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Bhagat Singh as ‘Satyagrahi’: The Limits to Non-violence in Late Colonial India1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2009

NEETI NAIR
NEETI NAIR*
Affiliation:
University of Virginia, Randall Hall, PO Box 400180, Charlottesville, VA 22904 Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Among anti-colonial nationalists, Bhagat Singh and M.K. Gandhi are seen to exemplify absolutely contrasting strategies of resistance. Bhagat Singh is regarded as a violent revolutionary whereas Gandhi is the embodiment of non-violence. This paper argues that Bhagat Singh and his comrades became national heroes not after their murder of a police inspector in Lahore or after throwing bombs in the Legislative Assembly in New Delhi but during their practice of hunger strikes and non-violent civil disobedience within the walls of Lahore's prisons in 1929–30. In fact there was plenty in common in the strategies of resistance employed by both Gandhi and Bhagat Singh. By labelling these revolutionaries ‘murderers’ and ‘terrorists’, the British sought to dismiss their non-violent demands for rights as ‘political prisoners’. The same labels were adopted by Gandhi and his followers. However, the quality of anti-colonial nationalism represented by Bhagat Singh was central to the resolution of many of the divisions that racked pre-partition Punjab.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 3 , May 2009 , pp. 649 - 681
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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Sitaramayya, Pattabhi, History of the Indian National Congress, Vol 1: 1885–1935. Delhi: S. Chand, 1969.Google Scholar
Thakur, Gopal, Bhagat Singh: The Man and His Ideas. Bombay: People's pub. House, 1953.Google Scholar
Report of the Commissioners Appointed by the Punjab Sub-Committee of the INC, Vol 1, 1920.Google Scholar
Chand, Duni (of Ambala), The Ulster of India or an Analysis of the Punjab Problems, Lahore, 1936.Google Scholar
Gandhi, M.K., An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth. Boston: Beacon Press, 1957.Google Scholar
Gandhi, M.K., Satyagraha in South Africa. Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1950 [1928].Google Scholar
Gandhi, M.K., Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vols 40–46 and 49–51, 1929–1932. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Trust, 1970–72.Google Scholar
Gandhi, M.K., Young India, Vols VI, IX, X and XIII, 1924–32. Reprinted Ahmedabad: Navajivan Trust, 1981.Google Scholar
Hale, H.W., Political Trouble in India, 1917–1937. Compiled in the Intelligence Bureau, Home Dept, GOI, Simla, 1937; Reprinted Allahabad, 1974.Google Scholar
Ogilvie, C.M.G., Report on the Administration of the Jails in the Punjab, 1932, Lahore, 1933.Google Scholar
Sandhu, Virendra, ed., Bhagat Singh: Patr aur Dastavez. Delhi: Rajpal and Sons, 1977.Google Scholar
Singh, Jagmohan and Chamanlal, eds., Bhagat Singh aur unke saathiyon ke dastavez. New Delhi: Rajkamal Paperbacks, 2005 [1987].Google Scholar
Alter, Joseph, Gandhi's Body: Sex, Diet and the Politics of Nationalism. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arnold, David, Gandhi, Profiles in Power. New York: Longman, 2001.Google Scholar
Arnold, David and Blackburn, Stuart eds., Telling Lives in India: Biography, Autobiography and Life History. New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004.Google Scholar
Bhattacharya, Sabyasachi, Book Review of David Hardiman, Gandhi: In His Time and Ours, New York: Columbia University Press, 2003 in The Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol XLI, No 4, Oct–Dec 2004.Google Scholar
Bondurant, Joan V, Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brasted, H.V., ‘Irish Models and the Indian National Congress 1870–1922’. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Vol VIII, Nos 1 and 2, June, December 1985.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Judith M., Gandhi and Civil Disobedience: The Mahatma in Indian Politics 1928–34. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1977.Google Scholar
