Bhagat Singh was a gem of a person. True he was to his ideals till the last minute of his short but eventful life. A great idealist, not only his life, even its very last minutes were hugely inspirational.
Apparently, he was reading a book while the hangman was getting the contraption ready. When the officers came to take him to the gallows, his only request was, "I am about to complete reading this book. Please wait." He completed reading the few remaining pages, and happily got up to face his capital punishment, chanting and singing revolutionary songs all the way to the gallows. He was hardly twenty five.
He was such an idealist true to his core that he could respect contrarían ideologies. He was, for instance, an atheist, and yet despite his confirmed agnostic beliefs, he knew the "Granth Sahib" much better than any devotee, even a 'granthee'.
Even the bomb he and the other radicals used was to create an awareness, to shock/shake the foreign colonising rulers regarding the ill-treatment of the 'natives' as well as of their own false beguiling promises regarding the 'native' representation in the Indian governance. Neither he nor his companions wanted to hurl the bomb to hurt anyone, nor did they as it was thrown in the well of the council building.
How much he achieved in his short life! Even from behind the bars, he imaginatively made the freedom struggle a truly spirited move that awakened the conscience of an entire nation. He wrote extensively, maturely, like a great scholarly thinker. Agriculture to untouchability, the ideal perfect post-independence India, nothing was an impossibility for his socialist vision.
Sure he had great charisma, and yet he was a superb team player. Remember the unique escape plan right under the nose of the station full of police? Wish he had lived longer, like many of his committed contemporaries and close associates. Hence this heart-felt tribute to all of them, to Bhagat Singh and the revolutionary spirit that fired them!
Pratima@ The oppressive rulers can kill a revolutionary, but never the revolutionary radical spirit he kindled, right?
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