It is heartening to see that civil groups in Lahore are now demanding the naming of Shadman Chowk – built after demolishing the Lahore Jail, where the three revolutionaries were hanged – to be named as Bhagat Singh Chowk and a statue of Bhagat Singh be installed there. In the same way, the people of Chak no. 105, Lyallpur Bange, have started holding a mela in memory of the martyrs, and the primary school of the village, where Bhagat Singh was a student, has been renovated to commemorate the great revolutionary. The Bhagat Singh Foundation, led by Imtiaz Rashid Qureshi, who is fighting a case in the Lahore High Court to get the death sentence given to the revolutionaries upturned posthumously, claims that the village has been named as Bhagatpura.
There are some other interesting aspects about Bhagat Singh, for instance he had an excellent rapport with national leaders, be it Subhas Chandra Bose, Jawaharlal Nehru, Motilal Nehru, Lala Lajpat Rai, Madan Mohan Malviya, or others. Subhas Chandra Bose and Nehru were both much appreciative of Bhagat Singh’s personality, even though Congress leaders and the young revolutionaries were at crossroads many times due to their different perceptions and way of working. Seeing Lala Lajpat Rai working with communal forces, Bhagat Singh and his comrades attacked him openly. Yet, they did not break contact with him. In fact, Lala Lajpat Rai’s grandson was the secretary of the Bal Students Union, which was inspired by Bhagat Singh. Motilal Nehru, Madan Mohan Malviya, Dewan Chaman Lal had all condemned the Central Assembly bomb-throwing by Bhagat Singh and his comrades in rather strong words. Gandhi even declared it ‘a mad act of two young men’. Bhagat Singh described Dewan Chaman Lal as a ‘pseudo socialist’ in his famous Sessions Court statement and accused Tej Bahadur Sapru as being no different from the British if the system remains same. Yet, the same leaders, from Motilal Nehru, Dewan Chaman Lal, Madan Mohan Malviya, even Tej Bahadur Sapru, apart from Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhas Bose and Jinnah, stood up for these revolutionary youth in courts and when they were on hunger strikes went to every possible extent to save their lives. Advocates like Asaf Ali, Kailash Nath Katju, Chander Bhan Gupta, Mohan Lal Saxena, all stood by the youth. It was the spirit of nationalism which bound these national leaders and the revolutionary youth. Even though both factions criticized each other bitterly, yet they stood together at the time of crisis, particularly against the British empire – something which needs to be learnt by present-day national leaders and the youth of India.
Another aspect of Bhagat Singh and his brand of the revolutionary movement was the total opposition of the caste system and communalism. Dalit movements of today, after Dr Ambedkar, accept Bhagat Singh as their genuine supporter. Bhagat Singh’s writings and his conduct earned him the love and support of the Dalit masses. Periyar and Ambedkar’s tributes to Bhagat Singh have come to light decades after they first appeared in Tamil and Marathi. In jail, before going to the gallows, Bhagat Singh was not only reading Lenin, he asked for food from Bebe, a name given to a Dalit jail employee, Bogha, in affection by Bhagat Singh, with the logic that the mother too cleanses the defecation of her children, just as the Dalit woman had to for grown-up people. In that sense, Bhagat Singh treated and respected the manual scavenger in jail just like his mother.
And when Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru were going to gallows, arm in arm, laughing and singing, it was jail warder Charat Singh and the prisoners, who were crying and shouting ‘Inqilab Zindabad’, with the three revolutionaries. Having great affection for Bhagat Singh, the deeply religious jail warder had requested Bhagat Singh to recite the Gurbani before going to the gallows. Bhagat Singh told him politely and affectionately that if he did so, the coming generations would think of him as a coward, who could not remain true to his convictions in the face of death. Written six months before his execution and two days before his death sentence was announced, Bhagat Singh had underlined this spirit in his now-celebrated essay ‘Why I am an Atheist’, that he will not remember ‘God’, while going to the gallows, even if he was dubbed as vain, something he was sure of even before the judgement came.
Excerpted with permission from “The Bhagat Singh Reader” by Chaman Lal, published by Harper Collins.