The Internationalist Archive
A socialist student leader from undivided Punjab, Bhagat Singh was a key figure in India’s freedom struggle. He was also a member of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA), a radical left-wing Indian revolutionary organisation that fought to disrupt the British Empire’s colonisation efforts in India.
In 1928, Singh, along with comrade BK Dutt, decided to destabilize a Legislative Assembly that was due to pass two bills: the Public Safety Bill and the Trades Dispute Bill. These bills would allow the British authorities to arrest anyone without evidence and render any strike by the labour unions illegal. As the Assembly proceeded, Singh and Dutt threw two non-fatal bombs on empty benches and tossed leaflets that detailed their reasoning behind such a disruption.
Subsequently, Singh and Dutt were detained, while the British police tracked and arrested other members of their organisation. In 1929 Dutt was sentenced to life imprisonment. Two years later, Singh, along with fellow HSRA members Sukhdev Thapar and Shivram Rajguru, was sentenced to death. He was only 23 years old.
Today, as movements worldwide rise in resistance — from labour unions fighting to take back their constitutional rights in Argentina to the farmers in India and the Philippines struggling against forced farm and land reforms — The Internationalist remembers Singh and his proclamation: “The real revolutionary armies are in the villages and the factories, in the peasantry and the labourers.”
Singh’s unflinching resolve is evident in the following excerpt from Ikroop Sandhu’s pioneering graphic biography of Bhagat Singh, Inquilab Zindabad. Here, Sandhu illustrates the final moments of the three young men walking towards the gallows, unafraid, crying out ‘Inquilab Zindabad!’ ‘Long live the revolution!’.
Excerpted from Inquilab Zindabad by Ikroop Sandhu, published by Yoda Press and Simon and Schuster India. Copyright © 2020 by Ikroop Sandhu. Used with permission. All rights reserved.
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