Bhagat Singh's slogan 'Inquilab Zindabad' still echoes in Punjab

Born on September 28, 1907, in Punjab’s Banga town, Shaheed Bhagat Singh, the legendary revolutionary continues to inspire the young in India.
Ians
IANS
September 27,2023 4:56 PM
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Chandigarh, Sep 27 (IANS) Born on September 28, 1907, in Punjab’s Banga town, Shaheed Bhagat Singh, the legendary revolutionary continues to inspire the young in India.

Bhagat Singh was hanged in the Lahore Central Jail, now in Pakistan, on March 23, 1931, along with his associates Rajguru and Sukhdev. 

His death had inspired thousands of people to join the freedom movement. In his autobiography, India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru writes about Bhagat Singh: "It is well to appreciate this, for only so can we have some understanding of subsequent events, of the phenomenon of Bhagat Singh, and of his sudden and amazing popularity... 

"He became a symbol; the act was forgotten, the symbol remained, and within few months each town and village of Punjab, and to a lesser extent in the rest of northern India, resounded with his name. Innumerable songs grew up about him, and the popularity that the man achieved was something amazing." 

His famous slogan -- "Inquilab Zindabad" or "Long live the revolution" still echoes in Punjab.

Today, a museum in his memory at the entrance of his native Khatkar Kalan village, 80 km from Chandigarh on the highway to Jalandhar in Nawanshahr district, speaks about his valour. 

During his visit on the freedom fighter's martyrdom day in 2003, former President late A.P.J. Abdul Kalam said he was indeed delighted to visit the home of one of the most inspiring and revolutionary freedom fighters of Mother India. 

"It is indeed like a pilgrimage for me to have come to this village of Khatkar Kalan which has produced one of the greatest sons of the Indian soil, Shaheed Bhagat Singh." 

It is said on March 3, 1931, Bhagat Singh's parents and other relatives came to visit him. It was their last meeting. The last person to meet him was his mother. 

His mother told him: "Son, don't abandon your stand. One day, everybody has to die. But the best death is one which is remembered by the whole world. I am happy that my son is making the sacrifice for a good and noble cause. My only desire is that my son should shout the slogan, 'Inquilab Zindabad' standing on the gallows. My son's weight should increase, not decrease. 

"What a great mother this land has given to us. The mother had brave tears. We always cherish this martyrdom by Shaheed Bhagat Singh and also his parents. Today, Punjab has enriched soil and above all high thinking," Kalam had said. 

It is indeed ironical that almost every family from Khatkar Kalan, now prosperous, has gone abroad. 

The village with a population of some 2,000-odd, which has made a mark in history, is currently one of the most modern and developed ones thanks to the philanthropic spirit of well-heeled NRIs. 

The ancestral maternal house of the revolutionary, where he came a few times, is a national monument. No one from his family has lived in the village for the last many decades. 

The village has a memorial-cum-museum, a centrally funded Rs 26 crore project, with true-to-life recreations of moments from the freedom fighter's short but significant life. 

In 2015, social activist Anna Hazare, the face of a watershed moment in Indian politics in 2011 to root out corruption from the country which led to the emergence of the Kejriwal-led AAP as a political force, visited Khatkar Kalan to pay tributes to the Shaheed-e-Azam and said some traitors have forgotten the people who sacrificed their lives for the country. 

Punjab Congress leaders, led by then Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, on September 28, 2020 launched a sit-in agitation against the Central government's three contentious agricultural laws, now repealed, from the birthplace of Bhagat Singh. 

The Chief Minister sat on a sit-in protest against the "draconian" laws after paying tributes to Bhagat Singh at his 'Samadhi Sthal' on his 113th birth anniversary. 

Bhagat Singh's younger brother Kulbir Singh, who was born in 1914 and was the Jan Sangh MLA from Ferozepur, passed away in 1983. 

Incumbent Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann (of the Aam Aadmi Party), who dons Bhagat Singh's trademark 'basanti' (yellow) turban and invokes the martyrs with the revolutionary slogan 'Inquilab Zindabad' that enables the youth to raise their arms and clench their fists, took oath in Bhagat Singh's ancestral village Khatkar Kalan, and not at Raj Bhavan, on March 16, 2022. 

On his order, no government office carries a photograph of the chief minister. Instead, photos of Bhagat Singh and BR Ambedkar will be put on the walls in government offices.