Bhagat Singh is one of India’s most influential communist revolutionaries and anti-imperialist whose contribution to the independence movement was unique and momentous. Sent to the gallows by the British Raj at a young age of 23, his influence on progressive and people’s movements in post independent India has been significant and continues to grow stronger.
Bhagat Singh believed that India’s freedom should be achieved through collective action by the masses rather than individual valour. True to his scientific socialist politics inspired by the success of the Russian Revolution and Lenin, he analysed Indian society through a historical materialist framework, leading him to conceive freedom as not simply liberation from the British, but also from the shackles of domestic feudalism, caste oppression, and capitalist exploitation.
As part of their devious strategy to distort history and especially the history of the national independence movement in which they played no part, Indian right wing forces have consistently tried to appropriate Bhagat Singh. However, even a cursory glance at his writings reveal that his politics and vision for independent India, is wholly opposed to the very ideological foundations of Hindutva politics. At a period of unprecedented assault on democracy and secularism, as well as on the rights of peasants, working class and minorities by the right wing ruling class, the life of Bhagat Singh and the politics he formulated serves as the beacon and inspiration for all the progressive peoples movements fighting against the tyranny of the right wing and capitalist exploitation.
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Progressive Students' Forum TISS 