Without Fear

Title: Without Fear – The Life and Trial of Bhagat Singh

Author: Kuldip Nayar

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2007 (First published 2000)

ISBN: 9788172236922

Pages: 244

Like the varied country India is, its freedom struggle consisted of many streams, distinct in form and content from each other. School textbooks and government propaganda on the independence movement harp on a lone strand among them – Gandhi’s nonviolence. This is certainly not astonishing as the Nehru dynasty ruled or influenced the country’s administration for most of the seven decades it was independent. Nehru was Gandhi’s loyal protégé who was hoisted onto the leadership of an unwilling Congress in session at Lahore in 1929 as its president. The very first thing Congress governments did after independence was to sanitize the history of the freedom movement by purging elements hostile to Congress’ ideology and Nehru’s detractors from the chronicles of the country’s fight against the British. Bhagat Singh, whose great self-sacrifice on the altar of the country’s honour is mentioned in a bare paragraph in most of the officially approved accounts. Many books on the martyrdom of Bhagat Singh and his comrades found the light of day only in the last few decades. Singh’s trajectory sparked violence and death. They were not reluctant to kill their enemies and were not afraid to lay down their lives for the cause. Kuldip Nayar is a world-renowned journalist who has made this excellent volume that tells the history of Bhagat Singh’s life and trial.

Nayar portrays Bhagat Singh as a brave and committed nobleman of integrity. Though he was born in a family of zamindars (landlords), he was deeply influenced by the hard toil and pitiable living conditions of his neighbours. His conversion to atheism was deeply rooted, considering the fact that he was just 23 when he died. Singh’s courage is exemplified by an incident on the day he was hanged and narrated touchingly in the book. When his lawyer visited him to ascertain his last wish according to procedure, Singh enquired whether he had brought the book ‘The Revolutionary Lenin’ requested in an earlier meeting. As soon as the book was handed over to him, Singh started reading it with great interest and absorption, even though he was scheduled to be hanged a few hours later. Seeing Bhagat Singh’s portrait with a European hat and clean shaved chin, many people are confused as to his religion. It is incongruous to enquire about the religion of an atheist, but Bhagat Singh was born a Sikh. He had cut off his hair and shaved off the beard as part of the plan of disguise to assassinate the police chief of Lahore.

Though at loggerheads with each other, Bhagat Singh’s Hindustan Socialist Republican Association supported mass actions initiated by Congress. When the Simon Commission was blockaded at Lahore railway station, the police baton-charged the protesters in which the widely respected politician Lala Lajpat Rai was seriously injured when J A Scott, the superintendent of police personally rained blows on his head. He died a few days later which unleashed a huge wave of resentment. Singh and his associates wanted to avenge Rai by killing Scott, but the man tasked with identifying the officer mistook Saunders, his deputy, for him and the assailants killed the wrong man. It was for this murder that Bhagat Singh, Shivram Hari Rajguru and Sukhdev Thapar were handed the capital punishment. Around the same time, the Central Assembly at Delhi was contemplating two draconian regulations. The Public Safety bill was designed to empower the government to detain anyone without trial, while the Trade Disputes bill was meant to deter labour unions from organizing strikes, particularly in Bombay. Bhagat Singh and B K Dutt threw bombs on the assembly floor in protest against the bills, while taking special care not to cause injury to anyone. The assembly claimed many Indian members like Motilal Nehru, Jinnah, N C Kelkar and M R Jayakar among its members. Singh and Dutt were arrested on the spot and later implicated in the Lahore assassination also. Many accomplices turned approvers and the prosecution’s mainstay was the evidence given by them.

Nayar brings out Singh’s outrage at Gandhi’s passive, nonviolent struggle in detail. However, the jailed revolutionaries adopted Mahatma’s tried and tested program of hunger strike to demand improved facilities in the prison such as better food and living conditions, a special ward for political prisoners and parity with European prisoners lodged there. While all of Gandhi’s hunger strikes ended conveniently before it seriously threatened the leader’s health, the revolutionaries were not so lucky. Jatindra Nath Das died of starvation. Singh and others escaped this fate as they bowed to a Congress committee resolution to call off the protest on the 116^th day.

