The Journal of Students' Federation of India
Culture Interviews National Struggles
September,
2020 Nitheesh
Narayanan
By Nitheesh Narayanan & Dayal
Paleri
Writer
and former professor Chaman Lal has been a chronicler of Bhagat Singh’s life
for decades now and is known to have brought out the many lesser known aspects
of the revolutionary, whose ideals, courage, and spirit remain unmatched in
Indian history. On Bhagat Singh’s 113rd birth
anniversary, Nitheesh Narayanan and Dayal Paleri speak
to Chaman Lal about a range of issues concerning the revolutionary — from what
got him interested in his life, why he is India’s Che Guevara and the Indian Left’s relationship with him.
Nitheesh
Narayanan (NN) & Dayal Paleri (DP): You have rigorously been engaging with Bhagat
Singh’s thoughts and activities, marking his unique role in different ways,
over many decades. Tell us about what led you to dedicate such a vast amount of
your life time on this? What was your entry point towards Bhagat Singh?
Chaman
Lal (CL): It was just like any other young adult attracted towards Bhagat Singh
seeing his image which has become so popular in India from his martyrdom in
1931. I was a regular reader at the Public Library in my home town Rampura Phul
in Bathinda district of Punjab, from 1964 when I was 17. Later, I became a
member of a book club of Hindi Pocket Books Delhi, which used to offer books
worth nine rupees for eight rupees. Those days, pocket books cost just 1-3
rupees. So, in one lot, I got the copy of Manmathnath Gupt’s Hindi book, Bharat Ke Krantikari. Gupt himself
was a revolutionary who skipped gallows as he was not even an adult in the
Kakori Dacoity case of 1925 — the one in which Ramprasad Bismil and Ashfaq Ulla
Khan and others were hanged. The book contained sketches of 16-18 young
revolutionaries who had sacrificed their lives for the nation. Bhagat Singh was
one among them. Gupt himself was a comrade of Bhagat Singh’s. The book inspired
me so much that I decided to translate it to my mother tongue, Punjabi — and I
did it in a few months’ time. All of its sketches were published during 1970-71
by Desh Bhagat Yaadan, a fortnightly
edited by the legendary Ghadarite revolutionary Baba Gurmukh Singh Lalton from
the Ghadar Memorial Hall in Jalandhar. From then onwards, my interest in the
Indian freedom struggle and revolutionaries took shape and later got focussed
on Bhagat Singh — India’s most ideologically advanced socialist revolutionary,
inspired by Marxism-Leninism.
NN
& DP: What is Bhagat Singh’s place in the
making of modern India?
CL: The place of Bhagat
Singh was in creating the dream of a new India, which never came into being.
Independence in 1947 never thought of making India of Bhagat Singh’s dreams, of
his vision. His vision of India was an exploitation-free society, where workers
and peasants are not exploited and where they get the fruits of their own hard
labour. Where the youth of the country are not without employment and where
students work for furthering the dream of a socialist
society.
Chaman
Lal at a reading session in New Delhi (Twitter)
NN
& DP: Bhagat Singh is often portrayed as a
brave freedom fighter, but very rarely do we see his portrayal as a man with an
ideology. How do you see this gap?
CL: Of course, he was a
brave and fearless freedom fighter, one of the rarest in the world, comparable
only to Che Guevara in fearlessness. Yet, he was not just limited to this
trait. He was much more than this in his personality. He was a socialist
thinker with a clear ideological perspective about bringing socialist
revolution in India, by organising workers and peasants as the main forces of
this revolution. His writings, totalling 130 found till now, and his jail
notebook, make this absolutely clear. As his writings were not brought to the
focus till a few years ago, his personality was limited to a brave freedom
fighter alone, which, of course, suited the political system in the country —
as Bhagat Singh as a revolutionary thinker was a threat to post independence
Indian rulers as well.
NN & DP: You have called Bhagat Singh a ‘pathbreaking
revolutionary on a Marxist path’. Could you explain Bhagat Singh’s engagement
with Marxism in particular?
