Shunti is a sturdy young man who takes short steps to a long morning’s work of milk distribution. His family has been into the dairy business for years. He supplies milk in a Punjab home I visited recently. I asked Shunti whether the male buffalo and cow calves were given their full share of milk before it reached us for our consumption. The answer was in the affirmative along with a full description of the behaviour of the bovine mothers, especially the cows. At the end of it, he asked me about what profession I belonged to as he commented on my “uchchi soch” (high thinking). He said, he had never been asked such a question before.
With that as the trigger, the interaction extended to other subjects. He was spilling over with condemnation of Simranjit Singh Mann. “Andar kar ke theek karna chahida ohda dimaag (he should be arrested to be brought to his senses)” for condemning Bhagat Singh, Shunti said. “Asli shaheed te rab da banda si oh jihne hass k maut nu jaffi payi. Kinna bahadar si sirf 23 saal da (He was a real martyr and a man of God. He embraced death happily. How brave he was at just 23).” Shunti could not believe that anybody in their right mind would find fault with Bhagat Singh, much less call him a “terrorist” –as Mann, the 77-year-old Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar)member of parliament from Sangrur has done.
I view Shunti’s observation about Bhagat Singh as simple and straight. Although Bhagat Singh was a self-proclaimed atheist, his core was godly. If godliness is about sacrifice and selflessness (and it is) Bhagat Singh personified it. Along with Sukhdev and Rajguru, he taught other freedom-fighters the art of living and dying for a cause and he left an imprint on the hearts of millions of Indians.
While in Punjab, I spoke to many people about the anti-Bhagat Singh line taken by Mann and his call to the Sikhs to hoist the Sikh rather than the national flag in their homes on Independence day. From an 80-year-old retired professor to a young Rajput Sikh in a junior administrative job, they all condemned Mann. He is a “spent force who is trying to win public attention with sensational statements and should be booked for his anti-tri colour remarks,” was the professor’s opinion. The young man was more strident: “Mann opens his mouth to say radical things because that is what his extremist backers prompt him to say.” This remark shows that young Punjabis of today are way smarter than the crooked political leaders whose only claim to fame is misusing religion to garner political power.
Why have they picked on a long-gone hero who has left an indelible mark on the heart and soul of India? Because he was an atheist and a leftist? That definitely is a major reason for their animus. The terrorists and their followers, exploiting Sikhism for their political ends, have always hated the leftists. Even the moderate and nationalist variety of the Sikh political class, who have used religion for politics, like the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), are uncomfortable about the very idea called Bhagat Singh.
But there is more to the opposition than just ideology. The new chief minister of Punjab, Bhagwant Maan, is almost apolitical, an obvious devotee of Bhagat Singh, and an authentic one at that. By restoring the place due to the martyr, he has injected a new spirit into the youth of Punjab. To the oldies, he has brought wonderful memories of their young days. The home walls of countless Punjabis were adorned with the pictures of Bhagat Singh for decades post- Independence. At that time, many Sikhs minded that the Hindus had appropriated their hero by putting a hat on his head.
Bhagat Singh did cut his hair to disguise his identity when he was on the run, but he grew his hair and beard towards the end of his life on the advice of Bhai Randhir Singh, a devout Sikh, who was lodged in the Lahore jail where Bhagat Singh was. Who can forget the picture of Bhagat Singh that was published in Blitz on March 28, 1948, where he is sitting handcuffed and chained in a cot in the Lahore jail, his hair tied in a knot on the top of his head? But Bhagat Singh’s appeal does not lie in his religious identity at all; he was, anyway, indifferent to it. It is his patriotism and heroic death that attract the common people to him.
Bhagat Singh’s form was frail but the spirit was rock-like against the British oppressors and dripping with love of the motherland. He was the kind of “sura” or valiant soldier Guru Gobind Singh, the architect of Sikh religion, envisioned a true Sikh to be. This is what the fundamentalists among the Sikh religious and political leadership, who, when not abusing religion for personal power, are paying only lip service to it, cannot tolerate Bhagat Singh. He was brave and stood firmly for India, whereas the fundamentalist Sikh is anti-India and a coward.
The fundamentalists admire the terrorist stooges of Pakistan, who tried to break Punjab from India in the 1980s and 1990s, and whose followers are once again active. They want to capture the hearts and minds of the Sikh youth once again and use them as cannon fodder for their war for a separate Sikh state. They would never have imagined that a greenhorn like Bhagwant Mann would one day become the chief minister of Punjab, resurrect Bhagat Singh and regenerate the patriotic spirit of the youth of Punjab. They are shell-shocked at this inadvertent political masterstroke played by a comedian-turned-politician.
Bhagwant himself may be innocent of the shock waves he has sent among the extremists. Even otherwise, he is a simple mind who, nonetheless, possesses a rare and spontaneous force. It is this force that drove him to make an impassioned appeal in the Lok Sabha about recognising the martyrdom of Guru Gobind Singh’s younger sons, Baba Fateh Singh and Baba Zorawar Singh, and to smuggling a placard supporting the farmers into the Central Hall of Parliament when he had exhausted all other methods of winning the attention of the national leadership to the cause. It is the same spontaneity that guided him to have the picture of Bhagat Singh in all government offices and to take the oath of office at Khatkar Kalan in Banga town where there is Bhagat Singh’s memorial. Through such moves, the chief minister means to remind the youth of Punjab about where true bravery and martyrdom lie, in strength and sacrifice. All youth craves such inspiration.
Eight years ago, I watched a movie on Bhagat Singh on television in the company of a public school–educated, 17-year-old Sikh girl, a friend’s daughter. She was planning to go abroad for further education. At the end of the film, she made a thought-provoking remark: “It is a pity that we do not have such inspiration in today’s India. Had Bhagat Singh been alive, I would not want to leave the country even to study abroad.” She was voicing the sentiment of millions of Punjabi youth who have not seen a spark in the state leadership for almost two generations. That remark has just flashed through my head and makes me grateful to Bhagwant Mann for reviving the memory of Bhagat Singh, an idea whose time will never run out.
Bhagat Singh’s heroism connects people across generations, class and religion: he unites that girl (who did go abroad), Shunti, the milkman, and me, the journalist, in spirit–the spirit of standing up to tyranny and the spirit of sacrifice. For me, there could be no better way to celebrate the 75 years of India’s freedom than by reporting that Bhagat Singh lives on through young men like Shunti, whose real name is Surinderpal Singh. It is he who represents the Sikh youth of today.
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