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Bhagat Singh

This article is about the Indian socialist revolutionary. For the Indian-American civil rights activist, see Bhagat Singh Thind.

Bhagat Singh
Singh in 1929
Born(1907-09-27)27 September 1907[a]
Banga, Punjab, British India (present-day Punjab, Pakistan)
Died23 March 1931(1931-03-23) (aged 23)
Lahore Central Jail, Punjab, British India (present-day Punjab, Pakistan)
Cause of deathExecution by hanging
MonumentsHussainiwala National Martyrs Memorial
Other namesShaheed-e-Azam
Organization(s)Naujawan Bharat Sabha
Hindustan Socialist Republican Association
Notable workWhy I Am an Atheist
MovementIndian independence movement
Criminal chargesMurder of John P. Saunders and Channan Singh[5]
Criminal penaltyDeath
Criminal statusExecuted
Signature

Bhagat Singh (27 September 1907[1][b] – 23 March 1931) was an Indian anti-colonial revolutionary,[6] who participated in the mistaken murder of a junior British police officer in December 1928[7] in what was to be retaliation for the death of an Indian nationalist.[8] He later took part in a largely symbolic bombing of the Central Legislative Assembly in Delhi and a hunger strike in jail, which—on the back of sympathetic coverage in Indian-owned newspapers—turned him into a household name in the Punjab region, and after his execution at age 23 into a martyr and folk hero in Northern India.[9] Borrowing ideas from Bolshevism and anarchism,[10] the charismatic Bhagat Singh[11] electrified a growing militancy in India in the 1930s, and prompted urgent introspection within the Indian National Congress's nonviolent but eventually successful campaign for India's independence.[12]

In December 1928, Bhagat Singh and an associate, Shivaram Rajguru, both members of a small revolutionary group, the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (also Army, or HSRA), shot dead a 21-year-old British police officer, John Saunders, in Lahore, Punjab, in what is today Pakistan, mistaking Saunders, who was still on probation, for the British senior police superintendent, James Scott, whom they had intended to assassinate.[13] They held Scott responsible for the death of a popular Indian nationalist leader Lala Lajpat Rai for having ordered a lathi (baton) charge in which Rai was injured and two weeks thereafter died of a heart attack. As Saunders exited a police station on a motorcycle, he was felled by a single bullet fired from across the street by Rajguru, a marksman.[14][15] As he lay injured, he was shot at close range several times by Singh, the postmortem report showing eight bullet wounds.[16] Another associate of Singh, Chandra Shekhar Azad, shot dead an Indian police head constable, Channan Singh, who attempted to give chase as Singh and Rajguru fled.[14][15]

After having escaped, Bhagat Singh and his associates used pseudonyms to publicly announce avenging Lajpat Rai's death, putting up prepared posters that they had altered to show John Saunders as their intended target instead of James Scott.[14] Singh was thereafter on the run for many months, and no convictions resulted at the time. Surfacing again in April 1929, he and another associate, Batukeshwar Dutt, set off two low-intensity homemade bombs among some unoccupied benches of the Central Legislative Assembly in Delhi. They showered leaflets from the gallery on the legislators below, shouted slogans, and allowed the authorities to arrest them.[17] The arrest, and the resulting publicity, brought to light Singh's complicity in the John Saunders case. Awaiting trial, Singh gained public sympathy after he joined fellow defendant Jatin Das in a hunger strike, demanding better prison conditions for Indian prisoners, the strike ending in Das's death from starvation in September 1929.

