Month: October 2021

Rediscovering Bhagat Singh (Part 2): The Hunger Strike

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Jatindra Nath Das (1904-1929) Source: Wikimedia Commons

On September 13, 1929, 25 year old Jatindra Nath Das died after an epic 61 day fast. He had joined Bhagat Singh’s hunger strike against the unequal treatment of Indian political prisoners compared to European prisoners. Jatin Das had built bombs for the HSRA and had been arrested with the rest of his revolutionary comrades in the Lahore Conspiracy Case (regarding the assassination of Saunders). When he had first heard of Bhagat Singh’s idea of a hunger strike, he had been doubtful about the strategy. He had warned other enthusiastic strikers that “inching toward death in a hunger strike is far more difficult than death in a gun fight or on the gallows,” It wasn’t that Jatin Das lacked commitment. He was practical. “It is better not to join the strike than suffer a premature withdrawal,” he had warned. But when his comrades assured him of their determination to see this through, Jatin Das joined the hunger strike demanding that Indian political prisoners receive the same dignity and rights that are afforded to a petty European criminal in Indian jails. As his health declined and the public grew increasingly concerned about his well being, the British panicked. They tried all kinds of tricks to force the hunger strikers to break their fast. They filled the drinking water pots with milk, hoping to trick thirsty strikers into drinking milk. They placed tasty foods outside their cells and tried to tempt the strikers to give in. And eventually they tried to force feed these men, phyiscally holding them down and pushing food into them. Jatin Das struggled all of these torments. He fell sick when food that they had tried to force into him got lodged in his lungs. When he died, 61 days after he first started his fast, an entire nation stirred and the British quaked.

The archival video below shows a river of men in white flowing through the streets of Lahore as part of Jatin Das’s funeral procession. Subhash Chandra Bose had sent train fare to transport Jatin’s body from Lahore, where he had died, to his home in Bengal. The revolutionaries who had hoped to make the British tremble through planned violence, had achieved greater success through their adoption of Gandhi’s weapon of choice – fasting.

The video shows “fanatical hordes” (as the video calls them) peacefully and respectfully accompany Jatindranath Das’s body to the railway station for his final journey home. Source: British Pathe

This hunger strike that captured the attention of a nation had been Bhagat Singh’s idea. During his brief stint in prison in 1927, Bhagat Singh had noticed petty European criminals received better food and treatment in jails compared to Indian political prisoners. Surely there was a difference in quality between a European thief or murderer and an Indian political prisoner who was in prison for upholding their ideals and values.

But how do you protest effectively in prison? Bhagat Singh took a page out of Gandhi’s handbook. He decided on going on a hunger strike until changes were made. He found a way to sneak the message across to his comrade B.K. Dutt before he was sent to another jails. Bhagat Singh and B.K. Dutt spread the word in their respective jails. Word spread rapidly and political prisoners across the nation began to join the strike. Some like Jatin Das lost their lives. Some, like Baba Sohan Singh who was close to being released after serving a sentence of 15 years, joined the strike and were punished by having their sentences extended.

Bhagat Singh, as usual, put pen to paper. He wrote to the home member of the Government of India explaining why the strikers were protesting and what their demands were.

We, as political prisoners, should be given better diet and the standard of our diet should at least be the same as that of European prisoners… We shall not be forced to do any hard and undignified labour at all… books… along with writing materials should be allowed to us without restriction. Toilet necessities… better clothing… at least one standard daily paper should be supplied to every political prisoner.

from Without Fear by Kuldip Nayar

Bhagat Singh’s demands had been simple and clear. He was asking for dignity, respect and fairness. According to Nayar, Bhagat Singh had been concerned that the message of revolution was being misunderstood by the youth of India. He did not want revolution to be linked to the romance of guns, bombs and dramatic acts of violence. It was about sacrifice for a greater purpose. Bhagat Singh showed through his choices that if violence did not do the trick, then revolutionaries should change their ways and choose whatever path would lead them most expediently to their goal. Like Jatin Das, Bhagat Singh seemed aware that hunger strikes were far more difficult than dashing around with guns and bombs. But his body and voice were the only tools available to him in jail. He and all his fellow hunger strikers reminded India that even though Indians were trapped in circumstance – either in an actual jail or in a society ruled by outsiders – every individual was not only capable of bringing change but had a duty to try.

