Bhagat Singh The Socialist: Sitaram Yechury
Sitaram Yechury
Bhagat Singh continues to remain a revolutionary icon for modern-day Indian youth. He and his associates acquired the status of living legends even in their brief life time. This is confirmed by the fact that the British clandestinely advanced the hanging of Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev fearing a public outrage. In an unprecedented manner, these legendary heroes of the Indian freedom movement were hanged until death at dusk on March 23, 1931 violating the norm for execution at dawn of the 24th. The British tried to surreptitiously dispose off the bodies at night at Hussainwallah on the banks of the Sutlej.
All these revolutionaries enthusiastically participated in the non-cooperation movement launched by the Congress under Gandhiji’s leadership in August 1920. However, when Gandhiji withdrew this movement in February 1922 following the attack on the police station in Chauri Chaura calling it a “Himalayan blunder”, the disappointment and the consequent frustration was rampant among the youth. Some historians believe that this withdrawal forced the unspent energy of the masses into fratricidal channels. The spurt in the number of communal riots is often cited as evidence. It is precisely in this period that alternatives to the Congress for advancing the struggle for freedom were being sought. The fledgling Communist Party formed in 1920 brought together the various Communist groups across the country at a convention in 1925 at Kanpur. The same year, the RSS was founded in Nagpur. It was in the course of these tumultuous years that three distinct visions on what should define the character of independent India emerged.
The Congress, in response to these developments, defined its vision of independent India as being a secular democratic republic. The Communists articulated their vision as one that will consolidate the secular democratic republic by transforming the political independence gained by the country into the true economic independence of all its people, i.e, socialism.
The third vision in complete contradistinction to the above two sought to define the character of independent India on the basis of the religious denomination of its people. This had a twin expression. The RSS advocating its fascistic vision of a rabidly intolerant “Hindu Rashtra” and the Muslim League seeking the partition of the country to establish an Islamic republic. These battles resulted in the unfortunate partition of the country with the establishment of the Islamic state of Pakistan. India, emerged as a secular, democratic constitutional republic. The RSS, however, continued with its efforts to transform our republic into their vision of a fascistic ‘Hindu Rashtra’.
The ideological battle amongst these three visions, in fact, continues till date and the present-day political developments can be properly understood only within these parameters. In this battle, Bhagat Singh was closest to the Communist vision and, in fact, independently moved towards Communist ideological foundations. Bhagat Singh was not a lone hero but part of a remarkable group of revolutionaries. It was at Bhagat Singh’s intervention, at a secret meeting that took place in Ferozeshah Kotla at Delhi on September 8, 1928, that the Hindustan Republican Association was rechristened as the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association. Socialism was now accepted both as a goal and the ideological foundation of their activities. Though Chandrashekhar Azad could not attend the meeting being underground following the famous Kakori incident in August 1925 and the hanging of his associates Ram Prasad Bismal, Ashfaqullah, Rajendra Lahiri and Roshan Singh in November 1927, he had given his prior approval to the decisions taken at this meeting. While many today seek to appropriate the legacy of Bhagat Singh and his associates, if a proper justice of their contribution to the evolution of modern independent India is to be done, then that must be based on Bhagat Singh’s own writings. For a youth barely in his twenties, Bhagat Singh, in his times, was fairly well-read. His diaries released by the National Archives on the 50th anniversary of his martyrdom revealed the vast range of contemporary writers that he read.
Though Bollywood has made his reading of Lenin famous, in his diaries, extensive quotations from various writers are there, including the famous concluding lines of the poet, Percy Byshee Shelley’s magnum opus, The Mask of Anarchy:
“Rise like lions after slumber
In unanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you
Ye are many – they are few.”
Everyday, during their trial, Bhagat Singh and B K Dutta used to enter the courts shouting the slogan “Inquilab Zindabad”. When the court questioned them on the meaning of this slogan, they submitted written statement which says: “I, Bhagat Singh, was asked in the lower court as to what we meant by the word ‘Revolution’. In answer to that question, I would say that Revolution does not necessarily involve a sanguinary strife, nor is there any place in it for individual vendetta. By Revolution we mean that the present order of things which is based on manifest injustice must change.
“This is our ideal and with this ideology for our inspiration we have given a fair and loud enough warning.
“Revolution is the inalienable right of mankind. Freedom is the imprescriptable birth right of all. The labourer is the real sustainer of society. The sovereignty of the people is the ultimate destiny of the workers.” Thus, the slogan ‘Inquilab Zindabad’ was immortalised during our freedom struggle.
There are various elements of Bhagat Singh’s life that have contributed to his immortal legend, heroism, sacrifice, the political clarity and the ability to catch the imagination of the people. For one, they marched to death with a smile. When the hangman offers him to pray before death, he says, “I have neither fear of death nor belief in God”. In terms of political belief, while firmly abjuring “the cult of the bomb and the pistol”, as Bhagat Singh himself notes, they chose to throw the bomb at the Delhi assembly and murder Saunders with pistol under the firm belief that these actions would galvanise the youth to seek freedom.
The recollection of Bhagat Singh’s legacy, thus, is of contemporary relevance in today’s continuing battle between the three visions that we spoke of above and more importantly to safeguard the secular democratic republic and strengthen India’s economic sovereignty and, thus, on the basis of popular struggles to move towards transforming our political independence into the economic independence of all the people – socialism.
This was the introduction to a graphic novel on Bhagat Singh, produced by Chattra Sangram, the organ of the Students’ Federation of India (SFI), West Bengal state committee. Republished here with minor edits, to mark Singh’s 89th death anniversary.
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