Bhagat Singh was convicted of the murder of John Saunders and Channan Singh, and hanged in March 1931, aged 23. He became a popular folk hero after his death. Jawaharlal Nehru wrote about him: "Bhagat Singh did not become popular because of his act of terrorism but because he seemed to vindicate, for the moment, the honour of Lala Lajpat Rai, and through him of the nation. He became a symbol; the act was forgotten, the symbol remained, and within a few months each town and village of the Punjab, and to a lesser extent in the rest of northern India, resounded with his name."[18] In still later years, Singh, an atheist and socialist in adulthood, won admirers in India from among a political spectrum that included both communists and right-wing Hindu nationalists. Although many of Singh's associates, as well as many Indian anti-colonial revolutionaries, were also involved in daring acts and were either executed or died violent deaths, few came to be lionised in popular art and literature as did Singh, who is sometimes referred to as the Shaheed-e-Azam ("Great martyr" in Urdu and Punjabi).[19]

  1. ^ a b c
    • "Bhagat Singh", Encyclopedia Britannica, 2021, Quick Facts
      Born: September 27, 1907, Lyallpur, western Punjab, India [now in Pakistan]
      Died: March 23, 1931, Lahore [now in Pakistan] (aged 23)
    • Deol, Jeevan Singh (2004). "Singh, Bhagat [known as Bhagat Singh Sandhu]". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/73519. Singh, Bhagat [known as Bhagat Singh Sandhu] (1907–1931), revolutionary and writer, was born in the village of Banga, Punjab, India (now in Pakistan) on 27 September 1907 (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
    • NCERT (India) (2004), Modern India: a textbook for Class XII, Textbooks from India, vol. 18, New Delhi: National Council for Educational Research and Training, p. 242, ISBN 9788174501295, OCLC 838284530, Sardar Bhagat Singh was born in a place called Banga in Lyalpur district on 27 September 1907
    • Singh, Bhagat; Gupta, D. N. (2007), Gupta, D. N.; Chandra, Bipan (eds.), Selected Writings, New Delhi: National Book Trust, p. xi, ISBN 9788123749419, OCLC 607855643, Bhagat Singh was born in a patriotic family on 27 September 1907 in the village Khatkar Kalan, tehsil Banga, district Jalandhar, though his father Sardar Kishen Singh had shifted to Lyallpur (now Faislabad in Pakistan) sometime before his birth.
    • Singh, Bhagat (2010). Words of Freedom: Ideas of a Nation. Penguin Books. ISBN 9780143068884. Bhagat Singh was born on 27 September 1907 in Lyallpur, Punjab into a family of revolutionaries. His uncles, Ajit Singh and Swaran Singh, as well as his father, Kishan Singh, were members of the Ghadar Party. (Swaran Singh was hanged in 1927, four years before his nephew, for his involvement in the Kakori train robbery of 1925.)
    • Juss, Satvinder S. (2022). Bhagat Singh: A Life in Revolution. Penguin Random House. ISBN 978-93-5492-674-7. Bhagat Singh was born on 27 September 1907 in a small village by the name of 'Banga'. It was then in the Lyallpur district of undivided ... Punjab. Today it is located in Pakistan under the new name of Faisalabad.
    • — (2022). Bhagat Singh: A Life in Revolution. Penguin Random House. ISBN 978-93-5492-674-7. At any rate, this is what Lajjawati appears to have said when she was interviewed for the oral history archive of the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library. The disclosure to Lala Feroz Chand of the bundle of documents enabled the publication of one of the writings of Bhagat Singh, namely, his celebrated, 'Why I Am an Atheist', on 27 September 1931. This was designed to coincide with what would have been Bhagat Singh's twenty-fourth birthday.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
    • Noorani, A. G. (2001), The Trial of Bhagat Singh: Politics of Justice, Oxford University Press, p. 9, ISBN 978-0-19-579667-4, Bhagat Singh was born in the village Banga in Lyallpur, on September 27, 1907, in a family of revolutionaries and in a clime in which the spirit of revolt gripped a large number of people in the Punjab.
    • Dayal, Ravi, ed. (1995), We Fought Together for Freedom: Chapters from the Indian National Movement, Delhi: Oxford University Press, p. 139, ISBN 978-0-19-563286-6, Bhagat Singh was born on 27 September 1907 in the village of Banga in the Lyallpur district of Punjab (now in Pakistan) into a patriotic family.
    • Singh, Fauja (1972), Eminent Freedom Fighters of Punjab, Punjab University, Department of Punjab Historical Studies, p. 80, OCLC 504464385, Bhagat Singh He belongs to the front rank of Punjabi heroes martyred in the cause of national movement . ... He was born on September 27 , 1907.
