Shaheed Bhagat Singh

Shaheed Bhagat Singh (1907 - 1931)

Bhagat Singh was the scion of a Sandhu Jat family which originally resided in the village Khatkar Kalan in District Nawan Shahar but at the time of Bhagat's birth was settled at the village Banga (Chak no. 105) in District Lyallpur. He was born to Kishan singh and Vidya Vati on September 27, 1907. Kishan Singh was the eldest of the three sons of Arjan Singh and Jai Kaur, the two others being Ajit Singh and Swaran Singh. The former had been deported to Mandalay along with Lala Lajpat Rai under the infamous Regulation III of 1818 on the charge of seditious activities caused by the inequitious Colonisation Bill of 1908. Bhagat Singh was the second of the five children (four sons and a daughter) of Kishan Singh, the others being Jagat Singh (died young), Amar Kaur, Kulbir Singh, Kultar Singh and Rajinder Singh. On completion of his primary education at the village school in Banga, Bhagat Singh was sent to the D.A.V. High School, and then to the D.A.V. College at Lahore. Here he came under the influence of two teachers, Bhai Parmanand and Jai Chand Vidyalankar, two veteran nationalists, who left their impress on the plastic mind of Bhagat Singh. He became the leader of the student community and founded the college students' union. He even joined the Indian National Congress but, finding it supine and ineffective, left it. The execution of the Ghadarite Kartar Singh Saraba in 1915, the Rowlatt Act and the Jallianwala Bagh tragedy of 1919 made Lahore a storm-centre of agitation. Bhagat Singh responded to the non-cooperation call of Gandhi ji , left the D.A.V. College and later joined the National College founded by Lala Lajpat Rai, from where he graduated in 1923. From 1923 to the time of his execution in1931 Bhagat Singh dedicated himself to the liberation of his motherland. In 1923 he associated himself with the Akalis and Babbar Akalies, who had organised Morcha at Guru Ka Bagh. The same year he joined the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association and was very soon elected as the general secretary of its central committee. He was entrusted with the task of co-ordinating the inter-provincial activities of the Association. In 1925 he founded the Naujawan Bharat Sabha at Lahore to inculcate a spirit of revolution among the youth. He came in touch with other revolutionaries like Sukhdev, Yashpal, Bhagwati Charan, Chandra Shekhar Azad, B.K.Datt, Surindra Nath Pandaya, Jatindra Nath Das and others, who were also working among the youth. Das taught how to make crude bombs. In 1926 Bhagat Singh planned with Kundan Lal and Azad to rescue the prisoners of the Kakori Case, but the plan fell through. On the Dussehra Day of 1926, a bomb exploded in Lahore. Bhagat Singh was arrested and prosecuted, but for want of sufficient evidence he was discharged. In 1928 the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association decided to open a network of branches in the Punjab under the leadership of Bhagat Singh. When the Simon Commission landed in Bombay on 3 February 1928, the Congress gave a call of black flag demonstration against it. A mammoth procession led by Lala Lajpat Rai greeted it with black flags at the time of its arrival at Lahore. It was lathicharged by the police and Lala too was not spared. It was too outrageous an insult to be left unavenged. The Lala succumbed to the injury a few months later. Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Azad decided to kill Mr. Scott, believed to be responsible for the lathi blows given to the revered Lala. Taking him for Scott, they shot at Saunders, Assistant Superintendent, on 17 December 1928 and killed him. Bhagat Singh escaped from Lahore and came to Calcutta where he opened a branch of his party. The party now entrusted Bhagat Singh and B.K.Datt to throw a bomb in the Central Legislative Assembly in Delhi in order to demonstrate to the alien rulers the utter disgust and disaffection of the Indians against their autocratic rule. On April 8, 1929 they threw a bomb when the Central Assembly was in session, and later offered themselves for arrest shouting 'Inquilab Zindabad' (Live Long Revolution), "Down Down with British Imperialism". Bhagat Singh and B.K. Datt were arrested, and later Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were tried, and hanged in Lahore Central Jail on 23 March 1931 at about 7:30 in the evening. Their corpses were not handed over to their relatives but were cremated by the police at the dead of night on the banks of the river Satluj, near Ferozepur.