In the shadow of some demi figures that are portrayed as the father figures in India, we tend to forget that our perception of history has been diverted to “what the historians say”, although pseudo (at the end what matters is that they possessed the degree) from “the study of past”. This fashion is quite scary. What contributes to it is the fact that the mind of Indians gets no more intrigued when we hear the fact that out of two significant personalities who changed the course of history in their own terms, one was provided with a secretary in the jail of scenic sites and had the privilege to write letters- one each at morning and evening, had family relations with the viceroy attendants used to ask his choice for the meal; while the other was feeded artificially, never had a perk of even getting a newspaper, leave behind reading and writing books, struggled for subsistence, jailors used to treat them kin to chattels. We no longer ask our preachers who is the first person and why is he limelighted as the founding members of ‘Idea of India’ when he believed that India didn’t exist prior to 1947 while the other finds no mention in voluminous texts of history even when the latter endured atrocities and former was embellished with them ? We have either lost our curiosity or it has been systematically exterminated- it is a question of a great contemplation.
One such conspiracy of clouding up the sun has been done in the mass understanding of the national movement for independence. While glorifying false gods, we were never told that there existed many streams which contributed in tandem to the large ocean of freedom. If critiqued, the national movement for independence can broadly be classified in three categories: political- primarily led by Indian National Congress and other political parties, military- primarily led by Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and his INA & revolutionary- primarily led by Ramprasad Bismil and Chandrashekhar Azad. Although the Indian National Congress had a little to do with the freedom struggle than it is lamented to as it only was in favour of dominion status but what kept sharpening the swords for the freedom movement was its military and revolutionary prospect along with the political parties which remain anonymous to masses even till date. Many suns were clouded complying to the ‘idea of India’ so that India itself succumb to the injuries caused by it.
One such sun of glory and son of Mother India was Sardar Bhagat Singh. We, as authors, don’t prefer using the prefix ‘shaheed’ (as he is popularly known as) because of its narrow etymological roots.
Early Life and Childhood
Bhagat Singh was born in the family of revolutionaries to Sardar Kishan Singh Sandhu ji and Vidyavati ji. His family was a supporter of Gadar party. At the time of his birth, his father Kishan Singh ji and his uncles Ajit Singh ji and Swaran Singh ji were incarcerated in the allegation of carrying out the demonstrations against the Colonization Bill of 1906. His uncle, Sardar Ajit Singh ji had 22 cases running against him due to which he was forced to flee to Iran. The effect of the rebel genes and that of a politically aware environment sowed the seeds of nationalism and patriotism in his mind during his boyhood days.
As the folk says that he when was 5, was planting guns in his father’s field. When asked the reason, he replied that he had been sowing it so that it bears a plant of guns which would be helpful in vanquishing the British.
He went to village school up till class 5th. Afterwards, his father got him admitted to the Dayanand Anglo Vedic School of Lahore which was run by the Arya Samaj. Bhagat Singh was an adherent of the Non- Cooperation movement by M.K Gandhi. He burnt the government sponsored books as a testimony to it.He got demoralised and got inclined towards the insurgent measures after the movement was called off as a result of Chauri Chaura incident. He later went to National College of Lahore which was run by Lala Lajpat Rai.
Inclination Towards Freedom Movement
There are two incidents which are credited with motivating Bhagat Singh to a revolutionary thinking. The first is the Nankana Sahib Massacre and the second was the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre of 1919. As the folks go with, after some 12- 13 days Bhagat Singh was on his way to the National College, Lahore. He, being disturbed by the horrifying Jallianwala Bagh Massacre, couldn’t get out of that trauma. He was on a rickshaw when he instructed the rickshaw puller to head furry him to the aforementioned place. He is said to greet the blood drenched land and put the pious soil in a little glass bottle, after which he whisked it home and showed it to his younger sister. It is said that he kept that bottle with him lifelong.
