New light on Bhagat Singh

Did Bhagat Singh fall in love with Durga Devi? Kuldip Nayar does not provide a definite answer to this question, though he raises it on more than one occasion in this book. Bhagat Singh, India's most famous revolutionary who chose the non-Gandhian path of violence to gain freedom for the country, was sworn to celibacy. He had disdainfully rejected his parents' suggestion that he should get married and settle down in life.

But during his escape from Lahore after eliminating J P Saunders, a senior British police officer, Bhagat Singh spent a few days with Durga Devi, a fellow revolutionary, and realised that he too had a heart and could develop a "personal relationship" with a woman "" a feeling that he had not experienced before. Bhagat Singh and his accomplice, Shivram Rajguru, had sought Durga Devi's help to escape from Lahore, while Sukhdev Thapar, the strategist who had planned the killing, stayed back.

It was a plan that had been badly executed. The real target was J A Scott, who along with his deputy, Saunders, had ordered a brutal attack on a group of Indian protestors led by Lala Lajpat Rai, who later succumbed to his injuries. So, the revolutionaries planned to kill Scott on December 17, 1928, just outside the main police station in Lahore. But on that fateful day, Scott was on leave and Jai Gopal, who was to have given the green signal to Bhagat Singh and Rajguru to open fire, mistook Saunders to be Scott.

That was Jai Gopal's first mistake. His second mistake was more grievous and unforgiveable. It is the same Jai Gopal who later turned approver in the case that finally sent Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev to the gallows on March 23, 1931. So angry was Sukhdev over the betrayal that he wanted to spend some time alone with Jai Gopal after the trial, so that he could strangle him to death.

As its title suggests, the book is about Bhagat Singh's life and his trial. But for a book that claims to be a biography, Nayar's account of Bhagat Singh's life is fairly sketchy. There are, however, fresh insights into his personality and his tense relationship with Sukhdev. Some members of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army (HSRA), for instance, did not approve the idea of Sukhdev nominating Bhagat Singh to lead the party that was to kill Scott in Lahore. Sukhdev overruled their objections. This gave rise to the feeling that Sukhdev had nominated Bhagat Singh because he was jealous of the latter's growing popularity as a leader. The author also suggests obliquely that it was strange that while a lot of advance planning had been done for the killing, there was no strategy in place on how Bhagat Singh and Rajguru would escape from Lahore after the assassination.

Sukhdev is also shown to be critical of Bhagat Singh's relationship with Durga Devi. "You would be of no use to revolution because you are now ensnared in the tresses of a woman," Sukhdev chided Bhagat Singh in an apparent reference to his soft corner for Durga Devi. Ensnared indeed Bhagat Singh was. It was this taunt that provoked Bhagat Singh to disregard the views of his other colleagues and took upon himself the task of hurling bombs in the Central Legislative Assembly hall in New Delhi in April 1929 and then surrendered before the police. It took less than two years for the British authorities to conduct the trial and send Bhagat Singh to the gallows.

In portraying Bhagat Singh, Nayar does not lose sight of the larger political context of that period, as the hanging of the three martyrs took place just six days before the start of the annual session of the Congress in Karachi. The Congress leadership was embarrassed, as its appeal to the British Viceroy to commute the death sentence awarded to them was turned down. Gandhi and other leaders like Nehru and Patel were opposed to Bhagat Singh's violent methods to gain freedom, but the popular mood was such that they had no option other than saluting his martyrdom. Political expediency and nothing else prompted that response.

Nayar also throws fresh light on why Hans Raj Vohra, one of the revolutionary members of the HSRA, had turned approver in the Lahore conspiracy case. Vohra, who later became a journalist and worked for The Statesman in Delhi and The Times of India and Deccan Chronicle in Washington, claimed that he turned approver once he learnt that Sukhdev, his guru, had let him down by "divulging every secret of the party" to the police. Interestingly, Nayar does not find Vohra's explanation convincing.

But that makes the story of Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and other revolutionaries of that era even more fascinating and intriguing. It is a badly structured book and poor editing makes it worse. But the raw material Nayar has collected over several years of hard work and research will be a historian's delight.

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Without Fear
The life & trial Of Bhagat Singh

Kuldip Nayar
HarperCollins Publishers India
Rs 395, 244 pages