CL: The Indian
revolutionary tradition against British colonialism is very long. Ever since
1757, when the East India company set up the colonial regime in India, there
were revolutionary upsurges in various parts of the country from time to time.
But prior to the Ghadar movement of 1913-15, all revolutionary movements had
religious connotations. It was the Ghadar party that for the first time, kept
religion away from political movements and made it a private and personal
aspect of the revolutionaries. No religious ceremonies or rituals were part of
the Ghadar movement — though for meetings, gurudwaras in the USA were used
(where the party was formed in 1913).
As Shiv Verma, a comrade of Bhagat
Singh’s, has defined, the Ghadar party was the first secular revolutionary
movement. Bhagat Singh and his organisations, the Naujawan Bharat Sabha (NBS)
and the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA), were the next
ideological advancements from the Ghadar movement, and were inspired by the
Russian socialist revolution led by Lenin in 1917. The Russian revolution had
not taken place during the Ghadar movement in 1915, but many Ghadarites had
travelled to Moscow after it and when the University of the Eastern toilers was
set up in Moscow in 1921. Bhagat Singh was in touch with many Ghadarite
revolutionaries and had even worked in the Kirti-Punjabi and Urdu journals
brought out by Ghadarites. He was also in touch with the early Communists of
India in Kanpur, such as Muzzafar Ahmad, Shaukat Usmani, and Satyabhakat.
All of this churning led to the
ideological development in Bhagat Singh as a Marxist, which is best reflected
in his long perceptive article, Letter
to Young Political Workers, written just one and half months before his
execution. In it, what he provides is the clear programme of a socialist
revolution based on Marxist principles.
NN & DP: What are your thoughts on the political
appropriation of Bhagat Singh? Earlier, the Khalistan movement and now the RSS
is trying their best to appropriate Bhagat Singh, in a way that completely obliterates
his Marxist politics.
CL: Due to Bhagat
Singh’s popularity amid the Indian people, all parties desire to appropriate
him for their narrow political interests — similar to B R Ambedkar’s
appropriation. The appropriation of Bhagat Singh is happening at two
levels: One, deliberately to obliterate his ideological perception, two, at a
level of ignorance about his revolutionary nature. The Khalistanis and the RSS
are trying to obfuscate Bhagat Singh’s ideological perception deliberately and
are trying to appropriate him in their own narrow sectarian, fascist vision.
Such attempts need to be exposed
using Bhagat Singh’s own writings. At another level, many don’t know about
Bhagat Singh as an ideologically advanced revolutionary thinker — they love him
simply as a “hero”, brave and fearless. Such groups need to be made aware of
the thinker he was, through his writings, which have now been published in
several languages — English, Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu, Marathi in complete, and
partly in Bengali, Telugu, Malayalam, Tamil etc.
A
protest led by the Students’ Federation of India (DNA)
NN
& DP: The RSS has been violently intolerant
towards a more substantial understanding of Bhagat Singh’s politics — they have
disrupted some of your lectures, demanded a ban on Bipan Chandra’s writings on
him, and more. What do you read out of this intolerance of RSS towards the real
politics of Bhagat Singh?
CL: There is
nothing surprising in it. RSS, like all religious fundamentalist organisations,
don’t tolerate the facts of history. Therefore, they create myths, call it
“history”, and anyone who questions or challenges these myths becomes their
target of attack. Historian Bipan Chandra was someone from the academic world
who focussed on Bhagat Singh as an ideologically oriented revolutionary thinker
for the first time, and I advanced this perception further by collecting
writings of Bhagat Singh in various anthologies. When I speak of Bhagat Singh’s
ideas through his own writings, the RSS or their followers don’t enter into
debate or discussion, as they are incapable of debate — instead, they attack
the speaker, that is what they tried to do with my lecture at Delhi University,
though they did not succeed in it. I continued to speak and focus on Bhagat
Singh’s ideas, despite their disruptive efforts. The progressive students of
Delhi University, who invited me to speak, stood their ground throughout the
lecture.
NN & DP: Bhagat Singh deserves worldwide recognition like
Che Guevara. How do you see that comparison and what is the global relevance of
Bhagat Singh and his ideas?
