A rather short Book Review by Chaman Lal and Michael D. Yates
“The state, the government machinery is just a weapon in the hands of the ruling class to further and safeguard its interest. We want to snatch and handle it to utilize it for the consummation of our ideal, that is, social reconstruction on a new, that is, Marxist, basis.” – Bhagat Singh
The young martyr Bhagat Singh is a legend of the Indian anti-colonial struggle. He was not just a man of action, but of great intellect and deep insight. While still in his early teens, he showed a depth of understanding of Indian political reality. He read widely and became fluent in several Indian languages, as well as English. Moreover, he wrote insightful political essays, ones that a much older person would have been proud to have written.
It is not only that his call to arms against the British imperialists inspired Indians – young and old. It is that his written works continue to stir the minds of all those who seek a world where everyone is equal, and all can fully develop their capacities. He is as much a part of the Indian radical tradition today as he was one hundred years ago.
Chaman Lal is India’s leading authority on Bhagat Singh. He retired as a professor of Hindi translation from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
Michael D. Yates is an economist and labour educator and Editorial Director of Monthly Review Press.
Additional Notes
Bhagat Singh was born into a Punjabi Sikh family on 27 September 1907 in the village of Banga in the Lyallpur district of the Punjab in what was then British India and is today Pakistan; he was the second of seven children—four sons, and three daughters—born to Vidyavati and her husband Kishan Singh Sandhu.
Bhagat Singh was involved in two high-profile plots against British authorities in India that helped galvanize the Indian independence movement. In 1928 he took part in a plot to kill the police chief responsible for the death of influential Indian writer and politician Lala Lajpat Rai.
Fondly known as 'Shaheed (martyr) Bhagat Singh', he is considered a national hero of India's freedom struggle against colonial rule. As a teenager, Bhagat Singh popularised the slogan of ‘Inquilab Zindabad’ which eventually became the catchphrase of the Indian independence movement.