Bhagat Singh: Between Icon and Ideologue
- The Debate: Was Bhagat Singh a Marxist Thinker?
- Intellectual Depth Beyond Academia
- Writings That Define a Revolutionary Mind
- Revolutionary Praxis vs Academic Critique
- Misreading History: From Ghadar Movement to 1857
- Ideological Contestations in Contemporary India
Reclaiming Bhagat Singh’s Revolutionary Legacy
A critical analysis of attempts to dilute Bhagat Singh’s ideology, revisiting his Marxist thought, writings, and enduring political legacy.
Bhagat Singh sent to the gallows once again
Lenin, in his seminal work State and Revolution (1917), unequivocally stated:
"What is now happening to
Marx's theory has, in the course of history, happened repeatedly to the
theories of revolutionary thinkers and leaders of oppressed classes fighting
for emancipation. During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing
classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage
malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and
slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless
icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the ‘consolation’ of the oppressed classes
and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the
revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its
revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it.”
Lenin stated this fact in context of Marxism but has universal
connotation. It has been the similar fate of the ideas, contribution and
sacrifices of Indian revolutionary Bhagat Singh. The latest contributor to this
venture is a renegade liberal, Bhagwan Josh. He contributed ‘Why Bhagat Singh
was not a Marxist thinker’ (The Tribune, March 23, 2026).[1] He ended
his derogatory piece with the words: “The fact remains that Bhagat Singh was
hanged not for his revolutionary ideas but for committing a murder of a British
officer.” It is notable that The Tribune chose to publish it on the 95th
anniversary of the martyrdom of Bhagat Singh and his comrades, Rajguru and
Sukhdev. It brazenly shows what has happened to an esteemed paper which remained
supportive of the revolutionaries when they were alive.
Bhagwan, not confident of his current take on Bhagat Singh, goes
hunting for names like Antonio Gramsci, Bipin Chandra and Harish Puri to add
weight to his diatribe. Gramsci and Bipin Chandra are not alive to clarify but
Professor Harish Puri needs to share with his fans like me whether he too
believes that Bhagat Singh was not a revolutionary. Thanks to Harish Jain who
responded by penning ‘Why Bhagat Singh defies easy labels’ (The Tribune, 26-03-2026) in
which Bhagwan in one of his earlier Punjabi work (Bhagat Singh da Markasvad) located “Bhagat Singh within the distinct Leninist current that
was emerging in Punjab between 1928 and 1931 an intellectual formation grounded
in study, debate and ideological seriousness and set apart from what he saw as
the more pragmatic and often anti-intellectual strands within Indian communism”.[2]
A
serious problem with armchair Professors is that they live in ivory towers but
believe that only they are authorized to explain the ground realities. Bhagat
Singh was not a thinker because he was unable to produce in his writings, "the
perfunctory references to the sources or books from which these notes and
quotes were taken have left a rather perplexing question mark with regard to
the authentic source. That is, from which editions of which books, by which
particular authors, were these taken?" They do not know that Bhagat
Singh was not a doctoral candidate in some university but chose to work to
liberate motherland from the colonial subjugation. According to British
official documents he was in jail for 716 days, consulted/read approximately
302 books and was well-versed in English, Urdu, Hindi, and Punjabi. When he was
not in jail he was a researcher and a journalist. He followed Gramscian dictum (without
reading him) that "It is necessary to think and study even under the most
difficult conditions…to keep the risk of intellectual degradation at bay".
Bhagat
Singh was not reading books for writing a doctoral proposal for enrolling at
Oxford or Cambridge but for understanding the world and India so that he could
challenge the mightiest imperial power and replace with a system in India where
‘men does not exploit men’. This is what a thinker does. I am sure if Bhagat
Singh had come in contact with Professors like Bhagwan Josh there would have
been no need commemorating his martyrdom day, he would have retired as a
teacher receiving pension from the British masters!
