Life & Legend of Bhagat Singh (A Pictorial Volume)

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"They may kill me, but they cannot kill my ideas. They can crush my body, but they will not be able to crush my spirit...." these words of Bhagat Singh spoken many years ago still reverberate. A whole generation was inspired by them.

Hailing from a family well-known for its revolutionary prowess and witnessing the injustice meted out against his fellow countrymen, Sardar Bhagat Singh was shaped as a patriot due to the politically charged era of his time. In his short life. he has left behind a legacy of organised agitation, unbelievable courage, and exemplary defiance against all forms of oppression. This pictorial volume consists of some rare photographs, letters, documents, personal belongings of Bhagat Singh and those associated with him. Apart from his influential role in India's independence, this book sheds light on Bhagat Singh's persona as well. His life journey, early influences, his association with the freedom movement, and lesser-known instances from his trial. has been chronicled in this book.

The author has been a Professor and Dean in prestigious Universities and is presently an honorary advisor to the Bhagat Singh Archives and Resource Centre, New Delhi. A known authority on Bhagat Singh, Chaman Lal has researched about the lesser known aspects of his life, ideology and personality. He has written around sixty books and has been honored by many literary associations throughout the country and abroad.

For every young adult in any part of India, the name Bhagat Singh creates a sense of intrigue towards this iconic hero Indian freedom struggle. That is I was also attracted towards Bhagat Singh. I have had the fortune to get firsthand account of the life, Bhagat Singh and other freedom fighters led, from one of their counterparts himself. Manmathnath Gupta, a participant in Kakori Rail dacoity of 1925, was saved from the gallows due to his young age. After reading his sketches of revolutionaries, Bharat Ke Krantikari, I was so impressed that I translated this small book in my mother tongue Punjabi at the age of 20. Though I was a student and later a teacher of Hindi literature, my passion and interest in Indian revolutionaries never waned. Along with writing, my focus remained mainly on collecting the writings and documents pertaining to Bhagat Singh.

Bhagat Singh was the product of his times, the epical times of glorious Indian freedom struggle, and his tenaciousness is what made him into an icon which he is today. Been born in a family which had a long tradition of patriotism since many generations, had a deep imprint on him and there are several instances from his childhood which are a tell-tale sign of the indelible mark he would eventually leave on the Indian history.

Bhagat Singh was quite influenced by his grandfather, Arjan Singh and uncle, Ajit Singh who was living in exile. Seeing his family members suffer at the hands of British Government created bitter feelings within him in his tender age. But surprisingly, it did not make him hate the Britishers or whites in general. He started reading political literature from a very early age, in fact, as soon as he learnt to read, he started reading patriotic journals, mostly in Urdu language at home. By the time he entered middle school in Lahore, he was writing letters to his family. At the age of 12 years, he went to Amritsar in 1919 to pay tributes to the victims of massacre of Jallianwala Bagh, returning with blood-soaked soil of martyrs in a glass container. He wrote his first essay on Punjab's language and script problem in Hindi at the age of sixteen years in 1923 and won first prize of fifty rupees. By the time he wrote his last letter to his comrades in jail on 22 March, a day before he was executed, he had already penned more than 130 letters, petitions, statements and essays, apart from writing a hundred plus pages of "Jail Notebook", which contained notes from books he had read in jail. Some of his writings have still not come to light; however, the total volume of his writings in the four languages he was competent in - Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi and English - comes to about 500 pages. He was well versed in Sanskrit and Bengali as well. Being a voracious reader contributed immensely to his writing, which advocated against all and any form of oppression.

**Contents and Sample Pages**