    • Aggarwal, Som Nath (1995), The heroes of Cellular Jail: Study based on personal memoirs of Indian freedom fighters incarcerated in the Cellular Jail, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, in connection with freedom movement, 1857-1945; includes a list of prisoners period-wise and state-wise, Patiala: Publication Bureau, Punjab University, p. 193, ISBN 9788173801075, OCLC 33970606, In the Punjab , Lahore was once again agog with revolutionary activities and Bhagat Singh who was to become Shaheed - i - Azam in subsequent years was on the forefront . He was born on 27 September 1907 and belonged to village Khatkar
    • Communist Party of India (Marxist) History Commission (2005), History of the Communist Movement in India: The Formative Years, 1920–1933, New Delhi: CPI (M) Publications and LeftWord Books, p. 231, ISBN 9788187496496, OCLC 493429162, Bhagat Singh 1907-1931 One of the most outstanding revolutionaries of India, martyred at the age of 23. Born in a peasant family in Banga village of Lyallpur district of Punjab on September 27 , 1907
  2. ^ a b
  3. ^ a b
    • Lal, Chaman; Yates, Michael D., eds. (9 January 2024). The Political Writings of Bhagat Singh. NYU Press. p. 34. ISBN 978-1-68590-067-0. Kumari Lajjawati, secretary of the Bhagat Singh Defence Committee and a Congress activist, frequently visited the Lahore jail to discuss the legal aspects of the case. In an interview with the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library's oral history cell, she said that she brought some papers given to her by Bhagat Singh, which she later showed to Feroze Chand, editor of The People, Lala Lajpat Rai's well-established paper in Lahore. Feroze Chand was given the freedom to select whatever he wanted for publication in The People. He did this and returned the rest to Lajjawati, who handed them over to Bejoy Kumar Sinha in 1938. From the papers he had, Feroze Chand published 'Why I am an Atheist' on 27 September 1931, Bhagat Singh's first birthday after his execution on 23 March of that same year.
    • —, ed. (9 January 2024). The Political Writings of Bhagat Singh. NYU Press. p. 127. ISBN 978-1-68590-067-0. Bhagat Singh wrote an impassioned letter to Bhai Randir Singh, and the latter agreed to meet. However, he implored the young revolutionary to renounce his atheism and embrace the religion in which he was raised. He claimed his word convinced Bhagat Singh to repent and return to the religious fold. But Bhagat Singh, understanding that what he said could be distorted after his death, soon wrote this famous essay, so that people would know what he really believed. This was done in October 1930, and the essay was published in The People on 27 September 1931, the first birth anniversary of Bhagat Singh after his execution.<Footnote 1: Bhagat Singh's birth anniversary is now widely accepted to fall on 28 September>{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link)
    • —, ed. (9 January 2024). The Political Writings of Bhagat Singh. NYU Press. p. 12. ISBN 978-1-68590-067-0. Bhagat Singh is a legend, but how he became one needs to be understood. He was born on 28 September 1907 in the village of Chak No. 105, Lyallpur Bange, as it was called in those days, which is now in Faisalabad, Pakistan, which itself was formerly known as Lyallpur.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link)
    • Moffat, Chris (2019). India's Revolutionary Inheritance: Politics and the Promise of Bhagat Singh. Cambridge University Press. p. 128. ISBN 978-1-108-49690-2. According to the scholar Chaman Lal, Lajjawati showed the contents of the bundle to Lala Feroz Chand, editor of The People. For Lal, this explains how the essay 'Why I Am an Atheist' came to appear in the Lahore weekly on 27 September 1931, selected from the smuggled documents and published near to what would have been the revolutionary's twenty-fourth birthday.