This message was not lost on Indians across the subcontinent. The efforts of Bhagat Singh, Jatin Das and so many other men and women in jails across India captured the interest of Indian media. Regional language newspapers like Sandhya, Bande Matram, Karma Yogin, Sanjibani, etc and English language papers like The Tribune reported the story and got the revolutionaries message to the common man. The strikers had gained so much sympathy from the public that the whole nation celebrated 21 June, 1929 as Bhagat Singh Day. He had achieved celebrity status during his own life time using methods that had made Gandhi, a man whom he felt was constantly chasing a Utopia at the cost of the present realities of the land, a household name.

Credit: The Tribune

It wasn’t just public sympathy and admiration that Bhagat Singh received. Mainstream names like Nehru, Gandhi and Jinnah were openly ackowledging their support for the revolutionaries while carefully adding a disclaimer that while they did not support their violent methods, they admired the dedication, devotion and courage that these young men were displaying.

In his autobiography, Nehru who had visited the strikers in Lahore Central Jail described Bhagat Singh as having an “attractive, intellectual face, remarkably calm and peaceful.” He noticed that his faced did not seem to have “any anger in it” and that he spoke very gently. However, Nehru admits that anyone who had been fasting for over a month “will look spiritual and gentle”.

Despite frequent criticisms of Gandhi’s apparently weak efforts to save Bhagat Singh and his comrades, Gandhi would state his disagreement with the revolutionaries’ methods while also openly acknowledging their sincerity and courage. He did try to convince Viceroy Irwing to commute the sentence but obviously failed. Later, he published Sukhdev’s open letter to Gandhi that he had sent before his execution and wrote a gentle and reasonable response giving Sukhdev’s words the due respect they deserved. This attitude of mutual respect that all these various freedom fighters had for each other makes me marvel at the quality of people who were leading our country at that time. Something we can all learn from – how to respectfully disagree.

When we look at the details of Bhagat Singh’s short life, I realised that school textbooks have done Bhagat Singh and his fellow revolutionaries a great disservice. While it is certainly true that the revolutionaries took to political assassinations and violence, there was more to their story than that. Perhaps they were misguided in their methods. Yet, they were not attached to violence. They were attached to their cause – a free India. When violence did not help, they turned to non-violence. It is true that they did not turn to it for the idealistic reasons that led Gandhi. They turned to it for more practical reasons. Yet, in that change in tactic, what I realised was that they were devoid of ego and blind and violent hatred for the enemy.

In his statement during the Legislative Assembly Bombing case, Bhagat Singh and B.K. Dutt had said the following:

We hold human life sacred beyond words, and would sooner lay down our own lives in the service of humanity than injure anyone else.

They had meant it when they spoke of their willingness to lay down their lives in the service of humanity. Leaders say it all the time; very few actually mean it. These young men in their early twenties lived by their words. There is good reason why Bhagat Singh features in our textbooks. But he is not there because he was willing to pick up a gun for his country. He is part of the narrative because he and his revolutionary brothers sincerely loved their country and are an example of how even when all freedoms were stripped from them, so many Indians showed the rest of us that we always have a choice.

Resources:

  1. Without Fear: The Life and Trial of Bhagat Singh by Kuldip Nayar
  2. ‘The Tribune photo on Jatin Das shook British empire‘ by Vishav Bharti for The Tribune, September 12, 2019.
  3. ‘Bhagat Singh respected Gandhi for his impact on masses, but thought his ideas couldn’t bring a social change for equality’ Interview of historian Chaman Lal for the Times of India, September 27, 2019
  4. ‘Modi Says No Congress Leader Visited Bhagat Singh in Jail, but That’s Not True’ by Arjun Siddharth for The Wire, May 10, 2018
  5. ‘The Hunger Strike of Revolutionary Jatin Das’ from Prashant’s Blogworld posted on January 2, 2017
  6. What Mahatma Gandhi did to Save Bhagat Singh by Chander Pal Singh for MKGandhi.org

