Op-ed: The contemporary relevance of Bhagat Singh

M V Ramana

During his short life, Bhagat Singh spanned a variety of political positions, from Gandhian nationalism to revolutionary terrorism to Marxism. Though he was accused of, and is sometimes praised for, being a terrorist, he clarifies, “I am not a terrorist and I never was”

This week, 72 years ago, Bhagat Singh and two of his comrades were hanged by the colonial British government. Only 23 years old at the time of his death, Bhagat’s popularity is said to have rivalled that of Mahatma Gandhi. Though much of the attention paid to Bhagat Singh has focused on his use of violence and his heroic patriotism, his real significance lies in his opposition to the exploitation of “the labour of the common people”. To him it mattered “little whether these exploiters are purely British capitalists, or British and Indians in alliance, or even purely Indians.” Also important was his opposition to communalism and the use of religion as a means of bondage.

Bhagat Singh was part of a substantial militant tradition within the independence movement. Ajit Singh, Bhagat’s uncle, was a leader in the Ghadar party. Set up in the early 1910s by Punjabi immigrants on the west coast of North America, the Ghadar militants wanted to overthrow British rule in India by armed revolt. The Ghadar movement deepened the nationalist consciousness by carrying the critique of colonialism developed by intellectuals to the masses, both in India and among the immigrant community; its methods of struggle emphasised secularism, democracy and egalitarianism.

Bhagat Singh, like many in his generation, became involved in the freedom struggle through participation in the Non-Cooperation movement launched by the Congress in 1920. The suspension of the movement in 1922 following an attack on a police station in Chauri Chaura led to widespread disenchantment and the exploration of alternatives, in particular revolutionary means.

In September 1928, several of these young revolutionaries came together in Delhi, and formed the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA). The rationale for adopting socialism as an official goal is in their manifesto: “socialism... alone can lead to the establishment of complete independence and the removal of all-social distinctions and privileges.”

The HSRA’s time for action came soon after. In April 1929, the British government introduced two bills to repress the labour movement, the Trade Disputes Bill that would effectively ban strikes, and the Public Safety Bill, which gave the police sweeping powers of preventive detention. The HSRA decided that these bills were to be opposed and on April 8, 1929, following the passing of the Trade Disputes Bill, Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt threw two bombs in the Legislative Assembly. The bombs were deliberately targeted at empty benches so that no one would be hurt. In Bhagat’s own words, the bomb throwing was intended 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.”

Over and above the protest, there was a deeper reason for the HSRA’s resort to bomb throwing. Though the HSRA did not favour individual violence and was well aware of the need to politicise the masses in order to further the revolution, their means for doing so were limited and time was short. They therefore resorted to “propaganda by deed”, in the hope that this would result in the recruitment of a large cadre, and to use the courts as a stage for publicly propagating their ideas.

Accordingly Bhagat Singh and his comrades would enter the court shouting Inquilab Zindabad (Long live the Revolution) and Down with Imperialism. When the court asked him what he meant by revolution, Bhagat Singh replied: “By ‘Revolution’ we mean that the present order of things, which is based on manifest injustice, must change. Producers or labourers, in spite of being the most necessary element of society, are robbed by their exploiters of the fruits of their labour and deprived of their elementary rights. The peasant who grows corn for all, starves with his family, the weaver who supplies the world market with textile fabrics, has not enough to cover his own and his children’s bodies, masons, smiths and carpenters who raise magnificent palaces, live like pariahs in the slums. The capitalists and exploiters, the parasites of society, squander millions on their whims... A radical change, therefore, is necessary and it is the duty of those who realize it to reorganize society on the socialistic basis.”

This is quite different from the way the word Inquilab is used in Bollywood movies where the word is used as a vague term for a crusade against poverty. I mention this partly because there are six films on the life of Bhagat Singh, including four last year and all but the one starring Ajay Devgan do little justice to the true politics of the leader.

During his short life, Bhagat Singh spanned a variety of political positions, from Gandhian nationalism to revolutionary terrorism to Marxism. Though he was accused of, and is sometimes praised for, being a terrorist, he clarifies, “I am not a terrorist and I never was, except perhaps in the beginning of my revolutionary career. And I am convinced that we cannot gain anything through these methods.” Elsewhere, Bhagat Singh has clarified that as he involved himself in deep study of history and politics, “the romance of the violent methods alone which was so prominent amongst our predecessors, was replaced by serious ideas... Use of force justifiable when resorted to as a matter of terrible necessity: non-violence as policy indispensable for all mass movements.”

It is not Bhagat Singh’s use of violence, if it can be called that, which was of significance. Rather, as Bipan Chandra et al point out in their authoritative India’s Struggle for Independence, Bhagat Singh “understood, more clearly than many of his contemporaries, the danger that communalism posed to the nation and the national movement. He often told his audience that communalism was as big an enemy as colonialism.” Today, as we are faced with the simultaneous onslaught of communal politics, global capitalism and American imperialism, the relevance of Bhagat Singh’s ideas can scarcely be overstated.

M V Ramana is a physicist and research staff member at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security and co-editor of Prisoners of the Nuclear Dream

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