Getting it right: a historian’s effort to document the life of Bhagat Singh   Premium

books on Bhagat Singh’s legacy and life

India has been slow to appreciate the genius of Bhagat Singh. Generations of students have grown up with a little more than passing mention of Bhagat Singh in history textbooks. Often clubbed with Sukhdev and Rajguru and the three revolutionaries’ hanging on March 23, 1931, Bhagat Singh, the man who wanted to “sow guns” as a child, deserves better.

Back in the summer of 2002, Hindi cinema made a belated and somewhat hurried attempt to shine a light on the man under whose influence the Hindustan Republican Army transformed into the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association. The result was three films, The Legend of Bhagat Singh, Shaheed-e-Azam and Shaheed. The films failed to conquer the box office. About a month after the three Bhagat Singh movies, the audiences warmed up more enthusiastically to Devdas based on Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s novel. The threads of history lost out to the yarn of a famous novelist. And Bhagat Singh, in the mind of the common man, remained a peripheral figure whose execution could not be saved by Mahatma Gandhi despite the pact with Lord Irwin. One man though has given the best years of his life, and some more after retirement, to study, research and write about Bhagat Singh. Indeed, retired Jawaharlal Nehru University academic Chaman Lal has researched the life of Bhagat Singh with a passion unparalleled.

While Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Abul Kalam Azad and Subhas Chandra Bose have, at various times, been celebrated through biographies, Bhagat Singh has often been a freedom fighter who does not fit the template of a freedom struggle based on ahimsa and satyagraha. Easily glossed over is the fact that he spent 157 days on a hunger strike, picking up not even once a weapon in anger. Not by Lal though who has penned around a dozen books on the revolutionary freedom fighter, an atheist who is now sought to be appropriated by right wing forces. Truth to tell, Bhagat Singh defies easy definition.

Born in 1907, Lal writes in Life and Legend of Bhagat Singh, (published by Publication Division), that Bhagat Singh lived for all of 23 years but filled those years with an unwavering commitment to India and fierce anti-imperialism. Impatient of delays and hateful of colonial ways, he preferred the gallows to writing letters of clemency. Lal’s latest book which comes replete with photographs of Bhagat Singh’s ancestral house in Khatkar Kalan besides his family elders, presents him as a human being, a young man close to his elder brother Jagat Singh.

Bhagat Singh’s biography too was written by his younger brother Ranbir Singh who was all of six years when Bhagat Singh was executed in 1931, and used family anecdotes and experiences to put together the story. The Urdu biography was released in 2020. A more nuanced one was penned by his niece Virender Sindhu who brought together three generations of Bhagat Singh’s family together in a book back in 1968.

Despite these books and films, the common man has not had much authentic literature focused solely on Bhagat Singh. Many have been intrigued by him and many others inspired by his bravery in front of imperial forces. Yet there has been an aura of mystery about Bhagat Singh. As Lal writes in Life and Legend…, “For every young adult in any part of India, the name Bhagat Singh creates a sense of intrigue towards this iconic hero of [the] Indian freedom struggle. That is how I was also attracted towards Bhagat Singh. I have had the fortune to get firsthand account of the life, Bhagat Singh and other freedom fighters led, from one of their counterparts himself. Manmathnath Gupta, a participant in the Kakori Rail dacoity of 1925, was saved from the gallows due to his young age. After reading his sketches of revolutionaries, Bharat Ke Krantikari, I was so impressed that I translated this small book in Punjabi at the age of 20. Along with writing, my focus remained on collecting the writings and documents pertaining to Bhagat Singh. Bhagat Singh was the product of his times…and his tenaciousness is what made him into an icon he is today.”

This focus of Lal enabled him to expose several lies floating about Bhagat Singh. A few years ago, attempts were made on social media to tell youngsters that Bhagat Singh was executed on February 14, the idea being to undermine the importance of Valentine’s Day in a youngster’s life. Lal calmly demolished the myth, telling this correspondent, “This has been a standard Goebbelsian philosophy adopted by his true followers in Hindutva Lies Factory. To speak a falsehood hundred times to make it look ‘true’! They avoid saying ‘executed’ now, as March 23 is too well known a day, but say the punishment was announced this day, whereas judgment was delivered on October 7, 1930.”