Erikson, Erik H., Gandhi's Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence. New York: Norton, 1969.Google Scholar
Friend, Corinne, ed., Yashpal Looks Back: Selections from an Autobiography. New Delhi: Vikas, 1981.Google Scholar
Friend, Corinne, ‘Yashpal: Fighter for Freedom, Writer for Justice.’ Journal of South Asian Literature, Vol 13, Nos 1–4, 1978.Google Scholar
Ghosh, Durba, ‘Terrorism in Bengal: Political Violence in the Interwar Years’ in Ghosh, Durba and Kennedy, Dane, eds., Decentring Empire: Britain, India and the Transcolonial World. Delhi: Orient Longman, 2006.Google Scholar
Grant, Kevin, ‘The Transcolonial World of Hunger Strikes and Political Fasts, c. 1909–1935’ in Ghosh, Durba and Kennedy, Dane eds., Decentring Empire: Britain, India and the Transcolonial World. Delhi: Orient Longman, 2006.Google Scholar
Gupta, Manmathnath, They Lived Dangerously: Reminiscences of a Revolutionary. Delhi: People's Pub. House, 1969.Google Scholar
Hardiman, David, Gandhi in His Time and Ours: The Global Legacy Of His Ideas. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Jafar, Mohammed, Rehman, I.A. and Jafar, Ghani, eds., Jinnah as a Parliamentarian. Islamabad: Azfar Associates, 1977.Google Scholar
Lucas, Colin, ‘Revolutionary Violence, the People and the Terror’ in Michael Barker, Keith, ed., The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture, Vol 4: The Terror. New York: Pergamon Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Markovits, Claude, The Ungandhian Gandhi: The Life and Afterlife of the Mahatma. Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003.Google Scholar
Mohan, Kamlesh, Militant Nationalism in the Punjab, 1919–1935. Delhi: Manohar, 1985.Google Scholar
Mukherjee, Rudrangshu, ed., The Penguin Gandhi Reader. Delhi: Penguin, 1993.Google Scholar
Nagaraj, D.R., The Flaming Feet: A Study of the Dalit Movement in India. Bangalore: South Forum in association with Institute for Cultural Research and Action, 1993.Google Scholar
Nanda, B.R., The Making of a Nation: India's Road to Independence. New Delhi: Harper Collins, 1998.Google Scholar
Nanda, B.R., ed., Mahatma Gandhi: 125 Years. New Delhi: Indian Council for Cultural Relations & New Age International Publishers, 1995.Google Scholar
Nanda, B.R., Gandhi and His Critics. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985.Google Scholar
Noorani, A.G., The Trial of Bhagat Singh: Politics of Justice. Delhi: Konark Publisher, 1996.Google Scholar
Pinney, Christopher, Photos of the Gods: The Printed Image and Political Struggle in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Pinney, Christopher, ‘The Body and the Bomb: Technologies of Modernity in Colonial India’ in Davis, Richard H., ed., Picturing the Nation: Iconographies of Modern India. Delhi: Orient Longman, 2007.Google Scholar
Parekh, Bhikhu, Colonialism, Tradition and Reform: An Analysis of Gandhi's Political Discourse. New Delhi: Sage, 1999.Google Scholar
Pratt, Tim and Vernon, James, eds., ‘“Appeal from This Fiery Bed . . .”: The Colonial Politics of Gandhi's Fasts and Their Metropolitan Reception’. Journal of British Studies, 44, January 2005, pp. 92–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rahbar, Hansraj, Bhagat Singh and His Thought. Delhi: Manak Publications, 1990.Google Scholar
Sanyal, Jatinder Nath, Sardar Bhagat Singh. Nagpur: Vishwa Bharti Prakashan, 1983.Google Scholar
Sarkar, Sumit, A Critique of Colonial India. Calcutta: Papyrus, 2000 [1985].Google Scholar
Sitaramayya, Pattabhi, History of the Indian National Congress, Vol 1: 1885–1935. Delhi: S. Chand, 1969.Google Scholar
Thakur, Gopal, Bhagat Singh: The Man and His Ideas. Bombay: People's pub. House, 1953.Google Scholar