WITHOUT FEAR—THE LIFE AND TRIAL OF BHAGAT SINGH
AUTHOR: KULDIP NAYAR
Price; Rs 395
PUBLISHED BY HARPER COLLINS INDIA, NEW DELHI


After reading Nayar’s “Without Fear” I was numbed; my mind kept re-playing the scene in which a patriotic 23 year’s last gesture before departing from this world was to kiss the hangman’s noose, readily accepting it around his neck only so that India might be free and more quitable. Looking at today’s 23 year olds around me, I see hedonists to the hilt, willing to kill for an out-of-reach lifestyle, obsessed with the latest 3G mobile, latest car, you name it. Advertisements consistently mock the simple way of life, stressing that simplicity is stupidity, girls grimacing if a young man still uses an old mobile, or doesn’t understand their silly innuendos, but hey, life gives you a second chance, so buy this new mobile, you tubelight, remember the “men are back!” Somebody who doesn’t belong to this yuppie set earns the smiling contempt of a super-star, “don’t be santoosht--thora aur wish karo”. Selfishness is in, wishing for the rest who struggle below the poverty line (Who ARE these villagers, man?) is just so uncool. A wish list for people still without education, roti kapda aur makan, electricity, two square meals a day, is that for real?

It was for these “benefits” for the poor that Bhagat Singh gave up his life 77 years ago, on March 23, 1931. His wish list would have been long and formidable, but selfish it was certainly not. It makes one weep to realise that even after 77 years we have not been able to honour Bhagat Singh’s wishes and bring about a more equitable society in India. Sadly, in many ways his sacrifice for India was in vain, if this is what free India is all about today.

Kuldip Nayar’s account of Bhagat Singh is a loving portrait of a young man fired by nationalistic fervour, by an idealism that brooked no hypocricy, that suffered no fools, that saw Gandhi’s pacifism as inept. He believed that a strong statement, acts of strength and not ahimsa, needed to be committed for the British to quicken their complete exit from India. The voracious reader in Bhagat Singh was fond of the words of Auguste Valliante, the French anarchist, “It takes a loud voice to make the deaf hear.” He wanted on the one hand, to awaken the youth of India and on the other, the British empire’s masquerade of being a “fair and just” administration, to be exposed to the world’s watching eyes.

Nayar’s brilliant depiction of the chain of events that led to the martyrdom of the three revolutionaries, Sukhdev, Rajguru and Bhagat Singh, makes the book an absolute must-read. Each of the 11 chapters has no heading but commences with an excellent well-chosen Urdu couplet that sums up the mind-set of the idealistic revolutionary that was Bhagat Singh: “Usey yeh fikr hai hardam naya tarz-e-jfa kya hai, hamen yeh shauq hai dekhen sitam ki intiha ky hai, ” Nayar’s penchant for couplets ends with the last one that decorates the epilogue, “Bhagat Singh ke khoon ka asar dekh lena Mitadege zaalim ka ghar dekh lena!”

Tracing the growth of a revolutionary, Nayar shows us how in 1919, the child brought up in a patriotic family, managed to slip through the heavy police security and visited the site on which 20,000 Indians were trapped and killed by the British. “Somehow managing to push through the sentries on guard, he had barged into the garden and collected a jar full of mud, wet with the blood of Indians. When he finally returned home, the twelve year old was asked by his younger sister,” Where were you all this time? Mother has been waiting to give you something to eat.” But Bhagat Singh was no thinking of food. Showing her the jar he said, “Look at this. This is the blood of our people killed by the British. Salute it. “ Then he put the jar in a niche and worshipped it with flowers.” By the time Lala Lajpat Rai was mercilessly beaten to death in 1928, Bhagat Singh was a prolific reader of serious non-fiction, and had shaped into an extraordinarily brilliant and well-informed young man. He resolved that Lajpat Rai’s death had to be avenged; his approach is contrasted with a mild statement from Gandhi who remarked, “What I would like the workers to draw from this incident is not to be depressed or taken aback by assault, but to treat it as part of the game.”

In fact, it is the apposition of the two ideologies, Bhagat and Gandhi’s, that really makes one wonder: what if the British had still been rich, would they have left merely on the basis of satyagrapha? Satyagraha can hardly work with the Osama Bin Ladens of this world and for India, British rule was even more devastating and illegitimate than the destruction of the twin towers on 9/11. Does Gandhigiri have answers for Osama? Sadly, no. Bhagat Singh could see as much and realised that the plight of Indians would remain the same if they allowed themselves to be subjected to the ineffectiveness of pacifism.
Mercenaries to the core, the British saw the bottom-line and what they say wasn’t appetizing. India was no longer the cash-cow they could bank on and the nuisance caused by Lajpat Rai, Tilak, Bhagat Singh, and their ilk, played a much larger role in their decision to leave India than has so far been credited to these great men.

It was the systematic attempts to undermine British administration that played their part to enhance Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement and give it that “fear factor” that any movement against violent and undemocratic forces always necessitates. Forceful statements are essential, so much even Arjuna was advised in the Gita. More than Gandhi who was guided by the Gita, it was the atheist Bhagat Singh who really followed Krishna’s words and let his life deliver His message.

The book traces the various brain-storming sessions the young men had before deciding to make their statement; it touches upon the mysterious connection between a married woman, Durga Devi, a fellow revolutionary, and himself, and their two days spent together; it depicts how Saunders instead of Scott was killed due to mistaken identity; how Motilal Nehru often funded them while they were in hiding.

However, the book lacks photographs which would have made the subject come alive. A table of contents at the beginning would have made the book complete. Apart from typos found at various places, the book also suffers when Nayar attempts to differentiate between a “terrorist” and a “revolutionary’ in the Preface. It is in the Annexures that the book really comes alive, Bhagat Singh’s treatises “The Philosophy of the Bomb” and “Why I am an Atheist” are exceptional inclusions that make Bhagat Singh spring alive from the pages of the book. Bhagat Singh’s intellectual honesty is rare, who else but Bhagat Singh could write,
“ I am going to sacrifice my life for a cause. What more consolation can there be? I know that it will be the end when the rope is tightened around my neck and the rafter moved from under my feet. To use more precise religious terminology,--it will be moment of utter annihilation. My soul will come to nothing. With no selfish motive or desire to be awarded here or hereafter, quite disinterestedly, have I devoted my life to the cause of independence, because I could not do otherwise.”
An absolute gem of a book about Bhagat Singh, a gem of a man.