Bhagat Singh is relevant to modern India

OPINION: Sitaram Yechury

As noted earlier in these columns, the year 2007 has a remarkable bearing on India's historic struggle for freedom. It marks the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Plassey; the 150th anniversary of the 1857 uprising; the 60th anniversary of Independence ; and the birth centenary of Shaheed Bhagat Singh.

Through the course of this year, many aspects of the life and work of Bhagat Singh have been written about. While Bhagat Singh continues to remain an icon for modern-day Indian youth, the fact that needs to be underlined is that he and his associates acquired the status of living legends even in their brief lifetime. In the few years of his active political life, being just over 23 years of age, when the British executed him, Bhagat Singh, along with his associates had radicalised the freedom struggle. The Delhi bomb case ("to make the deaf hear") and the murder of British officer Saunders to avenge the death of Lala Lajpat Rai due to the severe lathicharge in the anti-Simon Commission protests, brought on to the agenda of the freedom struggle a militancy hitherto unknown.

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 were being sought. The fledgling Communist Party formed in 1920 brought together the various communist groups across the country at a convention at Kanpur in 1925. The same year, the RSS was founded in Nagpur.

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 "" 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.

In terms of political belief, while firmly abjuring "the cult of the bomb and the pistol", as Bhagat Singh himself notes, he and his associates 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.

Contrast this with those political commentators who in the wake of team India's historic win of the Twenty-20 cricket world cup, have sought to suggest that new India's icons are far removed from the traditions of anti-imperialism that galvanised earlier generations of Indian youth. They need to note that popular Hindi cinema is, by far, the most reliable barometer of popular Indian opinion and sentiment.

During the first six years of this decade, as stated above, six mainstream successful films have been released on Bhagat Singh! This is the reaction of the overwhelmingly youthful population of India.

(Excerpts from the article 'Shaheed Bhagat Singh's Birth Centenary: Abiding Relevance' by Sitaram Yechury, published in the People's Democracy issue dated September 29, 2007)