Recent events in my life have thrust me into evaluating what the word friend means to me. I’ve had few friends in my life. The word friend is totally different from the friendly acquaintance. The friendly acquaintances are those who know something about us and litter our lives with phrases like “How are you today?” or “How is the weather today?” They are nice to be around but cannot fulfill a place of a friend. I realize that some friends in our life are for reason and others for a season. Some of our best friends come from the animal kingdom especially dogs. A friend is a hard word to define just like love and varies from person to person. According to me a friend is one who honor’s you and likewise you honor him. A friend should have your back even when you aren’t looking and would never know. He/she should know the strengths and weaknesses and help you when one or the other becomes out of balance. When you fuckup big time, a friend, without making excuses for you or helping you point a finger in different directions helps you through it. A friend is one who was there when you first got drunk. He/she was there to hear all about your first crush. I’ve been blessed with very few but good friends, whom I don’t see or talk to very often but they are all unique and important in their own way,. Have I been a real friend that I could have been, I doubt it, but I aspire to be one. True friendship is hard work. Both have to put in the effort to keep it thriving but it’s worth it. Friends are people you are most comfortable with. They are loyal to the bone and they long ago earned your trust with their constant support and understanding. I know people who are everyone’s friend. I am a friendly acquaintance to everyone I meet, but I have few people who are close to me. Recently may be one less. So I’m trying to figure it out, may be its my definition of friendship, may be I expect too much……………..but I cannot lower the bar, no matter if I’m lonely one day with just friendly acquaintances around me.
Shaheed Bhagat Singh’s towering 18-feet bronze statue in the Parliament looked lonely today, with just one MP turning up to pay floral tributes at it on the occasion of Martyrs’ Day. The Parliament gave them a miss. No official commemoration of the same was held and no intimation published in the bulletin for parliamentarians.And all this happened on the day when Prime Minister Mr. Manmohan Singh, lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar, BJP leader L K Adwani, Sushma Swaraj visited the parliament house to pay homage to Mr Ram Manohar Lohia on his birth anniversary. On Lohia's portrait which hangs in the same place where on 8th April 1929 Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt threw bomb to make deaf Britishers listen to their demand of complete independence (pooran sawaraj), the visiting dignitaries offered flowers to Lohia's portrait while the Bhagat singh's statue just yards away got flowers from only one dignitary visitor our Sports Minister Mr. M S Gill. This is a matter of great concern and shame that our leaders has forgotten the heroes of our history who kissed the gallows with ease and our leaders today are just money and power hungry. Do they really deserve to be our leaders? Have we got the right group of people to take India forward? Are we represented by the right people.
Today is the death anniversary of three of the most heroic figures of the Indian freedom struggle.
Few people remember it though. The Free Press Journal in its issue of 24th march 1931 wrote “Sardar Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev live no longer. In their death lies their victory, let there be no mistaking it. The bureaucracy has annihilated the mortal frame. The nation has assimilated the immortal spirit. Thus shall Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev live eternally to the dismay of the bureaucracy……… To the nation, Bhagat Singh and colleagues will ever remain the symbol of martyrdom in the cause of freedom.”
The most famous of them was Bhagat Singh, today I think more people relate to Bhagat than Gandhi. Bhagat Singh was born in a Sikh family in village Banga in Layalpur District of Punjab(Now in Pakistan) on September 27th , 1907. He was the third son of Sardar Kishan Singh & Vidyavati. His father Sardar Kishan Singh and Uncle Ajit Singh were members of the GHADAR PARTY. So patriotism flowed in his vanes from childhood.
(From left) Bhagat Singh's father Kishan Singh; grandfather Sardar Arjun Singh; and uncle Ajit Singh who was involved with the Ghadar movement and exiled from India for 40 years.
In 1919, when Jaliawala massacre took place Bhagat Singh was only 12 & the massacre had disturbed him deeply and also it strengthened his resolve to drive the Britishers out of India. In response to the Gandhi’s call to participate in the Non Cooperation movement in 1920-21 he left his school and actively participated in the movement in 1922. But when Gandhi withdrew the Non Cooperative movement on Feb 22nd ,1922 due to a mob of people who at chauri-chaura (near Gorakhpur) clashed with police and burnt 22 policemen on Feb. 5th, 1922(CHAURI - CHAURA INCIDENT), weakened Bhagat’s belief in Non – violence and he came to the conclusion that armed revolution was the only way of gaining freedom. Then he joined the National Collage in Lahore which was then the hub for revolutionary activities and there he came into contact with revolutionaries such as Bhagawati Charan, Sukhdev and others.
In October, 1924 a meeting of revolutionaries from all parts of India was called at Kanpur. The meeting was attended by old revolutionary leaders like Sachindra Nath Sanyal, Jogesh Chandra Chatterjee and Ram Prasad Bismil and some young revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh, Shiv Verma, Sukhdev, Bhagawati charan Vohra and Chandrashekhar Azad. They setup HINDUSTAN SOCIALIST REPUBLIC ASSOCIATION/ARMY (HSRA). Their objectives were:
·To raise the consciousness of people against the futility of Gandhian movement of non – violence
·To perform direct action and revolution to attain complete independence (pooran sawaraj).
·To setup a republic of the United States Of India on the federal structure.
They carried out a dacoity on the Kakori bound train on the Saharanpur – Lucknow railway line on Aug 9th, 1925. The conspirators were later arrested and hanged (Ram Prasad Bismil, Ashfaqulla, Roshan Lal and Rajendra Lahiri). On December 17th, 1928 Bhagat Singh with his colleagues shot dead Saunders (Asstt.S.P. of Lahore, who ordered lathi charge at a rally which was headed by lala Lajpat Rai). Then Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt threw a bomb in the central assembly on April 8th, 1929. Thus a case was registered against Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru and was popularly known as the LAHORE CONSPIRACY CASE. They were trilled for two years and were found guilty thus were hanged on March 23rd, 1931 at Lahore jail and their bodies were cremated at Hussainiwala near ferozpur.
Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev acquired the status of living legends even in their brief lifetime. This is confirmed by the fact that the Britishers clandestinely advanced the hanging of the three Martyr’s fearing the public outrage. But they never bowed to anything that the Britishers threw at the brave men in the two years of imprisonment. They didn’t walked, but marched to death with smile. When hangman asked them to pray before death they said “ We have neither fear of death nor belief in God”. In terms of political belief, while firmly abjuring ‘the cult of the bomb and the pistol’, as Bhagat Singh himself notes, they chose to throw the bomb at the assembly and murder Saunders with a pistol under a firm belief that these actions will galvanize the youth to seek freedom.
The loss of these martyrs’s is one of the greatest tragedies the people of India ever faced. It’s the nature of colonialism and imperialism to cause such tragedies. But the people do avenge these crimes by yet more ferocious struggles against imperialism, if not today, then tomorrow. Our task is to keep the memories of our martyrs fresh and by doing so we prepare the victories of tomorrow
