CHAPTER 4

 

EARLY EFFORTS IN THE REVOLUTIONARY PARTY

 

    The years 1926, 1927 and 1928 may be regarded as depicting a wandering and restless spirit of young Bhagat Singh. The hanging of the four youths in the Kakori Conspiracy Case and the heavy sentences on many others had set a fire to the heart of the emotional youth, and his first impulse was to avenge the death of his dear comrades.  In the year 1927 he directed his energy towards this pur­pose, but the efforts were mostly un­successful.

    In order to achieve better results a meeting of the important members of the party was held at Cawnpore sometime in the year 1927, and it was decided there that the first work of the party would be to organize and consolidate the party. With this aim in view Bhagat Singh and Bijoy Kumar Sinha undertook to tour Punjab, U. P. & Bihar and establish connections with scattered youths.

 

    But hardly had he commenced work on this line in right earnest when a strange incident occurred which checked his activities for the time being. In October, 1926 a bomb was thrown at Lahore on a dense crowd which had accumulated on the occasion of Ram-Leela procession. The Punjab police, by an ingenious argument, convinced themselves that it was the work of the Re­volutionary party. It forthwith began to look for an important revolutionary who was at Lahore on that date. As Bhagat Singh admirably suited their pur­pose, they arrested him and lodged him in the Borstal Jail. For several days he was locked up in a Solitary cell without being produced before a magistrate or getting an opportunity to know why he was arrested. Nevertheless, he got an opportunity to see the inside of that very jail where his comrades, two years and a half later, valiantly fought alongside with him in the memorable hunger strike for the betterment of the lot of the political prisoners.

    When the charges were revealed to-him he was greatly surprised. To be hauled up any moment for revolutionary conspiracy was a thing to the idea of which he had accustomed himself from boyhood. But to be charged with the heinous offence of killing innocent men and women on a Mela day like the Dussera, was a thing beyond his dreams. The case dragged on for a long period and the learned magistrate asked him to furnish a security for no less than Rs. 60,000 before he could be released on bail. There was, of course, not much difficulty in procuring the huge security for such a family as that of Bhagat Singh. After a prolonged litigation, the bond was ulti­mately cancelled by order of the High Court. The whole episode is a glaring commentary on the methods of the police who thus harassed Bhagat Singh with impunity for a crime with which he had not even the shadow of a connexion.

 

During the period when he was enlarged on a security of  Rs. 60,000 Bhagat Singh could not naturally take part in revolutionary activities. But this period he utilized by taking part in public activities in which he rapidly came to the forefront. Two important things carried out by Bhagat Singh at this period were the organization of the wellknown NauJawan Bharat Sabha and the public demonstrations in connexion with the hanging’s of the revolutionaries in the Kakori Conspiracy Case. The first developed into the foremost national organization of the youths of the Punjab, and considerably influenced the activities of the Congress. The second resulted in the "Kakori Day" celebrations which took place on the day when the four young men were hanged a year ago.

    While engaged in organizing the "Kakori Day" celebrations, an idea came into the mind of Bhagat Singh to deliver public lectures on the lives of the Indian youths who had laid their lives in the Lahore Conspiracy Cases of 1915 and 1916 He set to work and collected photos from obscure places and got lantern slides made of them. He had an idea of going on a lecture tour throughout Northern India in accompaniment with these lantern slides.  Though he could not carry out his plan as far as Northern India was concerned, he organized very successful lectures at Lahore. On the first day of the lantern lecture at Bradlaugh Hall, the whole hall was packed to suffocation and the lectures were listened to with rapt attention. It should be noted, however, that Bhagat Singh was prevented from delivering the lectures himself on account of the huge security. But he instructed his lieutenant, Bhagwati Charan, gave him full materials and. provided him with lecture notes. On account of the striking success of these lantern lectures, they were soon prohibited by the Punjab Government. It may be mentioned here that this was the same Bhagwati Charan whose name comes out so prominently in the recent Lahore Conspiracy Case which started on 26th. January, 1931, and of whom it is stated that he died while carrying on an experiment in the preparation of bombs on.

account of a terrible explosion. He was an absconder in that Lahore Conspiracy Case in which Bhagat Singh and Dutt figured.

 

    Bhagat Singh's idea in organizing the NauJawan Bharat Sabha as a distinct from, and in some cases a rival organization to the Congress should be carefully studied. His study of the poverty question of the world convinced him that the emancipation of India laid not merely in political freedom but in the economic freedom of the masses. Hence the activities of the N. B. Sabha were planned on purely communistic lines. In fact, it was meant to be purely a laborers' and peasants' organization to which the youths of the country were required to render service.

We thus see a great change in the thought and outlook of Sardar Bhagat Singh. In 1926-27, he was of opinion that terrorism should be one of the weapons of the revolutionary party. The hangings in the Kakori Case, in spite of the powerful appeals of the legislators and councilors for a commutation, made him a convinced terrorist. But his deeper study of the problems of India, which were to him identical with those of the world, led him to change his opinion. During his study at the National College, Lahore, he was gradually converted to .socialism, and he began to look up to Russia as the state which came up nearest to his ideal.

 

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