BHAGAT SINGH : An Enduring symbol of resistance

On the 13^th December 2023, a group of young men and women plotted to bomb the parliament with smoke bombs. This group of young radicals mimicked the methods of a revolutionary from 94 years ago, one who remains a symbol of resistance and rebellion in India to this day.

The actions of the youth who attacked the parliament that day emulated those of Bhagat Singh, and just like him the group performed this action to protest the ruling class and it’s politics. Bhagat Singh used it to protest the passage of two repressive bills brought before the imperial legislature, while Manoranjan D and Sagar Sharma, the two leaders of this group, used the bomb attack to protest the failure of the parliament to take up issues facing the country, that of inequality, unemployment, and the violence in Manipur.  

Both attacks used non-lethal weapons to ensure minimal to no damage to the people in the parliament. The objective was not to kill but to make a political statement. Bhagat Singh courted arrest together with his comrade Bhatukeshwar Dutt, just as the smoke bomb attack plotters did more recently. With Bhagat Singh under arrest, he could use the court proceedings as propaganda against the British Raj. On this count, the smoke bomb attackers have been considerably less successful.

The similarities only grow more distant as one looked into the two actions more closely. The smoke bomb attackers have since been arrested under the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and remain under arrest today. Unlike Bhagat Singh, their actions have not led to a wider uprising, there are no great mobilizations to free them. The investigations conducted on them have failed to find any link between the group and any organization or political party. They discussed and coordinated through online groups and chat groups.

There was no specific agenda, nor any political objectives behind their action, beyond the vague goals of challenging the parliament which had grown more and more distant from the people. Nevertheless, their bravery must be acknowledged, their actions cannot be denied or ignored. It is a testament to the enduring legacy of the revolutionary Bhagat Singh. The bomb attack is equally a testament to how far the capitalists have succeeded in distorting the image of Bhagat Singh, from a Socialist revolutionary, to an aggressive nationalist. At the time when the police arrested the bomb plotters, they sounded nationalist slogans, ‘bharat mata ki jai’ is today perfectly at home with the right wing BJP.

Bhagat Singh’s world:

Bhagat Singh was a product of the material conditions of his time. To understand him, we must understand the context in which he lived.

After the first war of independence in 1857 British rule in the Indian sub-continent changed. The old company based colonialism was done away with in favour of an imperial bureaucracy that ruled India directly from London. India was primed for a new sort of exploitation as world capitalism entered the era of imperialism.

The British Raj saw the rapid expansion of railways, industrial capital, and the deeper penetration of British finance adding to the vice like grip over India. Added to this was finance capital from the USA and the growth of an indigenous Indian capitalist class tied to British finance capital.

India was dragged into the first world war and became a key supplier of manpower and resources for the British war effort. Indian jute, and Indian soldiers helped the entente win the first world war and carried the British Empire into the post war world. While Indian soldiers fought and died in the trenches of Europe, the jungles of Africa and the deserts of Mesopotamia, India’s people suffered through ten million deaths during the influenza outbreak of 1918. The ‘Spanish flu’ as it was known claimed up to a hundred million world wide, the largest death toll in China and India.

The British handling of the influenza pandemic in India included harsh quarantine measures and mistreatment, coupled with negligence or outright racist exclusion. The huge death toll was very much the result of British administration, and this only contributed to radicalizing the populace against British rule.

For many Indians who did participate in the war, it was expected there would be a quid pro quo from the British, that they would take steps towards granting Indian independence or at least some form of autonomy in recognition of the sacrifice of tens of thousands of Indians for an imperialist war. Instead, for many returning Indians, especially in the province of Punjab, they returned to the iron fisted rule of governor O’Dwyer.

Oppressive acts to curb protests in Punjab, called the Rowlatt Act. The growing nationalist upsurge that had gripped the nation came at a time when the world saw the first successful socialist revolution in Russia. The Indian Communist Party was founded in Tashkent when Bhagat Singh was only 13 years old.

The growth of the left wing Ghadar party, which had influence in Punjab, contributed to radicalizing young Bhagat Singh. The two most decisive events that helped radicalize him, was the non-cooperation movement, the first large scale mass mobilization against British rule since the rebellion of 1857 and it’s abrupt disruption by Gandhi and the Congress party following the massacre of policemen at Chauri Chaura village. From this, the Hindustan Republican Association split, along with other radical outfits that challenged the Congress Party.

Bhagat Singh would join them and become it’s most famous revolutionary.

The HSRA :

While Bhagat Singh is remembered, the organization he led and fought for has been forgotten for the most part. The Hindustan Republican Army became the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association in 1928.

The Hindustan Socialist Republican Association started it’s life as the Hindustan Republican Army, in the model of the Irish Republican Army which had recently won independence for Ireland. The armed struggle presented a contrast to the ‘peaceful’ mobilizations started by Gandhi.

