It is extremely disappointing that a book in the Delhi University’s curriculum, which labels Shahid Bhagat Singh a “revolutionary terrorist”, got through a system of checks and into academia. Such a view of the history of a man who went smiling to the gallows and who had once written “My life has been dedicated to the noblest cause, that of the freedom of the country. Therefore, there is no rest or worldly desire that can lure me now,” should have been filtered out long before it got into lecture halls.
The freedom movement also had revolutionaries with militant tendencies, besides the main thrust of Mahatma Gandhi’s ahimsa. It has been explained on behalf of the lead author of the 1988 book, who is no more, that the term “terrorist” was used without any pejorative meaning and for want of a different term. The issue has surfaced again because of the carelessness of the syllabus committee in accepting a historical treatise without revising it and more, presenting it to impressionable minds without so much as a footnote of explanation. This is a disservice to a national hero who was hanged age 23 — for the killing of police officer John Saunders to avenge the death of Lala Lajpat Rai — after the British colonisers bent their own rules of legal jurisprudence in hanging him.
Bhagat Singh remains a significant figure in our national iconography. The memory of a man who threw non-lethal bombs in the Central Legislative Assembly and then stood with his gun pointing down while surrendering should not be distorted by academic oversight, especially when the nation seems to have embarked upon a debate on nationalism marked more by extreme opinions than moderate ones.
