Shahid-e-Azam Bhagat Singh

Bhagat Singh was not the first of the many young Indians who sacrificed their lives at the altar of Indian freedom; others too kissed the noose and embraced the gallows with a defiant cry of Inkalab Zindabad! on their lips. We revere the memory of each one of these martyrs. Bhagat Singh should primarily be studied as a political figure. It should be noted that as early as the beginning of 1928, when he was just entering his twenties, he and his comrade, Bhagwati Charan Vohra, very correctly visualised the future course of political development in India-some sort of Round Table Conference; a compromise between the British and the Congress leaders; a gradual merging of a section of Indian capital with British capital, the congress leadership becoming the spokesmen for this section of capitalists; They also asserted that some of the then champions of the freedom strugglewould, in due course, become the champions of Indo- British 'cooperation' and betray the cause of national freedom. After that, they said, task of leading and carrying forward the freedom struggle would fall to the workers and peasants, to the common people, led by the proletariat and a party based on the messes and relying on the teaching of Marx. All these points amply emerge from the letters and documents written by Bhagat Singh and especially from the Manifesto of the Naujwan Bhagat Sabha which was drafted mainly by him and Bhagwati Charan.

It is in this that Bhagat Singh differed from the earlier revolutionary martyrs; it is in this that he rose higher than many of the political leaders of his time and in this lay his greatness. It is true that Bhagat Singh was not a Marxist in the full sense of the term. But it is also true that he had come very near Marxism towards the end of his days. In one of his letters to Sukh Dev, he wrote: " You and I may not live but our people will survive. The cause of Marxism and Communism is sure to win." Bhagat Singh was link between the Revolutionaries of the past and the communist movement of today. This is the perspective of this short study.

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