The organization founded by Ram Prasad Bismil, Ashfaqullah Khan, Sachindra Nath Bakshi, Sachindranath Sanyal and Jogesh Chandra Chatterjee in 1922 by splitting the youth group of the Congress party in the light of the abrupt suspension of the Non-Cooperation movement.

Bhagat Singh joined the organization in the late 1920s radicalized by the political developments which had taken place over the decade. By the time he had joined the HSRA, he was already influenced by socialist ideas. No longer was radical republicanism of the old HRA enough, the organization was turned to a militant socialist revolutionary organization. In September of 1928 Bhagat Singh led the union of numerous socialist organizations across Bengal, Punjab and Bihar at Delhi. From this meeting emerged the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association as we know it.

The organization was committed to a socialist revolution in India. The organization rightly identified the oppression of India with the capitalist system and it’s manifestation in the last stage, that of imperialism. The independence of India could not be won without also struggling against the capitalist system. It was the workers and peasants of a united India who would have to lead the revolutionary struggle against British Imperialism.

The HSRA stood in defiance of the Congress and the leadership of Gandhi, against his criticism of violence Bhagwati Charan Vohra of the HSRA wrote the Philosophy of the bomb.

To those attempting to paint Bhagat Singh in saffron colours, whether casting him as a pure nationalist or a Sikh hero, would do well to know of his part in building the HSRA into a Socialist revolutionary organization. In it’s manifesto, the HSRA clearly aimed at the capitalist system and attempted to rouse the masses in struggle against British Imperialism, as an anti-capitalist struggle. To quote from the HSRA manifesto :

Indian is writhing under the yoke of imperialism. Her teeming millions are today a helpless prey to poverty and ignorance. Foreign domination and economic exploitation have unmanned the vast majority of the people who constitute the workers and peasants of India. The position of the Indian proletariat is, today, extremely critical. It has a double danger to face. It has to bear to onslaught of foreign capital on the other. The latter is showing a progressive tendency to joint forces with the former. The leaning of certain politicians in favour of dominion status shows clearly which way the wind blows. Indian capital is preparing to betray the masses into the hands of foreign capitalism and receive as a price of this betrayal, a little share in the government of the country. The hope of the proletariat is, therefore, now centred on socialism which alone can lead to the establishment of complete independence and the removal of all social distinction and privileges.

Bhagat Singh’s ideas :

That Bhagat Singh was a Communist, could not be clearer if one reads his writings. The two of his most famous articles hold some of his endearing ideas. Bhagat Singh’s fame began from the bold bomb attack on the Central Assembly Hall in Delhi, what is less known is what was written in the leaflets he threw on the floor of the assembly.

The text of the leaflet was a clear in it’s condemnation of the repressive bills being discussed before the assembly : “Without repeating the humiliating history of the past ten years of the working of the reforms (Montague-Chelmsford Reforms) and without mentioning the insults hurled at the Indian nation through this House-the so-called Indian Parliament-we want to point out that, while the people expecting some more crumbs of reforms from the Simon Commission, and are ever quarrelling over the distribution of the expected bones, the Government is thrusting upon us new repressive measures like the Public Safety and the Trade Disputes Bill, while reserving the Press Sedition Bill for the next session. The indiscriminate arrests of labour leaders working in the open field clearly indicate whither the wind blows.”

The public safety and trades disputes bills were aimed at curbing the rising militancy of Indian workers, whose ranks grew with the wave of industrial development following the First World War. The growth of left wing and radical trade unions among the workers gave cause for alarm to the British Raj.

The attack on the assembly was not merely an act of directionless rebellion, nor a mere nationalist spectacle, it was a carefully planned political action with the aim of protesting the passage of repressive bills which aimed at curbing protests and enforcing imperial rule.

During his time in prison Bhagat Singh wrote many articles and kept track of world events through access to newspapers. One of his key writings was ‘To Young Political Workers of India’ where Bhagat Singh analysed the political developments of his time and the leadership of Gandhi and the Congress with remarkable foresight. The warning to the youth not to fall into the traps of bourgeois demagogues still rings true today. At the same time Bhagat Singh showed remarkable clarity.

No one reading this writing can doubt where Bhagat Singh’s leanings lay. To quote from the article :

I said that, because in my opinion, this time the real revolutionary forces have not been invited into the arena. This is a struggle dependent upon the middle class shopkeepers and a few capitalists. Both these, and particularly the latter, can never dare to risk its property or possessions in any struggle. The real revolutionary armies are in the villages and in factories, the peasantry and the labourers. But our bourgeois leaders do not and cannot dare to tackle them. The sleeping lion once awakened from its slumber shall become irresistible even after the achievement of what our leaders aim at. After his first experience with the Ahmedabad labourers in 1920 Mahatma Gandhi declared: “We must not tamper with the labourers. It is dangerous to make political use of the factory proletariat” (The Times, May 1921). Since then, they never dared to approach them. There remains the peasantry. The Bardoli resolution of 1922 clearly denies the horror the leaders felt when they saw the gigantic peasant class rising to shake off not only the domination of an alien nation but also the yoke of the landlords.”