As aforementioned, he was quite upset with the withdrawal of Non Cooperation Movement after which he isolated himself, joining the young revolutionary movement, which proved to be a threshold of his life as one of the most popular advocates of violent and insurgent measures against colonialism. He fled to Kanpur in 1925 when he was forced to marry by the family when he famously said, “if my marriage was to take place in Slave-India, my bride shall be only death.” In Kanpur, in addition to coming in contact with revolutionaries, setting up Naujawan Bharat Sabha and joining Hindustan Republican Army which had Ram Prasad Bismil as its chief and Chandrashekhar Azad, Ashfakulla Khan and Sukhdev as its fellow members, he started writing corrosive and resistant articles under the daily hindi newspaper ‘Pratap’ which was established by the grandfather of Indian Journalism i.e Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi under the name ‘Ek Punjabi Yuvak’ (A Punjabi Youth). After getting reassured from his parents that he would no longer be forced to marry, he returned to his Lahore residence where he established contact with Kirti Kisan Morcha and started contributing to their weekly magazine ‘Kirti’. Being an avid reader he also wrote for newspapers like ‘Veer Arjun’ under pseudonyms.
Revolutionary Activities
- 1926 arrest- Initially, Bhagat Singh’s role was only limited to writing fierce articles in various magazines and newspapers in different languages as he had the knowledge of 6 languages which include Hindi, Punjabi, English, Marathi, Bengali and Urdu, distributing pamphlets carving out the surface of a violent uprising and instigating the masses for a revolution. These factors withal his active association with the Akali movement made him a man of interest to the British government. He was arrested in 1926 for the Lahore bombing case for which he had to spend 5 weeks in the jail and he was only released in the bond of 60,000/-.
- Saunders’ Assasination- In 1928, when Lala Lajpat Rai led the All Party Demonstration to the railway station of Lahore to register his protest against the arrival of Simon Commission where he was lathi charged by the police officers which led him several injuries to whom Lala ji surrendered on 17 November, 1928. The demise of Lala Lajpat Rai led to a huge anger and agitation in the youth of the country. To avenge the same, HRA plotted to murder the commisioner James A. Scott, the SP who ordered the lathi charge. In case of mistaken identity JP Saunders was killed in place of the former. Bhagat Singh and his fellows quickly left Lahore to escape the penalty of the act. Bhagat Singh even shaved his beard and cut his hair- which are a sacred tenet of the Sikh Belief, to avoid identification.
The 1929 Bomb Blast, Proceedings, Hunger Strike and Execution
In 1929, the Defence of India Act was to be passed in the Central Assembly by the British government. The Hindustan Republican Socialist Army (HSRA) planned to explode bombs in the legislature in order to mark the protest. On April 8, 1929, Bhagat Singh along with his partner, Battukeshwar Dutt (B.K Dutt) exploded two bombs in the Central legislature at the time of ordinance. Noteworthy is that the bombs were exploded with such a dexterity that not even a single person lost his life or suffered an injury. However, both the bravehearts stayed back raising the slogans of “Inquilab Zindabad” which translated to Long Live the Revolution, got arrested or should be said that they let the police arrest them and were imprisoned. The proceedings began in May, the following year in which Bhagat Singh sought to defend himself and BK Dutt was represented by Afsar Ali. The court held the two guilty of malicious and unlawful intent of the explosion.
Not much later following the proceedings, there were raids on the bomb fatories of HSRA in Lahore and Kanpur. Three traitors Hans Raj Vohra, Jai Gopal and Phanindra Nath turned the approver to the government which further led to 21 arrests including that of Sukhdev and Rajguru. Bhagat Singh was to be tried again for bomb blast case of 1926 and the Saunders’ assasination. The trial began with 28 accused on 10 July, 1929 under the presidency of Judge Rai Sahib Pandit Sri Kishen in the special court.
Meanwhile, Bhagat Singh and his fellow inmates started their famous hunger strike against the partisan treatment they got and the abysmal services of the Jail. The strike received immense attention- both praise and criticism. The demands of the imprisoned were written by Bhagat Singh and BK Dutt in a letter to the jail authorities, a soft copy of which has been affixed without any editorial manipulations.
