Whom India Martyred

Rewind to 1905 India. Curzon has partitioned Bengal. There are strong reactions. A glowering anger has consumed Bengal and affected other parts of the country.

Two years hence, significant events are unfolding. Punjab is reeling under a disastrous spell of draught and plague. Administrative incompetence has added to the woes and thousands are dying. An insensitive government has introduced the Colonization Bill in the Punjab provincial legislative council.

Today Punjab is simmering. Lala Lajpat Rai and Sardar Ajit Singh, who have been stirring the Punjabi consciousness, have been arrested and deported to Mandalay. Later in the year, an ugly confrontation has developed between the moderates and the extremists. Gradually, the moderates have cleverly cleansed the Congress of any extremist expression.

Deprived of a legitimate space in the Congress, more and more political workers are being pushed into revolutionary outfits. There is widespread unrest and the threats of violent protests are tangible in the air.

IT WAS IN SUCH A FORGE, on the 28^th of September 1907, one of the foremost Indian revolutionaries is born in the very house of Sardar Ajit Singh, his uncle. He was Sardar Bhagat Singh. More than a century later, today, his name continues to capture the Indian imagination.

It is quizzical to consider why in a country where so many revolutionaries embraced that coveted noose, at ages younger than his, Bhagat Singh stands apart?

Disturbing events during his adolescence were important factors moulding Bhagat Singh’s character. At 12, Dyer’s inhuman handling of the Jallianwala Bagh protests shocked the country. The wretched degradation of the Sikh society triggered reforms within. It was when Bhagat Singh was 14 that the Nankana massacre occurred. The hanging of 6 brave babbar akalis on the auspicious day of Holi in 1926 while the country celebrated left a deep impact on his personality. Bhagat Singh, then working for Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi in Kanpur, wrote in the Hindi weekly Pratap:

The city was still celebrating. Colour was still being thrown on the passers-by. What a terrible indifference. If they were misguided, if they were frenzied, let them be so. They were fearless patriots, in any case. Whatever they did, they did it for this wretched country. They could not bear injustice. They could not countenance the fallen nation. The oppression on the poor people became insufferable for them. They could not tolerate exploitation of the masses; they challenged and jumped into action. They were full of life. Oh! The terrible toll of their dedicated deeds! You are blessed!

But, his response to such provocative stimuli was not that of a mundane activist. He did not jump into frenzied actions. At the time when Bhagat Singh’s generation was growing up, they had more resourceful foundations to draw from. Lala Lajpat Rai had formed the National College and the Dwarka Das Library was a rich source of books. These resources fed the patriot’s thirst. By the time Bhagat Singh grew into a young man he had a formidable intellectual reservoir.

From a revolutionary, he grew into an ideologue and leader. Issues such as ‘should the Hindustan Republican Association (HRA) have Socialism as a stated goal’, were important for him. The text of the pamphlet dropped into the central assembly by Bhagat Singh and B K Dutt indicates that they were not ordinary youth driven to violent reactions by individual acts of cruelty. Instead, it shows their understanding of the broader picture.

"Without repeating the humiliating history of the past ten years of the working of the reforms (Montague-Chelmsford Reforms) and without mentioning the insults hurled at the Indian nation through this House-the so-called Indian Parliament-we want to point out that, while the people expecting some more crumbs of reforms from the Simon Commission, and are ever quarrelling over the distribution of the expected bones, the Government is thrusting upon us new repressive measures like the Public Safety and the Trade Disputes Bill, while reserving the Press Sedition Bill for the next session. The indiscriminate arrests of labour leaders working in the open field clearly indicate whither the wind blows." 

A second aspect of his personality was his abilities as an organizer. As is to be expected, the revolutionary faces a serious handicap in working in the public sphere. Bhagat Singh, who for most of his active life was a suspected and later a wanted revolutionary, could not have spent much of his time working visibly.

Apart from his participation in the HRA, he founded the Naujawan Bharat Sabha. The sabha with communist inclinations developed into one of the foremost organizations for the Punjabi youth.

Post the withdrawal Non-Cooperation movement, which had stirred the Indian imagination to unprecedented levels, many Indians – including a great many in the Congress – were dismayed. Most failed to see a rationale. Bhagat Singh was one of them. During a depressing lull that followed, the Congress groped for a course and revolutionary activities gradually regained momentum throughout India.

In 1926, the HRA plotted and executed the daring Kakori Train robbery to fund revolutionary activities. Though the members of HRA fled after the robbery, eventually the police were able to hunt down most of the leadership.  In the trials that followed, almost the entire HRA leadership was executed. Chandrasekhar Azad was the only leader yet on the loose. HRA was virtually destroyed and the revolutionaries scattered.

