Top 8 unknown & interesting facts about Bhagat Singh

Bhagat Singh’s courage and beliefs continue to inspire many, even 90 years after his martyrdom. His legacy is revered, his words glorified and his name in the history books is inconceivable to forget even if a considerable chunk of life is shrouded in mystery and quandary. 

Inquilab Zindabad“long live the revolution” were the words of the man credited with igniting a renewed fire in the dormant struggle for freedom in British-ruled India. Bhagat Singh spent his short life driving the torch of revolution and it is in this way that he died as well. At only 23 years of age, he was a legend, an exemplar, and termed the nation’s son for his unequivocal resistance to the British regime. 

Born on 27 September 1907 in the village Banga of Lyallpur district in Western Punjab — current day Pakistan — Bhagat Singh had been taken with the romantic idea of revolution quite early in his life. As a student, he was uncannily interested in understanding the nitty-gritty politics that surrounded the British regime in India. A patriot by heart, he had always dreamed of India as an independent nation. 

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While he did amass a fair share of critique for the violent path he had chosen to walk, rather than the more peaceful and non-violent efforts propagated by the Indian National Congress and Mahatma Gandhi, it was the spirit of his sheer desperation for freedom that won people over. Bhagat Singh was a national hero — especially among the young adult student population in India who had grown up under the British regime and had witnessed the atrocities committed by them firsthand. 

The police, at that time, had become cautious of his unmistakable influence over the youth who had begun to raise their voice against injustices with renewed vigour. He was subsequently arrested and tried for the murder of a British Official. The whole country was in unrest as his death sentence was announced. But the sentence could not break Singh’s spirit and he continued to be a source of strength and endurance to the revolutionary movement in the country until, and long after his untimely death. 

Bhagat Singh’s courage and beliefs continue to inspire many, even 90 years after his martyrdom. His legacy is revered, his words glorified and his name in the history books is inconceivable to forget even if a considerable chunk of life is shrouded in mystery and quandary. 

Here are 8 unusual and unique facts about Bhagat Singh you should know about: 

1. Bhagat Singh’s family had a longstanding association with the freedom movement taking shape in the country. His Father and Uncle were involved in grassroots efforts in mobilising the people at the local level to join the struggle for freedom. In fact, at the time of Bhagat’s birth, his father was in jail for political agitation.

2. Despite being a Sandhu Jatt, Bhagat Singh’s grandfather did not approve of the Khalsa High School in Lahore and its allegiance to the British government. Consequently, Singh was not enrolled in the school and instead went to a Hindu reformist Arya Samaj institution.

Image courtesy: aajtak.com

 

3. When the Jallianwala Bagh incident occurred in Amritsar, Bhagat Singh was in school. He immediately left the premises during school hours and went straight to the location of the massacre. It is rumoured that he gathered the mud of that place which was spotted with the blood of those who died in a vial and worshipped it every day. At that time, he was just 12 years old.

 

4. From a young age, he was attracted to the extreme and socialist ideas of leaders such as Vladimir Lenin and began to examine their works. He was fascinated with Anarchist and Marxist ideologies propagated by radical and socialist leaders which further aided in cultivating his revolutionary outlook towards the sluggish freedom movement that had been occurring in the country so far.

 

Image courtesy: Wikipedia commons

 

5. He was enrolled in National College — located in Lahore, now Pakistan — founded by Lala Lajpat Rai, and was known to have a keen interest in co-curricular activities. During his academic years in college, Bhagat Singh was a great actor and a theatre artist. He was part of several plays organized in the institute, the most notable characters played by him being ‘Rana Pratap’, ‘Samrat Chandragupta’ and ‘Bharat-durdasha’.

 

Image courtesy: indiatimes.com

 

6. Bhagat Singh’s love and devotion to his country always trumped all else. When his parents wanted him to marry, he ran away to Kanpur, making it known to his parents that “if I marry in colonial India, where British Raj is there, then my bride will be my death. Therefore, there is no rest or worldly desire that can lure me now.” He only agreed to come back to Punjab after his parents acquiesced to his stand.

 

Image courtesy: Wikipedia commons

 

7. During his time in prison, after he was convicted of murder and sentenced to death, Bhagat Singh’s maintained a daily journal where he continued to record his ideas of freedom and revolution. He also staged a hunger strike, fasting for 116 days with a fellow inmate to demand better living conditions and treatment for prisoners in jails.

 

Image courtesy: punjabtoday.com

 

8. Bhagat Singh had insisted to the British government that he should be granted capital punishment with a bullet and not through hanging as he was a prisoner of war but his request was unheeded. He mentioned this in his letter addressed to Lord Irwin, writing “since I was arrested during the war, I cannot be punished to death by hanging. Let me be thrown into the mouth of a cannon.”