    • —, — (2019). India's Revolutionary Inheritance: Politics and the Promise of Bhagat Singh. Cambridge University Press. p. 210. ISBN 978-1-108-49690-2. Solitude characterizes the biographies of all three sites. Each structure is relegated from the rhythms of everyday experience due to poor accessibility: Khatkar Kalan is a small village in rural Punjab, Hussainiwala, an outpost on the border with Pakistan, and the Lok Sabha grounds have been highly securitized since militant attacks on the complex in December 2001. Crowds gather at the first two sites on special occasions — the 23 March death anniversary or 28 September birth anniversary, specifically — but visitors are otherwise infrequent.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  4. ^ a b Phanjoubam, Pradip (2016), The Northeast Question: Conflicts and frontiers, London and New York: Routledge, ISBN 978-1-138-95798-5, Consider this. 27 September is the birthday of Google. This day is also the birthday of well-known and respected Indian freedom fighter Bhagat Singh, though some claim 28 September to be his birthday. For all the years after Indian independence, Bhagat Singh's birthday was what the Indian media remembered on 27 September, with the union government's Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity (DAVP) issuing large eulogising display advertisements ahead of the day, reminding the nation of the day's significance in the Indian independence movement and nation-building. But by the turn of the twenty-first century, amidst the excitement of changes brought about by the liberalisation of the Indian economy and its consequent growing integration with the global market, all major Indian news channels and newspapers began enthusiastically remembering Google, carrying features on this phenomenon of the digital age for days, and in the process, virtually marginalised the memory of Bhagat Singh to the periphery of the media's, and therefore, the public's consciousness.
  5. ^ Deol, Jeevan Singh (2004). "Singh, Bhagat [known as Bhagat Singh Sandhu]". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/73519. The trial of Bhagat Singh and a number of his associates from the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association for the killing of Saunders and Channan Singh followed. On 7 October 1929 Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, and Sukhdev Thapar were sentenced to death.Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev Thapar, and Shiv Ram Hari Rajguru were executed by hanging at the central gaol, Lahore, on 23 March 1931. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  6. ^ Jeffrey, Craig (2017), Modern India: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, p. 30, ISBN 978-0-19-876934-7, Congress was often split on the question of the extent to which all protests should be non-violent. Gandhi, though highly influential, had opponents. It is particularly important to recognize the existence of a socialist, radical wing within the nationalist movement. Historians often discuss this wing with reference to Bhagat Singh, a charismatic Indian revolutionary executed by the British with two other revolutionaries in 1931 for murdering a British police officer.
  7. ^
    • Raza, Ali (2020), Revolutionary Pasts: Communist Internationalism in Colonial India, Cambridge University Press, pp. 106–107, ISBN 978-1-108-48184-7, Bhagat Singh's life epitomized the political journeys of many disaffected youths who took to revolutionary and militant activism. Involved in a (mistaken) high-profile assassination of John Saunders, ...
    • Moffat, Chris (2019), India's Revolutionary Inheritance: Politics and the Promise of Bhagat Singh, Cambridge University Press, pp. 78–79, ISBN 978-1-108-75005-9, One month after Lajpat Rai's death, at 4:30 pm on 17 December 1928, members of the HSRA ambushed Assistant Superintendent of Police J. P. Saunders as he was leaving the police station on Lahore's College Road. He was shot once by Shivaram Rajguru, and then again by Bhagat Singh." As the two fled through the gates of the DAV College located opposite the station, their comrade Chandrashekhar Azad fired at the pursuing officer, Constable Chanan Singh. Both Singh and Saunders died from their wounds. Amid the chaos, there was some room for farce. Saunders was not the primary target; the HSRA's Jaigopal mistook the assistant for his boss, Mr. Scott, the man who had ordered police to charge the Simon Commission protestors two months earlier. Once it was clear this was a subordinate and not Scott, the revolutionaries scrambled to amend posters prepared in advance to announce the act.
  8. ^
    • Vaidik, Aparna (2021), Waiting for Swaraj: Inner Lives of Indian Revolutionaires, Cambridge University Press, p. 121, ISBN 978-1-00-903238-4, The memoirs poignantly recount how they would be filled with agony and remorse after the assassinations and the deaths of the innocent. For instance, Azad shot the Indian constable Chanan Singh, who had chased Bhagat and Rajguru as they escaped through the DAV College after shooting Saunders. Azad was standing guard a few metres away from Bhagat and Rajguru supervising the operation and, if needed, was supposed to give them cover. Azad called out to Chanan Singh to give up the chase before shooting but Chanan did not heed the warning and kept running. Azad lowered his gun and aimed at his legs and shot a preventive bullet. It got Chanan in the groin and he eventually bled to death. The well-being of Chanan Singh's family kept nagging Azad, who would voice his worries time and again to his associates.
