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The living legacy of Bhagat
Singh
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - Bhagat Singh was a son of the
soil, groomed to struggle for the cause of freedom
for the lands of Sindhu civilization, and then he
was hanged on the same soil in 1931. He was called
a terrorist by Mahatma Gandhi and by the British,
yet his struggle changed the political dynamics of
the South Asian sub-continent.
It is
significant, therefore, that hawkish Indian
politician L K Advani took time out on his six-day
visit to Pakistan to place flowers on Bhagat
Singh's memorial (where he was executed) in
Lahore. Advani is a former deputy premier and now
leader of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP). In Indian perception, shrines bless and
inspire the living souls who visit them.
Thanks to Bollywood movies, in recent
years Bhagat Singh has once again emerged as a
strong symbol of people fighting for their freedom
- as Bhagat Singh did to end British rule on the
sub-continent. Advani's visit to Bhagat Singh's
memorial thus sends a powerful message that he
embraces the spirit of "freedom fighters",
especially as this was the first such visit to the
memorial by a leading South Asian dignitary since
the birth of Pakistan and India in 1947.
To back this up, Advani, who has in the
past advocated pre-emptive strikes on militant
hideouts in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, signaled a
willingness to show flexibility in talking to
Kashmiri militant groups, as well as to help build
bridges between India and Pakistan.
Advani
has always been considered hawkish over Pakistan.
Apart from his tough stance on cross-border
militancy in Kashmir, he has been blamed for
sabotaging the Agra summit talks in 2001 between
Pakistan's President General Pervez Musharraf and
then-Indian premier Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
When in 2001 Delhi announced a list of
what it labeled as Indian terrorists sheltering in
Pakistan, including Maulana Masood Azhar and
Dawood Ibrahim, and demanded their return,
Pakistan prepared a tit for tat.
It dug
out an old police case against Advani in which he
was allegedly involved in a conspiracy in Karachi
in 1948 to assassinate Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the
founding father of Pakistan, and it made clear
that if India went through with its demands, so
would Pakistan. [1]
The case
against Advani could well be one of mistaken identity
and involve another L K Advani. For this
visit, it was made public that Pakistan would not
raise the issue.
The legend of Bhagat
Singh
Unlike Gandhi's philosophy of
non-violence, Bhagat Singh believed in using
violent means, calling it "self defense" - the
story goes that as a child he planted and tried to
grow guns.
He was born on September 27,
1907, in Faisalabad, Punjab, British India (now
part of Pakistan). A fatal attack by the police on
veteran freedom fighter Lala Lajpatrai at an
anti-British procession on November 17, 1928, in
Lahore, crystallized Bhagat Singh's thinking,
putting him on the path of Marxism and violent
struggle.
Bhagat Singh determined to
avenge Lajpatrai's death by shooting the British
official responsible, but he shot an assistant
superintendent by mistake. He then fled from
Lahore to Calcutta (now Kolkata) and from there to
Agra, where he established a bomb factory. In the
meantime, he was denounced by Gandhi and the
British as a terrorist. Gandhi blamed him for
"damaging the cause of freedom".
Yet
Bhagat Singh's Hindustan Socialist Republic
Association was fighting for complete independence
from the British and for a revolution in which
Indians could live in their homeland without
discrimination of caste, creed or religion.
In 1930, the British government introduced
the Defense of India Act to give more power to the
police to arrest people. The act was defeated in
the assembly in Delhi, but it was passed as an
ordinance in the interests of the public.
As a protest, Bhagat Singh and a colleague
threw bombs in the assembly. They were
specifically aimed not to hurt anyone (they
didn't), only to draw attention to what was
happening. Bhagat Singh turned himself in, and
then went on a hunger strike to protest the
inhumane treatment of fellow political prisoners.
Overnight he became popular across India, even
overshadowing Gandhi.
He was hanged on
March 23, 1931, at the age of 23. He was reading a
book on Karl Marx's life before his execution, and
refused to perform any religious rituals as he was
a firm atheist.
L K Advani's visit to
Pakistan marks a rediscovery of Bhagat Singh, and
Advani's assertion that he will talk to Kashmiri
militants could be seen as an inspiration that
armed struggle in liberation movements does not
necessarily equate with terrorism.
Notes
While in Pakistan,
L K Advani, in an important public statement, said
that his BJP party had accepted the emergence of
India and Pakistan as two separate, sovereign and
independent nations as an "unalterable reality of
history". Many in the Pakistani establishment and
intelligentsia - and in India, too - believe that
the Hindu-centric BJP is opposed to the two-nation
theory, which was the basis of Pakistan's and
India's emergence in 1947.
Syed
Saleem Shahzad, Bureau Chief, Pakistan, Asia
Times Online. He can be reached at
saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
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