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Politics and the Work of the Dead in Modern India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2018

Chris Moffat
Chris Moffat*
Affiliation:
School of History, Queen Mary University of London
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

This article provides a framework for understanding the continuing political potential of the anticolonial dead in twenty-first-century India. It demonstrates how scholars might move beyond histories of reception to interrogate the force of inheritance in contemporary political life. Rather than the willful conjuring of the dead by the living, for a politics in the present, it considers the more provocative possibility that the dead might themselves conjure politics—calling the living to account, inciting them to action. To explicate the prospects for such an approach, the article traces the contested afterlives of martyred Indian revolutionary Bhagat Singh (1907–1931), comparing three divergent political projects in which this iconic anticolonial hero is greeted as interlocutor in a struggle caught “halfway.” It is this temporal experience of “unfinished business”—of a revolution left incomplete, a freedom not yet perfected—that conditions Bhagat Singh's appearance as a contemporary in the political disputes of the present, whether they are on the Hindu nationalist right, the Maoist student left, or amidst the smoldering remains of Khalistani separatism in twenty-first-century Punjab. Exploring these three variant instances in which living communities affirm Bhagat Singh's stake in the struggles of the present, the article provides insight into the long-term legacies of revolutionary violence in India and the relationship between politics and the public life of history in the postcolonial world more generally.

Keywords

martyrdominheritancerevolutionhauntingafterlivespoliticsBhagat SinghIndia
Type
Mimesis and Familiarity (Religious)
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 60 , Issue 1 , January 2018 , pp. 178 - 211
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2017 

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48 These actions are traced out on the group's Facebook page, but also see: “Serial Offender Bagga Danced on Mirwaiz's Car,” Sunday Guardian, 16 Oct. 2011; “Protesting Group Tries to Burn Constitution at J&K House,” Pioneer, 26 Jan. 2012; “Kak's Film Screened amid Tight Security in Delhi,” Hindu, 17 Feb. 2012; “Right-Wing Activists Badger Geelani at Event in City,” Hindustan Times, 26 Mar. 2012; and “CD Row: Congress MP Abhishek Manu Singhvi Quits Official Posts,” IBNLive, 23 Apr. 2012, http://ibnlive.in.com/news/cd-row-congress-mp-abhishek-manu-singhvi-quits-official-posts/251385-44.html (last accessed Mar. 2016).

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88 Axel, Nation's Tortured Body; “Pro-Khalistani Group Distributes “Sadda Haq” in Canada,” Indian Express, 12 Apr. 2013.

89 Louis E. Fenech charts a similar process with famous gunman Udham Singh, whose “individual identity was … clearly subsumed and reshaped by the discourse of martyrdom”; “Contested Nationalisms; Negotiated Terrains: The Way Sikhs Remember Udham Singh ‘Shahid’ (1899–1940),” Modern Asian Studies 36, 4 (2002): 827–70Google Scholar, 855.

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92 The most direct treatment remains the documentary In Memory of Friends, directed by Anand Patwardhan (Independent Release, 1990).

93 This alignment with a history of honorable death was evident in the immediate wake of his execution; see Ramaswamy, Goddess.

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95 Fenech, “Contested Nationalisms,” 8. See also Fenech, Martyrdom.

96 Gaur, Martyr, 26.

97 Mahmood, Cynthia Keppley, Fighting for Faith and Nation: Dialogues with Sikh Militants (Philadelphia, 1996)Google Scholar, esp. ch. 8. See also Bal, “Shattered Dome.”

98 National newspapers carried abridged versions of the letter in July 1990, with only the Chandigarh-daily Tribune publishing the full version on 28 July after one of its correspondents received threats of violence. See the Press Council of India's report on militancy in Punjab and Kashmir: Crisis and Credibility: Lancer Paper 4 (New Delhi, 1991), esp. 22.

99 “Text of Bhai Sukha and Bhai Jinda's Letter to the President of India,” Panthic.org, http://panthic.org/articles/5155 (last accessed Mar. 2016).

100 Ibid. Sukha Singh and Mehtab Singh were eighteenth-century figures revered for killing the pro-Mughal kotwal of Amritsar, Massa Rangar, loathed for his disregard for Sikh customs. Wazida refers to the infamous Nawab of Sirhind at the time of Guru Gobind Singh, while Lakhpat Rai was the diwan in Mughal Lahore notorious for massacring Sikhs in the 1740s. Julio Rebeiro was director general of the Punjab police during Sukha and Jinda's time and responsible for brutal crackdowns on Sikh militants. Dawyer is likely a misspelling of O'Dwyer, the Punjab lieutenant-governor assassinated by Udham Singh, but it also echoes Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer, who ordered the shooting at Jallianwala Bagh and died of natural causes in England in 1927.

101 Singh, Bhagat “On the Slogan of Long Live Revolution,” in Varma, Shiv, ed., Selected Writings of Shaheed Bhagat Singh (Kanpur, 1996)Google Scholar.

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103 See “Videos” on Jazzy B Official Website, http://www.jazzyb.com/ (last accessed Mar. 2016).

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105 Ibid. On bhangra’s global career, see Kalra, Virinder S, “ Vilayeti Rhythms,” Theory, Culture & Society 17, 3 (2000): 80–102 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Jazzy B's context in contemporary Punjab, see Isha Singh Sawhney, “Swagga like Us: The Unstoppable Boys of Punjabi Pop,” Caravan [magazine] (Nov. 2013).

106 See “Main Fan Bhagat Singh Da—Diljit Dosanjh—Bikkar Bai Sentimental Official Full Video,” posted by user “Sony Music India” on YouTube, 22 Mar. 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDE0SLOw-OI (last accessed Mar. 2016). Yo Yo Honey Singh was featured on Nishawn Bhullar's album The Folkstar (2010), contributing to the song “Bhagat Singh.” When Honey Singh has been criticized in the press for references to sexual violence in his songs, he often refers to his admiration for Bhagat Singh, as if to prove his credibility. For instance: “Honey Singh: Do You Know I've Sung a Song about Bhagat Singh?” Parda Phhash, 2 Jan. 2013, http://www.pardaphash.com/new/news/honey-singh-do-you-know-ive-sung-a-song-about-bhagat-singh/54506.html (last accessed Mar. 2016).

107 Zulm is conventionally understood as “oppression directed against an entire people and so intense it has to be resisted.” See Joyce Pettigrew, Sikhs of the Punjab, 10.

108 Roy, Arundhati, ed., 13 December: A Reader (Delhi, 2006)Google Scholar.

109 Firdous Syed, “Afzal Guru's Hanging Has Widened Gulf between Delhi and Kashmir,” DNA India, 20 Feb. 2013.

110 “Kashmiri Students Protest in Delhi Against Guru's Hanging,” Kashmir Media Service, 23 Feb. 2012, http://www.kmsnews.org/news/2013/02/23/students-protest-in-new-delhi-against-guru's-hanging.html (last accessed Apr. 2016).

111 “Gun an Option for Kashmir Solution: Syed Ali Geelani,” Times of India, 12 Nov. 2013.