    • Vaidik, Aparna (2021), Waiting for Swaraj: Inner Lives of Indian Revolutionaires, Cambridge University Press, pp. 121–122, ISBN 978-1-00-903238-4, Despite it being a vengeful act, even Rajguru and Bhagat Singh were deeply disturbed and filled with remorse after shooting Saunders. Rajguru opined: "Bhai bada sundar naujawan tha [Saunders!]. Uske gharwalon ko kaisa lag raha hoga?' (Brother, he [Saunders] was a very handsome young man. How his family must be feeling?)! Similar was Bhagat's state. Mahour recounts that he met Bhagat after the Saunders murder and found him deeply shaken. 'Kitna udvelit tha unka manas. Unke sayant kanth se unka uddveg ubhara pada tha. Baat karte karte ruk jaate the aur der tak chup raha kar phir baat ka sutra pakad kar muskaraane ke prayatn karte aage badte the' (How shaken his mind was. Despite his measured tone his discomposure was visible. He would suddenly stop talking mid-sentence and then stay quiet for a while before making an effort to smile and move forward.)
  9. ^ *Maclean, Kama (2016), "The Art of Panicking Quietly: British Expatriate Responses", in Fischer-Tine, Harald (ed.), Anxieties, Fear and Panic in Colonial Settings: Empires on the verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies, Palgrave Macmillan, p. 154, ISBN 978-3-319-45136-7, Several HSRA members, including Bhagat Singh and Sukhdev, had dabbled in journalism and enjoyed friendships with journalists and editors in nationalist newspapers in Punjab, UP and Delhi, with the result that much of the coverage in Indian-owned newspapers was sympathetic to the revolutionary cause. By the end of 1929, Bhagat Singh was a household name, his distinctive portrait widely disseminated ...
    • Grant, Kevin (2019), Last Weapons: Hunger Strikes and Fasts in the British Empire, 1890–1948, University of California Press, p. 143, ISBN 978-0-520-97215-5, After 1929 the British regime became increasingly concerned that the hunger strike might break down discipline across the prison system and demoralize the police and army. In this year the power of the hunger strike was demonstrated by members of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association before and during their trial in the second Lahore conspiracy case. This case was widely publicized because several of the defendants had been involved either in the assassination of a police official and a head constable or in the bombing of the Central Legislative Assembly in Delhi. Bhagat Singh, the charismatic leader of the group, had participated in both actions.
    • Raza, Ali (2020), Revolutionary Pasts: Communist Internationalism in Colonial India, Cambridge University Press, p. 107, ISBN 978-1-108-48184-7, His trial became the stuff of popular legend, as did his hanging — and those of his comrades Raj Guru and Sukhdev – in Lahore in March 1931. Bhagat Singh's death earned him the title of Shaheed-e-Azam (Great Martyr). He was not the only Shaheed who went to the gallows for his or her revolutionary activities, nor was he the only Shaheed-e-Azam.
  10. ^
    • Loadenthal, Michael (2017), The politics of attack: Communiques and insurrectionary violence, Digital Edition, Contemporary Anarchist Studies, Manchester University Press, p. 74, ISBN 978-1-5261-1445-7, Though numerous illegalist anarchists are (in)famous due to their linkages to specific acts of political violence, the tradition includes many lesser known individuals. These include French illegalists Clément Duval, Francois Claudius Koenigstein (aka Ravachol), ..; and Indian socialist-anarchist Bhagat Singh who played a major role in India's anti-colonial struggle.
    • Jeffrey, Craig (2010), Timepass: Youth, Class, and the Politics of Waiting in India, Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, p. 111, ISBN 978-0-8047-7073-6, Bhagat Singh (1907–34), often referred to as "Shaheed (martyr) Bhagat Singh" was a freedom fighter influenced by communism and anarchism who became involved as a teenager in a number of revolutionary anti-British organizations. He was hanged for shooting a police officer in response to the killing of a veteran freedom fighter.
