(First published on NewsYaps on Bhagat's Singh's birth anniversary)
Today is Comrade Bhagat Singh’s birth anniversary, an apt
day to point you to his last petition written to the governor of Punjab before he was
executed.
Bhagat Singh’s trial had created a furore. So much so that
the British Government had to promulgate an ordinance which dispensed with the
need for a defence counsel, defence witnesses and even the presence of the
accused during the trial. To quote that brave crusader, Shri Rahul Gandhi, on
another ordinance, this rendered the trial to be “complete nonsense” and little
more than a farce. It was recently described by the Supreme Court as “contrary
to the fundamental doctrine of criminal jurisprudence" because there was
no opportunity for the accused to even defend themselves.
In spite of this obvious injustice (the technical term for
it is, I believe, a British sense of fair play), Singh refused
to ask for any sort of clemency or concession. In fact, the tone of his final
letter—this is after he had been sentenced to death—is a cocky mixture of
defiance and sarcasm. He mocks the British Government by actually requesting to
be shot dead as behoves a man who has been held guilty of waging war against
the government. The last line in his petition reads:
“We
request and hope that you will very kindly order the military department to
send its detachment to perform our execution.
Notice the
“kindly order”. I mean, wow. This man is on death row and he’s not above requesting
for a kind order to shoot him dead.
The only time
bitterness creeps in is when he’s discussing the activities of the Congress.
Gandhi, who was in discussions with the British at the time (which would
eventually lead to what would be called the Gandhi-Irwin Pact), comes in for criticism for doing nothing to
help “even the homeless, friendless and penniless of female workers
who are alleged to be belonging to the vanguard and whom the leaders consider
to be enemies of their utopian non-violent cult
(ouch!) which has already
become a thing of the past” .
And, of course,
let me highlight parts of the letter in which Bhagat Singh strives to point out
the fact that his vision for India is that of a ”Socialist Republic”
since it’s amazing and bewildering how comrade Bhagat Singh
of the Hindustan Socialist Republican
Association has become a right-wing hero, of all things:
“Let us
declare that the state of war does exist and shall exist so long as the Indian toiling
masses and the natural resources are being exploited by a handful of parasites.
They may be purely British Capitalist or mixed British and Indian or even
purely Indian. They may be carrying on their insidious exploitation through
mixed or even on purely Indian bureaucratic apparatus. All these things make no
difference...But that war shall be incessantly waged without taking into
consideration the petty (illegible) and the meaningless ethical ideologies. It
shall be waged ever with new vigour, greater audacity and unflinching
determination till the Socialist Republic is established and the present social
order is completely replaced by a new social order, based on social prosperity
and thus every sort of exploitation is put an end to and the humanity is
ushered into the era of genuine and permanent peace. ”
In case this is
not strong enough, please also note that Bhagat Singh sent this telegram to the Third International while in
prison:
“On
Lenin Day we send hearty greetings to all who are doing something for carrying
forward the ideas of the great Lenin. We wish success to the great experiment
Russia is carrying out. We join our voice to that of the international working
class movement. The proletariat will win. Capitalism will be defeated. Death to
Imperialism. ”
Of course, the
fact that there is an organisation called the Bhagat Singh KrantiSena which takes up solidly Leninist causes such as
protesting against the shortening of the duration of the Amarnath yatra would
have surely warmed the cockles of Singh’s heart were he alive. As will the fact
that Narendra “Hindu Nationalist” Modi
invokes his memory without having the faintest idea of what he died
for.
This corruption of Bhagat Singh’s ideals does not stop at Socialism
but extends even into his personal faith (or the lack of it). Singh was an
avowed atheist and his pamphlet Why I am an Atheist, written a few months before
he was murdered, is a crisp read which ends with a guarantee that he will
remain a non-believer till the day he dies.
“One of
my friends asked me to pray. When informed of my atheism, he said, “When your
last days come, you will begin to believe.” I said, “No, dear sir, Never shall
it happen. I consider it to be an act of degradation and demoralisation. For
such petty selfish motives, I shall never pray.”
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