My Re-Introduction to Bhagat Singh: The Bombing of Central Legislative Assembly

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Credit: Wikimedia Commons

The picture above was taken by the police during Bhagat Singh’s first stint in jail in 1927. At the time of the picture he was only 19. His hands were bound in chains and he was in conversation with Gopal Singh Pannu, DSP, CID who was interrogating him on his role in the Lahore Dasehra Bombing Case. One year later, Rajguru and Bhagat Singh would kill Saunders, an Assistant Police Commissioner in Lahore. They had meant to kill Scott, the policeman who had beaten Lala Lajpat Rai brutally and that led to the legendary leader’s death. But when this picture was taken, Bhagat Singh had no idea that he was going to commit a political assassination. He did not know that two years later he would lob bombs into the Central Legislative Assembly Chamber and then wait patiently for the police to arrest him. Nor did he know that he and his comrades, Sukhdev and Rajguru, would be remembered in Indian history as martyrs and heroes.

My own introduction to Bhagat Singh had been through a paragraph, like the one below, in my history textbook. As a student, I could not understand Bhagat Singh’s place in the story of Indian Independence. In a struggle made famous for its non-violent approach, here was a man who seemed unafraid of violence. He killed a man, bombed the Legislative Assembly when it was in session, and was executed for his actions. How were his actions any different from that of a modern terrorist? Why do we include him in a textbook? Why do we still remember him?

Credit: Our Pasts III, NCERT Grade 8 Textbook

My husband did not like that I compared Bhagat Singh to a common terrorist. “Absolutely not,” he had said fiercely. “Bhagat Singh was an intellectual, not just a revolutionary.” His defense of Bhagat Singh spurred me to do my own reading on the subject. I started with Kuldip Nayar’s book Without Fear: The Life and Trial of Bhagat Singh, followed by Bhagat Singh’s own writings. In the process my own attitude towards Bhagat Singh changed. While I agree with my husband that Bhagat Singh was absolutely not a terrorist, I think what makes Bhagat Singh extraordinary is that his life was his message or, as Sukhdev called it, ‘propoganda by action’.

In the following blog posts, I will focus on two events that made me change my mind about Bhagat Singh. The first (and the focus of this blog) was his role in the Central Legislative Assembly Bombing. The second was his protest against the treatment of Indian political prisoners compared to Europeans (which I will cover in the next blog). I wish I had heard these stories when I was in school because it would have highlighted the various paths Indians took to achieve the same desired outcome of Independence and might have allowed us to reflect on how grey a lot of these approaches really were.

Bhagat Singh’s Role in the Central Legislative Assembly Bombing

Credit: India Today

Bhagat Singh belonged to a communist group called the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA). Although Bhagat Singh was not a founding member, he joined the party when he was still in his teens and became an active member. After Saunder’s assassination, the HSRA had been disappointed with the response. The mainstream leaders of the freedom struggle had clearly disavowed the actions of the young revolutionaries and the British seemed unfazed. The public had also seemed unimpressed. If they wanted to make any serious impact on the British and the public, this clearly had not been the way. HSRA also realised that “mobilising public opinion and making people believe in their ideology was the real necessity, not random bombs and killings.” (Nayar, Without Fear).

So, how do you create a splash? The HSRA decided to toss a few low intensity bombs into a crowded Legislative Assembly Chamber when it had assembled to discuss two bills that they were against – the Public Safety Bill and the Trade Disputes Bill. After throwing the bombs and propaganda fliers in an emptier part of the hall, to avoid killing anyone, the two chosen HSRA members were supposed to wait for the police to come and find them. The idea was to use their time in court to explain their philosophy, bring attention to the faults of the British and to inspire the Indian youth to join the freedom movement.

There had been some debate over who the two sacrificial lambs should be. Bhagat Singh desperately wanted to be one of them. He would have been a good option because they needed someone articulate and confident to highlight the problems with the British, defend the revolutionaries’ ideals and inspire the public. But, they did not originally select him because they all knew that if the British had Bhagat Singh they would not let him go alive. They would have to hang him for the killing of Saunders. He would have to be made an example of.

