Is Bhagat Singh a martyr or a terrorist? Sangrur MP Simranjit Singh Mann’s remarks about the freedom fighter have stoked a row, especially at a time when the Aam Aadmi Party government in Punjab has made Bhagat Singh’s legacy a part of its political posturing — from holding Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann’s oath-taking ceremony in Khatkar Kalan, wearing yellow turbans to putting up pictures in government offices.
Mann’s statement, calling Bhagat Singh a “terrorist”, has not only irked the political dispensation of the state but also AAP, which has asked the leader to apologise. Mann, however, has refused to toe the line.
Was John Saunders really ‘innocent?’
Bhagat Singh, Shivaram Rajguru and Sukhdev Thapar were sentenced to death for conspiring to kill John P Saunders, a British police officer, in pre-partition Lahore.
Mann’s remarks have triggered a debate over Bhagat Singh’s celebration as a national hero, with some condemning him as a “coward” while others praise him as a “symbol of people’s struggle” even in the present day.
Mann’s son Emaan Singh Mann, while talking to News18, defended his father and asked how people could be told to follow the path of anarchy like Bhagat Singh.
However, many believe that Saunders wasn’t innocent either.
Prof Chaman Lal, honorary advisor to Bhagat Singh Archives and Resource Centre, Delhi Archives, has researched and widely written on Bhagat Singh and his friends. In his writings about Premdutta, a co-accused with Bhagat Singh who was standing next to Lala Lajpat Rai, he mentions that they were brutally lathi-charged by ASP John Saunders on the orders of SP James Scott.
Bhagat Singh and his friends also talked about the necessity of killing Saunders in the posters they pasted after the incident: “We are sorry to have killed a man. But this man was a part of cruel, despicable and unjust system and killing him was a necessity. This man has been killed as an employee of the British Government. This Government is the most oppressive government in the world.”
Co-opt or destroy
According to Prof Lal, “there has been a systemic effort to either co-opt or destroy Bhagat Singh who is an icon for the people”.
“Religious fundamentalists hate him because he talked of a secular-socialist perspective. There have been unsuccessful attempts earlier to prove that he became religious when the end was nearing. Now it is the other way around. They are trying to prove him shallow and cowardly but the documents regarding their cases, his own writings are all there to prove them wrong,” he said.
In a pamphlet after throwing a bomb in the National Assembly on April 8, 1929, Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt said: “It takes a loud voice to make the deaf hear…We are sorry to admit that we, who attach so great a sanctity to human life, who dream of a glorious future, when man will be enjoying perfect peace and full liberty, have been forced to shed human blood. But the sacrifice of individuals at the altar of the ‘Great Revolution’ that will bring freedom to all, rendering the exploitation of man by man impossible, is inevitable.”
For professor Lal, Bhagat Singh is as relevant now as he was then. “Bhagat Singh’s ideology, his writings are still relevant. His writings guide the peoples’ movement even today,” he said.
The tumultuous relationship
It is believed that it was the 1980s when governments started adopting Bhagat Singh, pitting him against Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, remembered for his violent campaign for autonomy for Punjab.
“It was in the 1980s that the government started to co-opt Bhagat Singh, started holding state functions in his memory, and then came the films and songs about him. He is a big symbol for the people in Punjab and in the country across ideologies, even in Pakistan,” said Harjeshwar Pal Singh, assistant professor of History at SGGS College, Chandigarh.
He added, “These people want to replace him. He doesn’t suit their ideology. Bhagat Singh is still popular as a symbol of the sacrificial tradition of Punjab against tyranny. Moreover, he was on the right side of history, fighting against the British, while Mann comes from a feudal background whose ancestors sided with the British. Bhagat Singh’s sacrifice cannot be negated.”
Nephew welcomes remarks
Bhagat Singh’s nephew and rights activist Prof Jagmohan Singh, meanwhile, welcomed Mann’s remarks, calling them a test for those who love and regard the freedom fighter. “It is a chance for people to talk to Bhagat Singh through his writings.”
Prof Singh said killing Saunders or throwing bombs in the Assembly was a political action with a historic reasoning behind it which nobody discusses. “Basanti Devi, who was considered a mother by revolutionaries, once asked them that though they told stories of Guru Gobind Singh-ji, did the youth have the courage to fight hopelessness? Their decision to act was an answer to this question.”
On Mann, Prof Singh said: “Bhagat Singh went to the Parliament to make the deaf hear. Mann is in the Parliament now as he justifies the actions of his maternal grandfather who gave a ‘siropa’ to General Dyer in the Golden Temple to pacify him as the latter said they were planning to bomb Amritsar. [While that didn’t happen]the British did bomb Gujjranwala.”
He also questioned Mann over the killing of Nihangs in an alleged fake encounter and firing at a historic Gurdwara on April 11, 1979, in Sarai Naga — the birthplace of Guru Angad Dev-ji. “He should forget about his Nana and answer for his own misdeeds first,” he said.
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