Bhagat Singh’s fight did not end at removing the British from India but in removing the capitalist system from India as well. Today, that is the fight we are faced with in India and all of South Asia.

Bhagat Singh and the Communist Party :

Much is usually made of Bhagat Singh not joining the Communist Party of India, and typically brought up by centrists and right wingers to counter leftists holding Bhagat Singh as a socialist icon. The manipulation of Bhagat Singh’s image by the bourgeois press is deliberate, to dilute his Socialist past. The truth of why he never joined the Communist Party is never explored. Like much of Bhagat Singh’s life and works, memory of his actions are deliberately made hazy.

The truth is, there is no contradiction between the reality of Bhagat Singh as a communist and Bhagat Singh’s decision not to join the Communist Party. Shortly after the formation of the party, the comintern and the soviet union would find itself in one of the worst periods of the communist movement. The degeneration of the first worker’s state was brought about by the immense weight of imperialist reaction and isolation. The result, was the birth and growth of what we would identify later as Stalinism.

The bureaucratization of the party following the end of the Russian civil war, affected the nascent Indian Communist Party as well. The party was loosely organized in it’s early period, and had to deal with the harsh British Indian police. All this at a time, when the comintern directed a policy of aligning with the progressive national bourgeoisie.

The theory of stagism was taken to it’s logical conclusion in China, where the Chinese Communist Party was directed to align with the bourgeois Kuomintang. The result was the Shanghai massacre. In the aftermath of this disaster the international entered the third period politics where united fronts of any kind with bourgeois parties was shelved in favour of sectarianism. This was the period when Bhagat Singh was building the HSRA by uniting with other socialist organizations.

The Communist Party had by this time build the Kirti Kisan party or the Workers and Peasants party, which worked within the Congress Party. The party which had at best a fuzzy commitment to socialism was aborted by the third period. Thus, at a time when Bhagat Singh was building the foundations of a revolutionary party in India, the Communist Party of India under the counter revolutionary leadership of Stalin and the troika, went from one confused failure to the next.

The party in it’s early phase gave no option to Bhagat Singh who had abandoned the Congress Party and repeatedly called out the leadership of Gandhi. The party in it’s second phase offered no prospect once it turned to sectarianism.

Rather than deny Bhagat Singh his socialist credentials, his distance from the Communist Party only proved him as a principled revolutionary.

Bhagat Singh today :

Bhagat Singh’s image has been diluted and manipulated and presented to us in a manner that he himself might find unrecognizable. Mass media and the bourgeois press, with no small help from the Communist Party and the mainstream bourgeois parties, have converted a revolutionary communist who was a committed atheist, into a hazy nationalist hero whose main contribution begins and ends at the bombing of the Central Assembly Hall in Delhi.

The purpose behind his actions, the ideas behind them, his writings, and his political work, have been largely brushed under the carpet.

The Communist Party which could never win over Bhagat Singh in his lifetime, have tried to appropriate him as one of their own. The Congress Party which Bhagat Singh had condemned and distanced himself from, attempt to dilute his image and place him in a common pantheon of loosely defined ‘freedom fighters’, standing side by side with the likes of reactionary Savarkar. The BJP since their inception have tried hard, and are still trying to appropriate Bhagat Singh into their own pantheon as a ‘violent radical’.

All three efforts reek of dishonesty and opportunism. Had Bhagat Singh been alive today, it is more than likely he would have been labelled a terrorist and put under arrest, under draconian laws which might remind him of the public safety act and the British Raj. India today has dozens of political prisoners who continue to languish behind bars. At such a time, the government of India’s homage to Bhagat Singh cannot be more brazenly hypocritical.

This brings us back to the smoke bomb attack on the parliament in December last year. It would seem as though, in the nearly eight decades of independence the Indian Republic has done everything to make Bhagat Singh’s warning come true. He had written in 1931 in his letter to Young political workers: “But if you say that you will approach the peasants and labourers to enlist their active support, let me tell you that they are not going to be fooled by any sentimental talk. They ask you quite candidly: what are they going to gain by your revolution for which you demand their sacrifices, what difference does it make to them whether Lord Reading is the head of the Indian government or Sir Purshotamdas Thakordas? What difference for a peasant if Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru replaces Lord Irwin! It is useless to appeal to his national sentiment. You can’t “use” him for your purpose; you shall have to mean seriously and to make him understand that the revolution is going to be his and for his good. The revolution of the proletariat and for the proletariat.”

Todays India is the government that Bhagat Singh warned us about, the only difference is, that instead of Sir Purshotamdas Thakordas, it is the government of Adani, Ambani and Tata that manifests in Narendra Modi that oppresses the Indian masses. To fight against this, it is not just the bomb that we must learn from, but his ideas and history of organization and agitation as well.