Under such conditions, by 1928, Bhagat Singh joined Azad to resurrect the HRA. It was largely due to Bhagat Singh that the HRA added Socialism as a stated goal and renamed to Hindustan Socialist Republican Association. His contribution to re-banding the HRA was immeasurable. His comrade, Jitendra Nath Sanyal, writes:

It was during his stay at Cawnpore at this time in the beginning of the year 1926 that Bhagat Singh showed signs of his genius as an organizer.  As a result of the Kakori Conspiracy Case, the Hindustan Republican Association had been disorganized. All the leaders were in Jail and the few inexperienced hands remaining outside could not do anything. Bhagat Singh, in conjunction with Bejoy Kumar Sinha of Cawnpore and Sukhdev of Lahore, began to organize the remnant of the party in U. P. and the Punjab.

Death of Lala Lajpat Rai and the killing of Saunders: The audacity of a petty British Police official to strike a respected and elderly leader like Lala Lajpat Rai during protests against the Simon Commission showed India her place in the imperial eyes. Lalaji passed away about 3 weeks later. While the country burned with rage but, this entire mass of humanity miserably failed to protect its venerated leader.

Bhagat Singh, together with Rajguru, Sukhdev and Azad plotted a reply to this humiliation. The reply was not so much a revenge as an assertion of the self-honour of a nation. The action resulted in killing of John Saunders. The daring escape of the three revolutionaries goes on to make a story in itself.

The Lahore Conspiracy: Bhagat Singh was not a believer in crumbs of reforms falling from the high table of imperialism. After the betrayal of the Mont-Ford reforms of 1919, many considered the Simon Commission an additional humiliation of India. Additionally, the Government was mulling further repressive measures like the Public Safety Bill and the Trade Disputes Bill. Considering the plight of the mute millions of the country, the HSRA believed it their duty to make these concerns heard within and out of India.

As a part of a well thought out strategy, on the 8^th of April, 1929, in Delhi, Bhagat Singh and BK Dutt visited the Central Legislative Assembly and hurled a low intensity bomb on empty benches. The intention was not to harm anyone but, to create an impact that could amplify and broadcast the views of HSRA throughout India and the world. In an amazing display of courage, both the young revolutionaries did not flee the scene and offered themselves to the Police.

Following the initial arrests, the government accidentally discovered the bomb making factory of HSRA in Lahore. This led to further arrests. Almost all, perhaps with the only exception of Azad, were put behind bars.

The trials that followed were only more tragic. His comrade Ajoy Ghosh writes:

In July 1929 we were produced in court - 13 of us - and there we met Bhagat Singh and Dutt again. No longer was he the Bhagat Singh of the magnificent physique whose strength had been a byword in our party. A shadow of his former self, weak and emaciated, he was carried into the court on a stretcher.

For months he and Dutt had been tortured by the police and now they were on hunger strike demanding human treatment for all political prisoners. Our eyes filled with tears as we greeted them.

Though sentenced already to transportation for life Bhagat Singh and Dutt were our co-accused in the new case that now began - the Lahore conspiracy case of 1929. For three days we paid no attention to the proceedings but held prolonged discussion which Bhagat Singh, though so weak that he had to recline in an easy chair all the time, took the leading part.

The hunger strike that Bhagat Singh and Dutt started was taken up by all accused of the Lahore Conspiracy case. Throughout this entire ordeal the ways in which Bhagat Singh made use of every occasion to bring the exploitation of India to the forefront and inspire the country to awake and arise.

The 23^rd of March was the day when Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev ascended the gallows. It is said that the execution of these three heroes was moved ahead of time fearing public outcry. After a swift execution, their bodies were cremated near the Sutlej and the ashes dispersed in the river. When people arrived later, they tried to gather any remains they could find. According to one version, their bodies were cut into pieces, partially cremated using kerosene and disposed off in Sutlej.

His life goes on to show his love for India. He saw the apathy of his countrymen in his life. Today, 81 years after he was executed, he is a victim of the same apathy. A consolation for his admirers would be to imagine he would have seen this coming his way and it would have little mattered to him.

But, through his actions he has left behind a legacy of immeasurable magnitude. He rose beyond birth or death. It did not matter to him that to be caught hurling the bomb in the assembly meant his execution (after all he knew killing Saunders would earn him the death sentence). But even in his death, as in his life, he presented the highest virtues of human existence.