![]() Not much was known about him in the 1930s except for his martyrdom. Yet, he could pursue his passion for reading and writing relentlessly. We know he had a very short life, most of which was spent under the surveillance of the colonial government. This image was deliberately publicised by the colonial government, which many of us internalised and continue to romanticise every day. It is also an attempt to wean him away from the image of a trigger-happy young man. It only emphasizes his exposure to world literature through intense reading in his short life. ![]() When one talks about Bhagat Singh as a thinking individual and not just as a raw nationalist, it does not mean that he was a scholar in his teens. He learnt a lot from the plays he participated in as a young man. He was also passionate about some meaningful as well as romantic films. Even his mother reprimanded him for pushing books into his jacket pockets, which were mostly torn. All his comrades reported in their memoirs that they never saw Bhagat Singh without a book in his hand and a few in his pockets. How was a young man, who did not live beyond his early twenties, able to think and write so profoundly about the complex social, philosophical, economic and political issues? One simple answer to this question is that he was a voracious reader, he read anything that helped him to unravel the complexities of life from both prose and poetry. He castigated all those who floundered on these basic values, as is evident from the fairly huge corpus of writings he bequeathed to us. Bhagat Singh evokes respect among many across the border, despite the two countries’ bitter relationship, because he always vouched for human dignity and rights beyond sectarian divide. It has been declared as a national heritage site by the Pakistani government. Bhagat Singh’s birth turned this remote dusty village into a place of pilgrimage. The village, like it does every year, is planning to celebrate his birthday with pride. Bhagat Singh was born on this day in 1907, in a village called Banga, now in Pakistan. ![]()
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