    • Balinisteanu, Tudor (2013), Violence, Narrative and Myth in Joyce and Yeats: Subjective Identity and Anarcho-Syndicalist Traditions, Palgrave Macmillan, p. 141, ISBN 978-0-230-29095-2, To capture better the political value of the manifestation of the contrary tendencies of monoglossia and heteroglossia in Joyce and Sorel, we might employ a term used to define the identity of the Indian anarchist Bhagat Singh: 'mystical atheism'. Singh developed his own brand of anarchism in the context of anti-colonial movements in India led by Gandhi and partly in relation to Irish anti-imperialism. Singh read anarchist philosophy extensively and translated Daniel Breen's My Fight for Irish Freedom (1924) under the name of Balwant Singh (Dublin, 1982, p. 54). In his 'Why I am an Atheist's, written in jail awaiting execution, Singh reflected on the role of religious belief in producing the romantic conviction required of the revolutionaries, but reasserted his faith in reason.
    • Moffat, Chris (2019), India's Revolutionary Inheritance: Politics and the Promise of Bhagat Singh, Cambridge, UK, and New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, doi:10.1017/9781108655194, ISBN 978-1-108-49690-2, S2CID 158993652, (p. 34) The worldliness of these spaces and print areas – rallies against the bombing of Medina at Mochi Bagh, reports from Munich in Lajpat Rai's weekly. The People, speeches on South Africa at the Bradlaugh Hall, books on the Soviet Union smuggled into Lahore by underground booksellers – allows us to approach a problem related to Bhagat Singh's biography: the manner in which the young man negotiated transnational currents so deftly, citing French anarchists in manifestos and regularly alluding to revolutionary Moscow, without ever once leaving India. (p. 151) The second function of the journey metaphor is to posit the eventual arrival at something refined, comprehensive, stable. If Bhagat Singh is separated from a 'terrorist' past above, here he is propelled into the future, beyond the event of death. The nature of his destination varies across the corps: for some it is most certainly Marxist, for others anarchist. <Footnote 128:Regarding the move from 'libertarian socialism' to 'decentralized collectives', the American historian and anarchist activist Maia Ramnath writes on Bhagat Singh that 'one revolutionary who might have been capable of persuasively elaborating such a synthesis died too soon to do so.' Ramnath, Decolonizing Anarchism, 145>
    • Vaidik, Aparna (2021), Waiting for Swaraj: Inner Lives of Indian Revolutionaries, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, p. 123, ISBN 978-1-108-83808-5, LCCN 2021005366, As Bhagat wrote in one his essays: 'All forms of government rest on violence.' The state, in the Marxist–anarchist conception, was the focal point of violence. "at is, the state created and perpetuated conditions of violence. If elimination of structural violence was the aim then the state as a form of human governance had to be done away with. Bhagat Singh questioned the desirability of all forms of state systems, democratic or otherwise: 'They say: "Undermine the whole conception of the State and then only we will have liberty worth having."' In Bhagat's conception, anti-statism (or astatism) was almost indistinguishable from anarchism. The post-revolutionary society was to be one with absolute individual freedom: a society created, maintained and experienced collectively, and where military and bureaucracy were no longer needed. The statement the HSRA revolutionaries made to the Commissioner of the Special Tribunal, for instance, declared: 'Revolutionaries by virtue of their altruistic principles are lovers of peace – a genuine and permanent peace based on justice and equity, not the illusory peace resulting from cowardice and maintained at the point of bayonets.' Here poorna swaraj transformed into an 'astatist' and 'aviolent' utopia for absolute political and human freedom even if the means of achieving this goal were violent or involved staging an armed revolution.
  11. ^
    • Chenoy, Kamal Mitra (2021). "Russian Revolution and the Global South". In Chenoy, Anuradha M.; Upadhyay, Archana (eds.). Hundred Years of the Russian Revolution: Its Legacies in Perspective. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9789813347854. Indian communists, who became active in the early 1920s and called for independence from Great Britain in 1925, became a significant force in the 1930s and 1940s and influenced several other progressive movements inspired by the Russian Revolution. Most popular and well known among them were the Hindustan Socialist Revolutionary Army established in 1928, whose charismatic leader Bhagat Singh and his comrades were all executed and buried in unmarked graves by the British colonialists.
