How not to remember Bhagat Singh
On the Monday that just went by, Bhagat Singh would have turned 108. If he were alive, and there's a good chance the hero from Faisalabad in present day Pakistan, Bhagat would have a been a quiet, grizzled old man. Perhaps still sitting on a khatiya, his hair in a small greyed knot atop his head. Thick glasses, perhaps, and his once imposing sardar frame bent by the years. It always startles those who don't know, as it did me, that Bhagat Singh was only 23 when he was executed.
History, like a TV camera, adds years that don't exist. For a figure that has shaped the idea of modern martyrdom more than any other, astonishingly little is really know about Bhagat Singh. We have bare contours of his personality from letters and accounts, the things he is quoted to have said. Nothing close to what we probably should have, given that for all things really matter, including his untiring pop culture appeal, Bhagat Singh is India's Che.
Martyr
This week, I've been dwelling on Bhagat Singh's life for two reasons: one, his birth anniversary, which ever-charged social media knock the doors down to remind you about. And two, the Shaheed's family in Punjab called for classified government files on Bhagat Singh to be opened to the public, like Mamata Banerjee had just done with some of Netaji Bose's. But there was a third item that arrived just yesterday that well, sealed the deal.
It was a video clip of Somnath Bharti, a man you are undoubtedly familiar with if you've been reading this column. The video showed him seated in a police vehicle, being escorted to Agra's Jagdish Pura Police Station. With a defiant grimness in his eye, Mr Bharti brandished a book for the cameras. It was a biography of Bhagat Singh. As with most things these days, my first impulse was mostly disbelief.
What was Somnath trying to say? What could he possibly have been trying to say? That he was a martyr? That his inconvenience in a south Delhi police lock-up as part of law's due process was somehow akin to the shackles that stayed on Bhagat Singh for the duration of the Lahore Conspiracy trial? Shaheed Somnath Bharti? Very little really baffles anymore, sure.
Politicisation
But given that Mr Bharti had similarly brandished a copy of the Indian Constitution for the cameras when he was arrested last Friday, clearly he was using Bhagat's book as more than a sunshade. It was also a reminder that Somnath had done little other than sign himself up to a fairly populous club of those who've dementedly tried hitching their carts to the Bhagat wagon.
In August 2012, posters at Delhi's sprawling Ramlila Maidan proudly depicted yoga guru Ramdev's aide Balkrishna in the centre, flanked if you please by a smaller Bhagat Singh to his left, in addition to other Indian heroes. It was only after a spasm of outrage and disbelief rang out across TV news stations that the yoga guru's team hurriedly had the posters taken down. Ramdev's own team was only the latest in what is undoubtedly a time-tested recourse: slap on a photo of Bhagat Singh to make some grinning neta or student leader or rabble-rouser look a little cleaner, braver and, well, cooler. They did it for Bhindranwale. They've done it for Amarinder Singh. They've done it for the ABVP and NSUI leaders in the past. Fringe groups, organisations, activist outfits, even some NGOs should probably pay Bhagat's family a royalty for the number of times they've invoked his name or used one of a small list of iconic images.
The only heartening thing about this historic relationship we have with the ghost of Bhagat Singh is the consistency of what we throw at him. In March this year, flamboyantly demonstrating that bumbling stupidity goes beautifully with the urge to be seen to pay obeisance, the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation ended up printing hoardings with photos of US soldiers instead of the Indian martyrs. An even more recent invoker of the Shaheed has been young Hardik Patel, the gun-toting crusader for Patel rights. Lounging slightly incongruously in a studio chair, he mumbled, "We will take our agitation to each block and district in the state. We were following Gandhi and Sardar Patel so far. We will now become like Bhagat Singh if the need arises." If there's a line between genuine obeisance and the facile borrowing of Bhagat Singh for reflected glory or profit, it's too blurry to see. Ek Bhagat Singh ka photo laga do, achha rahega. Rubberstamp goodness, courage, fearlessness and youth. There isn't a package in history more complete.
Homage
One little tailpiece: On Tuesday, actor Akshay Kumar arrived at a sports club in Delhi on a power bike, wearing a Sikh turban similar to the one he does in his new film Singh Is Bliing. After a customary audio-visual that saw the star, flanked by two Sikh organisers punch the air as they hailed a projected image of Bhagat Singh on the wall behind them, Akshay Kumar was awarded something called the Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh National Sadbhawna Award by Punjab's deputy CM. "Bhagat Singh dedicated his life for the freedom of India. He is a youth idol and an inspiration to millions. He will remain in the heart of every Indian," said Akshay. It isn't clear if Akshay power-biked it out of there right after.