Bhagwan makes another obnoxious claim: “But what sort of Marxism
did Bhagat Singh imbibe from his readings? Did this Marxism help him in any way
to get some insight into the contemporary politics of Indian nationalism,
working class movements and the immediate historical social reality around him?
A mastery of Marxism that is merely an exercise in the appropriation of textual
discourse must remain a ‘Brahmanical Marxism’…”
A Professor who we are told to have taught at Jawaharlal Nehru
University (JNU) can be so ignorant of written words, so oblivious of facts in
public domain, does not bode well for future of JNU. Bhagat Singh who died at
the age of 23 wrote following major documents, Universal Love (Hindi 1924),
Youth (Hindi 1925), Religious riots and their solution (Punjabi 1927), Religion
and our freedom struggle (Punjabi 1928), The issue of Untouchability (Punjabi
1928), Satyagrah and strikes (Punjabi 1928), Students and politics (Punjabi
1928), New leaders and their duties (Punjabi 1928), Lala Lajpat Rai and youth
(Punjabi 1928), What is anarchism part 1, 2, 3(Punjabi 1928), The Revolutionary
Nihilist of Russia (Punjabi 1928), Ideal of Indian revolution (English 1930), Why
I am an Atheist (English 1930), The first rise of Punjab in the freedom
struggle (Urdu 1931), Introduction to Dreamland (English 1931), and the young
political workers (English 1931).
Manifesto of Naujawan Bharat Sabha and Manifesto of Hindustan
Socialist republican Army were written by Bhagwati Charan Vohra and finalized
after consultation with Bhagat Singh.
Shame on those who call it ‘Brahmanical Marxism’. Bhagat Singh
developed Marxism in context of Indian realities. Marx said that future
generations would come and prove us wrong, this is how Marxism as a science
survives.
Bhagwan declares Ghadar movement as a failed movement and declares
that Bhagat singh “instead of learning a lesson from its tragic failure, he
blindly followed the example of the Ghadarites”. This fatwa shows on whose
side Professor stands while evaluating two greatest milestones in the glorious
anti-colonial history of Indian freedom struggle in the 20th
century. Failure does not mean that any resistance was faulty or not required.
To hail the victor is a typical Brahmanical characteristic. Bhagwan must be
glad to know that he is not alone in holding such a debased idea. The most
prominent ideologue of RSS, MS Golwalkar while denigrating the tradition of
martyrdom shamelessly stated:
“There is no doubt
that such man who embrace martyrdom are great heroes and their philosophy too
is pre-eminently manly. They are far above the average men who meekly submit to
fate and remain in fear and inaction. All the same, such persons are not held
up as ideals in our society. We have not looked upon their martyrdom as the
highest point of greatness to which men should aspire. For, after all, they
failed in achieving their ideal, and failure implies some fatal flaw in them.”
[‘Martyr, great but not ideal’, Bunch Of Thoughts, the collection of
writings of MS Golwalkar.]
Last but not the least Bhagwan indulges in another lie when
states that 1857 Mutiny (which in fact was a nation-wide liberation war which
continued for more than 3 years), was defeated by British forces and Sikh
troops. There are abundant contemporary documents which conclusively prove that
Punjab and Sikhs played significant role in 1857 liberation war. These were not
only Sikh ruling families in Punjab who supported the British but also
well-known rich families amongst Hindus and Muslims who joined the British
campaign against the 1857 rebellion. This reality was no different from the
rest of India, where rulers of Gwalior, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Kota,
Bhopal, Dhar and many more native states joined hands with the British in
crushing the great War of Independence.
If Bhagat Singh is simply a murderer, Professor Bhagwan, why do you bother about him? The fact is that he, with his comrades continue to be
synonymous with Indian revolution, the lackeys of imperialism come out of rat
holes to denigrate them. Marxism survives so will Bhagat Singh’s heritage.
Shamsul Islam
27-03-2026