    • Grant, Kevin (2019). Last Weapons: Hunger Strikes and Fasts in the British Empire, 1890–1948. University of California Press. p. 143. ISBN 9780520301009. LCCN 2018057018. In this year (1929) the power of the hunger strike was demonstrated by members of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association before and during their trial in the second Lahore conspiracy case. This case was widely publicized because several of the defendants had been involved either in the assassination of a police official and a head constable or in the bombing of the Central Legislative Assembly in Delhi. Bhagat Singh, the charismatic leader of the group, had participated in both actions
    • Misra, Maria (2007). Vishnu's Crowded Temple: India Since the Great Rebellion. New Haven: Yale University Press. p. 174. ISBN 978-0-300-13721-7. LCCN 2007936529. The slavishly pro-Moscow communists left room for another form of Marxism, more fully blended with nationalism. In 1928 the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army (HSRA), an out-growth of the older revolutionary tradition of the Punjab, was founded in Lahore. Led by a charismatic 22-year-old student, Bhagat Singh, it departed from its pre-war terrorist lineage by adopting Marxist militant atheism as its ideology. The HSRA favoured acts of 'exemplary' revolutionary violence.
    • Maclean, Kama (2016). A Revolutionary History of Interwar India: Violence, Image, Voice and Text. Penguin Books. p. 184. ISBN 978-0143426332. Chapter 8, Controlling Political Violence, Prisoner as Pedagogy: The bulk of the memoirs, oral histories and visual artefacts that I have drawn on to demonstrate the intersection between revolutionary and Congress activity in 1929–1930 are so heavily focused on the lives and adventures of personalities, especially the charismatic Bhagat Singh and the more enigmatic Chandrashekhar Azad, that evidence of revolutionary energies being chanelled into Congress activity in the aftermath of their deaths becomes elusive. From the perspective of Manmathnath Gupta, after the loss of these two figureheads, the revolutionary movement 'became divorced from its moorings and was more artificial and people came into it because of romantic glamour attached to it, not out of any deep idealism.'
    • Young, Robert J. C. (2016) [2001]. Postcolonialism: An Historical introduction (Anniversary ed.). Wiley Blackwell. p. 324. ISBN 9781405120944. LCCN 2016025068. Even within Gandhi's own closest political entourage his prohibitions against violence were interpreted with some liberality, the understanding being that violence against people was unacceptable, but violence against property was permissible. In political terms Gandhi's position also served to distinguish him clearly from the violence of the Bengali Hindu, Maharashtran chitpavan Brahmin, and communist terrorists, such as the celebrated group under Surjya Sen that carried out the Chittagong Armoury Raid in 1930, the followers of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, or the charismatic Bhagat Singh's Hindustan Socialist Republic Association. Although this terrorism was carried out by small groups and never seriously endangered British rule, its militancy, its increasing frequency from 1930 onwards, and its popularity greatly worried the British Government of India and led to fierce repression. It also made the government much more receptive to the liberal Congress Party that adopted Gandhi's stance of non-violence. As always in liberation struggles, militant 'extremists' encouraged the administration to negotiate with the moderates.
    • Nair 2011, p. 258: "The charisma and sacrifice of Bhagat Singh and thirteen other prisoners could unite the entire spectrum of political opinion in the Punjab and beyond, a significant achievement for a particularly fractured Congress, but for reasons never clear, the non-violent hunger strikers failed to move Gandhi very much. At any rate, the “Punjab wrongs” brought Indians from the rest of India into the politics of the province, courting arrest, writing in the press, and returning their medals of honour in protest against British imperialism."
    • Grant, Kevin (18 June 2019). Last Weapons: Hunger Strikes and Fasts in the British Empire, 1890–1948. Berkeley series in British studies. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. p. 143. ISBN 9780520301009. LCCN 2018057018. After 1929 the British regime became increasingly concerned that the hunger strike might break down discipline across the prison system and demoralize the police and army. In this year the power of the hunger strike was demonstrated by members of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association before and during their trial in the second Lahore conspiracy case." This case was widely publicized because several of the defendants had been involved either in the assassination of a police official and a head constable or in the bombing of the Central Legislative Assembly in Delhi. Bhagat Singh, the charismatic leader of the group, had participated in both actions.