CL: Yes, Bhagat Singh
does deserve worldwide recognition as a young anti colonial thinker revolutionary
who adopted Marxism, for both liberation from colonial exploitation and human
liberation in general. Slowly, he is indeed being recognised as a South Asian
revolutionary and he will surely find his place with revolutionaries like Che
Guevara. Bhagat Singh and Che Guevara are comparable in terms of their absolute
fearlessness and also their adoption of Marxism for human liberation. As India,
like China, is a big country, if Indian masses achieve liberation from Bhagat
Singh’s ideas, his global relevance will increase manifold, in my
opinion.
NN
& DP: The Indian Left faces criticism
for not having fully realised or utilised Bhagat Singh’s image as a
revolutionary Marxist. How do you see that?
CL: Sadly, that’s
true. Bhagat Singh was associated with the Communist movement from its
inception; as mentioned before, he was in touch with the earliest founders of
the Communist movement in India, like Shaukat Usmani, Muzzafar Ahmad,
Satyabhakat, Radha Mohan Gokul ji in Kanpur; in Punjab, he was closely
connected with Sohan Singh Josh; Ajoy Ghosh, the Secretary of the CPI at later
stage was part of HSRA and was acquitted in the Lahore Conspiracy case. His
image as a true revolutionary had travelled even to Moscow at the time — as
Shaukat Usmani mentions in his memoirs, Stalin had asked him to arrange Bhagat Singh
to be sent to Moscow. Jawaharlal Nehru too had wished for Bhagat Singh to be
able to go to Moscow.
Despite all this, when Congress
limited Bhagat Singh simply to a freedom fighter and RSS tried to colour him as
a narrow sectarian nationalist, the CPI accepted him as progressive
revolutionary, but not part of the Left’s own legacy in the freedom struggle.
Ajoy Ghosh to Shiv Verma, who was later central committee member of the CPM,
acknowledged Bhagat Singh as their most charismatic leader when they worked
with him, yet neither the united CPI, nor the CPM, and not even the Naxal
groups treated him as their own as an icon. His writings were not published in
their collections till 1970’s, even though people like Periyar had gotten his
important essays like Why I am An Atheist translated
into Tamil as early as 1934. In my opinion, it’s only in recent years, seeing
the kind of popularity that Bhagat Singh has among the youth and others, like
Ambedkar does, the Left has realised that they have not been able to own their
powerful patriotic legacy completely.
NN
& DP: How did Bhagat Singh envisage a
democratic society? Why do we need Bhagat Singh today?
CL: Bhagat Singh
by nature was a democratic person and was always in dialogue with his comrades
— that is how he became popular among his own comrades and a close friend to
all of them. He used to distribute books amid them. Bhagwan Das Mahaur, in his
memoirs, mentions how he got a copy of Karl Marx’s Capital from him. In prison too, he
used to get books from the Dwarka Das Library in Lahore through his friends. He
was so concerned about his co-prisoners that he once asked for a book to be
sent for Congress worker Dr. Alam, who was in jail for the Congress movement.
Bhagat Singh’s relations with the Congress party and its leaders were very
warm, though both sides kept the critical outlook for each other. He would have
liked to build socialism with a democratic outlook — where opinions and views
could be freely expressed. Today’s students, youth groups and other mass
organisations have many crucial lessons to learn from Bhagat Singh — lessons on
how to respect each other despite differences and understand each other to form
unity in action.
Chaman
Lal retired as a professor in Hindi
translation from the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). He is now Honorary
Advisor to Bhagat Singh Archives and Resource Centre, Delhi Archives of the
Delhi Government.
Nitheesh
Narayanan is the editor
of Student Struggle, a Central Secretariat member
of SFI, and a PhD scholar at the Jawaharlal Nehru University’s Centre for the
Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy. He is also a Researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
Dayal Paleri is a P.h.D Scholar at the Department of Humanities
and Social Sciences of IIT Madras, Chennai. He is also an Editorial Board Member of Student Struggle.
Chamal Lal’s Cover Photo: Times
of India
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