It is highly unfortunate that great figures like Bhagat Singh have to suffer because of the petty politics of the day. The India Bhagat Singh knew was very different where the communities celebrated each other with great respect and the current situation would have made him sad that the people for whom he gave his life are fighting for something he did not know of being an issue. Any attempt at maligning the great son of motherland should not only be resisted but any attempt to make him fit into modern political lines should be rejected.
SAD leader Simranjeet Singh Mann called for the removal of Bhagat Singh’s poster from the Darbar Sahib. It makes you think about what problem can one have with arguably the least controversial figure in the freedom movement. Bhagat Singh is revered across party or communal lines. He is India’s most loved revolutionary.
Sikh central museum already boasts the picture of Balwinder Jatana, the Sikh extremist who is responsible for the killing of M.L. Sekhri and Avtar Singh Aulakh chief engineer and superintending engineer of SYL canal. Jatana himself was killed in 1991 in an encounter by Punjab Police. The actions of Jatana halted the construction of SYL and vegetation grew in the place.
One of the arguments against Bhagat Singh is that he was an atheist and hence his picture cannot be displayed at Darbar Sahib. His article “ Why am I an Athiest?” has not exactly helped. There has been a pertaining argument from the youth wing of Shiromani Akali Dal (A) that displaying the picture of an atheist would promote idolatry which was against the Maryada (Sikh code of religious conduct).
More discomfort comes from the fact that Bhagat Singh’s grandfather was an Arya Samaji which proves that the lines that differentiated Hinduism and Sikhism were not clear. Bhagat Singh has said in his essay “ Why I am an Athiest?” that he recited Gayatri Mantra for hours. His father though a liberal pressed him to perform prayers daily. This does not suit the extremist narrative.
In 1923, the Punjab Hindi Sahitya Sammelan organized an essay competition. Bhagat Singh won Rs. 50 for his essay and it was published in Hindi Sandesh on 28th February, 1933. He wrote-
“In the early days of the Arya Samaj movement, the Sikhs and Arya Samajists used to have a religious gathering at the same place. At that time they had no feelings of being different, but afterward, a few sentences of Satyarth Prakash caused malice and mutual hatred. The Sikhs, swift in and the same stream, started hating Hindi as well. Others did not even take notice of it.
Afterward, it is said, a Samaji leader, Mahatma Hansraj Ji held consultations with many leaders and proposed that if they accept the Hindi script, he would get the Punjabi language in Hindi script recognised in the University.”
Bhagat Singh’s view on Hindi and Punjabi also makes him a figure that orthodoxy can neither accept nor reject. SGPC has been remarkably silent on the issue. One of India and Punajb’s greatest heroes is being disrespected and SGPC has nothing to say on the matter.
Lala Lajpat Rai and Bhagat Singh
Bhagat Singh murdered Saunders to avenge the death of Punjab Stalwart Lala Lajpat Rai who was associated with the Hindu Mahasabha. Lala Lajpat Rai succumbed to the injury suffered during the agitation against Simon commission. HSRA even distributed a pamphlet that ‘ J.P. Saunders is dead; Lala Lajpat Rai is avenged’.
The devotion to a Hindu leader also brings Bhagat Singh under orthodox scrutiny.
For the Punjabi Suba movement which intended to create a Punabi-speaking state with a Sikh majority, Bhagat Singh would not have been an ideal to follow.
Another shortcoming of Bhagat Singh as a Sikh hero was his reverence for Veer Savarkar. Bhagat Singh even wrote in Matwala on 15th and 22nd November, 1926 about Savarkar. He is reportedly supposed to have called Savarkar a braveheart.
Savarkar had huge respect for the Sikh community and had called them ‘the very embodiment of Hinduism’.
It is highly unfortunate that great figures like Bhagat Singh have to suffer because of the petty politics of the day. The India Bhagat Singh knew was very different where the communities celebrated each other with great respect and the current situation would have made him sad that the people for whom he gave his life are fighting for something he did not know of being an issue. Any attempt at maligning the great son of motherland should not only be resisted but any attempt to make him fit into modern political lines should be rejected.