Yet, even with full knowledge of this inevitable end, Bhagat Singh pushed for his inclusion in the plan and finally won out. On the day of the bombing, as the smoke cleared, the police finally mustered up enough courage to confront the two men in the balcony above the Assembly who were shouting Inquilab Zindabad. Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt stood there waiting. Bhagat Singh handed the policeman the gun he had used to kill Saunders. And later, as the two had hoped, they used the court as a platform to get the common man in India to pay attention to the revolutionary agenda.

In court, their lawyer Asaf Ali read out a statement that Bhagat Singh and BK Dutt wrote together. They explained the intention behind their most recent act as follows:

It was necessary to awaken England from her dreams… We dropped the bomb on the floor of the Assembly Chamber to register our protests on behalf of those who had no other means left to give expression to their heartrending agony. Our sole purpose was to make the deaf hear and give the headless a timely warning.

“We are neither perpetrators nor lunatics: Full text of Bhagat Singh and BK Dutta’s argument in 1929 Assembly Bomb case”, DNA India

They also addressed their disagreement with the nonviolent approach to freedom head on. They said:

The elimination of force at all costs is Utopian, and the new movement which has arisen in the country, and of that dawn we have given a warning, is inspired by the ideals which guided Guru Govind Singh, Shivaji, Kamal Pasha, Riza Khan, Washington, Garibaldi, Lafayette and Lenin.

“We are neither perpetrators nor lunatics: Full text of Bhagat Singh and BK Dutta’s argument in 1929 Assembly Bomb case”, DNA India

By tracing their movement’s lineage to such famous predecessors as Guru Govind Singh, Shivaji, etc, the revolutionaries were trying to point out that their ideas were neither new nor too radical since great heroes in history also resorted to the same methods. If you have a chance and sufficient interest, it is worth reading in its entirety. As I read it after having read Bhagat Singh’s other writing, I could see his hand in this as well. He is an emotive writer; it is hard to walk away from his work without some response. I did not always agree with him, and yet I did not walk away feeling that this was a rash and unthinking trigger-happy young man. He was, in fact, a person who was thinking and feeling deeply for his country and doing what he felt was right for her. He and his comrades felt so strongly about it that they were willing to suffer the torments of imprisonment (it was certainly torturous because they were frequently beaten brutally and suffered several humiliations and discomforts) and death for their ideals. Every time I read his words, I think back to the picture at the top of this article.

We are lucky that the photo of Bhagat Singh sitting on the charpoy in conversation with an investigator (that you can see at the top of this article) exists because that picture highlights two things – one is just how young Bhagat Singh was. At the time of his death he was only 23. The other is how confident Bhagat Singh appears. He looks comfortable in his shackles and relaxed in his conversation with the policeman. I could not find any sign of fear or apprehension in the collection of his personal correspondence and articles that I could find online. He seemed to overflow with conviction and dedication to his cause. Before, he died, he was visited by his grieving family. He was particularly affected by his younger brother who could not stop crying. He wrote him a particularly tender letter and included some couplets to console him. It ended as follows:

Meri hawa mein rahegi khayal ki khushboo,
Yeh musht-e-khak hai, fani rahe rahe na rahe.

(Our faith and ideas will fill the air.
What harm if this handful of dust is destroyed?)

Without Fear, Kuldip Nayar

Those who are willing to sacrifice themselves for a cause must have to view themselves with tremendous humility in the face of their faith and ideals. Through many of Bhagat Singh’s letters to his friends and family, Bhagat Singh seems to repeatedly come back to this point of how he as an individual does not matter as much as the cause.

Bhagat Singh expresses this sentiment through word and action over and over again in his short life. This is why we remember him. Not for having killed Saunders or for having bombed the Legislative Assembly as the textbooks imply. We remember him as being one of many men and women who viewed themselves as a handful of dust in the wind. They dedicated themselves to their principles and ideals regardless of the cost. Whether they chose revolution or non-violence, the love, dedication and sacrifice for their nation was the same.