Society
Mystique of Bhagat Singh
The martyr continues to capture the mindscape of the Indians even many years after he was born
Mehak Uppal

Martyr Bhagat Singh wrote this couplet on the first page of his jail diary. One wonders if he himself knew that what his analytical mind wrote, read and studied with a single-minded focus would define the way his life eventually came full circle. Is it possible that the events and ideas that a person feels strongly about end up playing an important role in his/her life in inexplicable ways?

His grandmother would call him bhagan wala (the one with good fortune) when he was born on September 28, 1907, because the news of release of his father and uncle from jail came the same day. Little did the family know that Bhagat Singh would influence the fortunes of not just the family, the youth of that generation, his country but also generations to come.

Clockwise from top: A portrait of Bhagat Singh; a rare group photograph of Bhagat Singh with students and staff of National College, Lahore. Bhagat Singh is standing fourth from right; and another rare photograph of Bhagat Singh

The notorious Jallianwala Bagh tragedy of Amritsar is said to be a major trigger that led Bhagat Singh on this path. He had bunked school to visit the place and had brought back a small portion of the soil in a container as a reminder of the impending revolution. "Another incident that impacted him occurred in 1921 when around 100 unarmed Sikh pilgrims were murdered on the behest of a mahant at Nankana Sahib, the birth place of Guru Nanak, and their bodies were burnt by sprinkling kerosene over them`85 Many people among Sikhs in Punjab took to wearing black turbans as a mark of protest. Bhagat Singh did likewise," writes Malwinder Jit Singh Waraich in the book Bhagat Singh, The Eternal Rebel.

Interestingly, in March 1931 while demanding commutation of death sentences given to Bhagat Singh and his associates, members of Naujwan Bharat Sabha covered their camp at the Jallianwala Bagh and, that too, with a black cloth as a mark of protest.

This interconnectedness of incidents seems to have been an underlying motif of his entire life. He had once written a journalistic piece for Pratap criticising the apathy of common people who celebrated Holi on the same day on which freedom fighters of the Babbar Akali movement were hanged and cremated. It is interesting to know that in March, 1931, a large procession of people in Lahore did not play the same festival to participate in a protest march against Bhagat Singh's death sentence.

Once, a publication Chand came up with a special fansi ank (issue) talking only about freedom fighters, who had been hanged. "Forty-one out of the 53 articles in that issue were written by Bhagat Singh. Also, he was deeply hurt, when, in 1926 the hangings of the H.R.A. martyrs failed to evoke national level protests. For him these sacrifices failed to serve the real purpose," says Waraich.

Bhagat Singh did not just manage to add his name to the list of martyrs who were sent to the gallows but also fired up the imagination of a nation which took form of protests, marches and distress telegrams requesting commutation of his death sentence. Not just that, he continues to capture that mindscape even 107 years after he was born.

Bhagat Singh's ideal was Kartar Singh Sarabha and the special Tribunal in 1915-16 had declared Sarabha 'ubiquitous'. "Bhagat Singh had read those documents and had underlined this particular word while studying them. It is interesting to know that the word 'ubiquitous' was only used for Bhagat Singh when the Tribunal gave a verdict in the Lahore Conspiracy case. It means that he was involved in every stage from planning to meeting to execution," says Waraich.

It almost seems as if he was weaving the future course of his life by the intensity with which he lived his 'present' moments. His confidence and clarity of knowing how he wanted his future to unfold can be judged from this anecdote. Once a judge told him that he did not like him joking around in his court to which he replied, "Sir, now you resent my laughing but what would you do when I shall be laughing at the scaffold shouting inqilab zindabad?"

These interconnections make one wonder if he scripted his own life and pre-determined his own end with the sheer intensity of his pursuit. We would never have a concrete answer to this abstract question but Bhagat Singh's life remains an example of the possibility of the potentials that lie within each one of us.

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