| Central Jail Lahore 24.6.29 WE, BHAGAT SINGH AND B.K. DUTT, WERE SENTENCED to life transportation in the Assembly Bomb Case, Delhi, on the 19th April, 1929. As long as we were undertrial prisoners in Delhi Jail, we were accorded a very good treatment from that jail to the Mianwali and Lahore Central Jails respectively, we wrote an application to the higher authorities asking for better diet and a few other facilities, and refused to take the jail diet. Our demands were as follows: 1. We, as political prisoners, should be given better diet and the standard of our diet should at least be the same as that of European prisoners. (It is not the sameness of dietary that we demand, but the sameness of standard of diet.) 2. We shall no be forced to do any hard and undignified lobours at all. All books, other than those proscribed, alongwith writing materials, should be allowed to us without any restriction. 3. At least one standard daily paper should be supplied to every political prisoner. 4. Political prisoners should have a special ward of their own in every jail, provided with all necessities as those of the europeans. And all the political prisoners in one jail must be kept together in that ward. 5. Toilet necessities should be supplied. 6. Better clothing. We have explained above the demands that we made. They are the most reasonable demands. The Jail authorities told us one day that the higher authorities have refused to comply with our demands. Apart from that, they handle us very roughly while feeding us artificially, and Bhagat Singh was lying quite senseless on the 10th June, 1929, for about 15 mts., after the forcible feeding, which we request to be stopped without any further delay. In addition, we may be permitted to refer to the recommendations made in the U.P. Jail Committee by Pt. Jagat Narain and K.B. Hafiz Hidayat Hussain. They have recommended the political prisoners to be treated as “Better Class Prisoners.” We request you to kindly consider our demands at your earliest convenience. – By “Political Prisoners”, we mean all those people who are convicted for offences against the State, for instane the people who were convicted in the Lahore Conspiracy Cases, 1915-17, the Kakori Conspiracy Cases and Sedition Cases in general. Yours Bhagat Singh B.K. Dutt |
British officers, when failed to make the prisoners eat, mixed salt with the water and kept the pots of milk in place of water pots in order to break the fast of the prisoners, reacting to which Bhagat Singh and his companions broke the pots by hitting them up on the grounds (this is how the forefathers of our ‘liberal’ and ‘secular’ class behaved with their prisoners, but owing to their loyalties to their illegal forefathers, the Lutyen zone has been belying the fact as they have veiled their eyes with a black strap and claiming the day to be night !) The hunger strike came to an end when Bhagat Singh broke his 116 day fast on the request of his father and other congressmen on October 5, 1929.
Judgement and Execution
The fairest legal miracles ever in the legal history of the United Kingdom and that of the world, either was the Last Treaty of Lahore between 5 year old Maharaja Duleep Singh & British empire or was ran against Bhagat Singh and his inmates ! On 1 May, 1930, on the indications of Viceroy Lord Irwin, a special tribunal was set up consisting of Justice J. Coldstream, Justice Agha Hyder and Justice G.C Hilton. The tribunal was emancipated to perpetuate the trial even in the absence of the accused people. Laudable Legal Knowledge !!!! This trial hardly complied to the norms of the legal world and was visibly just a formality in the form of a one sided trial.
On 7 October, 1930, the tribunal delivered its 300 pages judgement- awarding death sentence to Sukhdev, Bhagat Singh and Rajguru in which Bhagat Singh himself confessed the charges against him. The date of the execution was decided to be March 24, 1931 but as the British are famous for it- they executed the trio a day prior. So, on March 23, 1931 at 7.30 am, Sardar Bhagat Singh ji was hanged till death with his comrades Sukhdev and Rajguru, in the Lahore Jail. After the three brave sons of mother India departed to their heavenly abode, the British officers cut the three corpses into small pieces and threw them out in the river Satluj. The locals collected the parts and cremated the bodies.
THIS IS HOW A SUN SETTLED DOWN IN 1931. BRITISH HANGED HIM TILL DEATH BUT HE DIDN’T DIE….HE WAS EVEN KILLED WHEN OUR HISTORIANS DIDN’T COMMENSURATE HIM WITH AN APPROPRIATE SPACE IN OUR HISTORY TEXTBOOKS.
गाता है रह रहकर सतलुज का बहता पानी,
जिस उम्र में रहती है दिल में इश्क की रवानी,
उसी उम्र में थी दिल्लगी करने वाली एक ऐसी जवानी,
खून से लिखी जिसने वतन की आज़ादी की कहानी,
जिसकी वजह से हीरा है पत्थर भी हिंदुस्तानी,
सुनो ज़रा दोहराता हूँ भगत सिंह की कुर्बानी !!