A prominent part of the book is dedicated to cover Bhagat Singh’s trial, in which the author unfortunately shakes off his reputation for critical thinking and follows it with as much patriotism as is seen in a young initiate. Nayar accuses the court and its proceedings to be a sham. However, this is to be understood in conjunction with the numerous petty objections raised by the accused that were solely crafted to obstruct and hinder the smooth functioning of the court. Reading out loud a message of felicitation on Lenin Day (21 Jan 1930) in open court was just one of the charades. Many a times they declined the summons and didn’t even come to the court. Rai Sahib Pandit Sri Kishen, a first class magistrate, was assigned to try the case at first. Seeing him ineffectual, the government transferred the proceedings to a tribunal consisting of three high court judges Coldstream, Agha Haidar and J C Hilton without any right to appeal except to the Privy Council. It was also given powers to deal with willful obstruction and to dispense with the presence of the accused. This was necessary as the visitors too often shouted in open court. The police once beat up the accused when they refused to be removed as ordered by Justice Coldstream. The prisoners then declined to attend the proceedings of the court until he was removed. The government complied with this strange demand and Coldstream was asked to go on long leave. J K Tapp was appointed in his place and Justice Haidar was replaced by another Indian judge, Abdul Qadir.

Gandhi and the Congress cold shouldered the demands to save Bhagat Singh and other accused by failing to intervene with the viceroy to commute their death sentence to transportation for life. The viceroy was anxious to ensure Gandhi’s participation in the Second Round Table scheduled later that year in 1931 and the government’s compulsions were amply visible in the concessions it granted as part of the Gandhi-Irwin Pact signed on 5 Mar 1931, just 18 days before Singh was hanged. It was surely in Gandhi’s power to save the lives of the trio, but his half-hearted presentation of their case convinced Lord Irwin where his real sympathies lay. In fact, it was said that Gandhi requested the viceroy to execute the sentence before the planned Congress session in Karachi towards the end of March 1931 in an effort to forestall a possible demand from the delegates to seek commutation of the sentence as a precondition to the pact being ratified. If Singh was already hanged, Gandhi could preempt his detractors with a fait accompli. However, we should not lose sight of the substance behind the Mahatma’s reticence. A daring plan was being hatched by the revolutionaries to rescue Bhagat Singh from jail, but it failed when the bomb went off during a dry run, killing the leader of the assault then and there. The comrades had planted a remote-controlled bomb on the Viceroy’s Special train which again failed to cause him any injury. There was an assassination attempt on Khan Bahadur Abdul Aziz, the superintendent in charge of the investigation. These violent episodes might have forced Gandhi’s hand when he requested the viceroy to commute the sentence only because public opinion ‘rightly or wrongly’ demanded it and internal peace was likely to be promoted by it. It failed to break the ice with the British and the three patriots were hanged on Mar 23, 1931. Nayar reproduces Gandhi’s letter to Irwin.

However wholeheartedly the Indian people support the patriotic fervor of Bhagat Singh, the emphasis on violence against political opponents stirs the imagination of modern-day separatists too. Nayar tells about a letter received from Harjinder Singh and Sukhjinder Singh, who were awaiting their execution for assassinating General A S Vaidya for directing the military operation on Harmandir Sahib codenamed Blue Star. They claimed their operation to be on par with what Bhagat Singh had done against the British. The author clearly demarcates the meaning of the word ‘terrorist’ from ‘revolutionary’ in no uncertain terms. Lines from Urdu couplets and poems are given at the beginning of each chapter. Not providing a translation of these verses excludes a good section of the readers not conversant in that language from appreciating its message. The book casts some doubt on the motives of Sukhdev Thapar who was hanged along with Singh. He is accused of deliberately suggesting Singh’s name in the planning stages with the vile motive to get him killed. A few letters from Hans Raj Vohra, the approver in the case, to Sukhdev’s brother accuses the martyr of revealing crucial information to the police. The book also includes three excellent essays written by Bhagat Singh titled ‘Why I am an Atheist?’, ‘The Philosophy of the Bomb’ as a reply to Gandhi’s advocacy of nonviolence and ‘To the Young Political Workers’. These articles open a window to Singh’s sharp and critical mind.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star