    • Tickell, Alex (17 June 2013). Terrorism, Insurgency and Indian English Literature, 1830–1947. Routledge Research in Postcolonial Literatures series. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-87715-2. LCCN 2011019599. Under its charismatic leader, Bhagat Singh, the HSRA carried out several high-profile terror-attacks, including the assassination of J. P.Saunders, the Lahore assistant superintendent of police, whom they wrongly held responsible for Lala Lajpat Rai's death as the result of police brutality during a demonstration.' The HSRA also carried out two bombings: the first, a daring attack on the Legislative Assembly in session at Delhi, in which bombs were thrown from the public gallery but little damage was caused; and a subsequent attempt to blow up the viceroy's train. Bhagat Singh and a co-revolutionary, Sukhdev, were soon arrested and underwent a highly publicized trial before being executed in 1931. Baghwati Charan Vohra, another leading light of the association, died testing a bomb that would have been used to try to liberate Bhagat Singh from the Lahore Central Jail.
  12. ^ *Jaffrelot, Christophe (22 September 2017), "The Making of Indian Revolutionaries (1885–1931)", in Bozarsian, Hamit; Batallion, Gilles; Jaffrelot, Christophe (eds.), Revolutionary Passions: Latin America, Middle East and India, Routledge, p. 122, ISBN 978-1-351-37809-3, The man who epitomizes this transition is Bhagat Singh. His Janus-like appearance reflected his two sources of inspiration (Bolshevism and Anarchism), the Marxist one becoming dominant by the late 1920s. But his evolution has been followed by others, including Shiv Verma, one of the founders of the HSRA. Verma, however, admitted in a 1986 article, that if in 1928 the firm resolution to turn away from 'anarchism and to make socialism an act of faith' had been taken, 'in practice, we held on to our old style of individual actions'
    • Misra, Maria (2008), Vishnu's Crowded Temple: India Since the Great Rebellion, Yale University Press, p. 174, ISBN 978-0-300-14523-6, In 1928 the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army (HSRA), an out-growth of the older revolutionary tradition of the Punjab, was founded in Lahore. Led by a charismatic 22-year-old student, Bhagat Singh, it departed from its pre-war terrorist lineage by adopting Marxist militant atheism as its ideology. The HSRA favoured acts of 'exemplary' revolutionary violence.
    • Vaidik, Aparna (2021), Waiting for Swaraj: Inner Lives of Indian Revolutionaires, Cambridge University Press, p. 75, ISBN 978-1-00-903238-4, Bhagat's use of the 'socialist' language in his later writings has created the assumption of him being a theoretically sophisticated author. Daniel Elam in his analysis of Bhagat's jail notebook, however, observes that there has been 'a politically sympathetic attempt to place Bhagat Singh in line with other radical writers, especially Antonio Gramsci'. While Bhagat was believed to be a singular anti-colonial 'author' figure of his jail notebook, the text was actually an assemblage of quotations, fragments and notes. He is also believed to have authored all the HSRA propaganda materials (pamphlets, posters, court statements and essays) that were in fact a product of brainstorming and collective authorial contribution of Shiv Verma, Bhagwati Charan Vohra, Yashpal and others.
    • Raza, Ali (2020), Revolutionary Pasts: Communist Internationalism in Colonial India, Cambridge University Press, p. 107, ISBN 978-1-108-48184-7, Bhagat Singh's hanging further galvanized a radical and militantly nationalistic politics that was in a state of ferment from the mid-1920s onwards.<Footnote 22: A point made, among others, by Kama Maclean in A Revolutionary History of Interwar India ...> It also lent an added urgency to the ongoing civil disobedient movement.
  13. ^ Moffat 2016, pp. 83, 89.
  14. ^ a b c Moffat 2016, p. 83.
  15. ^ a b Maclean & Elam 2016, p. 28.
  16. ^ Moffat 2016, p. 89.
  17. ^ Moffat 2016, p. 84.
  18. ^ Mittal & Habib (1982)
  19. ^ Raza, Ali (2020), Revolutionary Pasts: Communist Internationalism in Colonial India, Cambridge University Press, p. 107, ISBN 978-1-108-48184-7, His trial became the stuff of popular legend, as did his hanging — and those of his comrades Raj Guru and Sukhdev – in Lahore in March 1931. Bhagat Singh's death earned him the title of Shaheed-e-Azam (Great Martyr). He was not the only Shaheed who went to the gallows for his or her revolutionary activities, nor was he the only Shaheed-e-Azam.


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Bhagat Singh

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