhagat Singh, his ideas and his methods. He drank the ‘Khalsa tradition’ with his mother’s milk, which infused in him special spirit of seva and sacrifice. He held the Arya Samaj hand, along with that of his buzargas, to walk into the nationalist corridors. The foreign (Irish, Russian, etc.) influence could arouse him to do what he did because the spirit of Zafarnamah of Guru Gobind Singh was there with him: "When all other means have failed and gone unheard/It is righteous to draw the sword out of its scabbard" (trans. Khushwant Singh). It was not for nothing that he had asked his father to get him the Gita (Tilak’s commentary) while in a Delhi jail (vide The Tribune, April 30, 1929, p. 9). The author has done his work admirably well. His strength is, however, not in craftsmanship as a historian but in his diligence as a researcher, not in his mastery over his narrative skill but in his sincerity in telling his tale. His is an honest, competent effort to portray a full, warm picture of Bhagat Singh in colours true to history. The author, along with Publications Division, deserve to be complimented for making this valuable addition to the literature on the life and work of the great revolutionary.
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THE centenary year of
Bhagat Singh, 2007, prompted many people to write on the great
revolutionary. As a result, there is a proliferation of writings on his
life and work. Seeing their content, one can easily place these writings
into two distinct, if not neat, categories—one, those paying tributes
to the great revolutionary and the other, discussing/analysing his life,
ideas, work and so forth. The book under review falls into both the
categories.