Publisher: Penguin Books
Pages: 305
Price Rs 599 Book Now
This is the story of the Indian revolution, focusing on Bhagat Singh, the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army and their influence and radicalisation of the Congress.
The book shows that, contrary to popular belief, there were many secret agreements between the Congress and revolutionary movements, often through intermediaries. It is a detailed account of how the HSRA interacted with the Congress, the Indian government and other parties, based largely on unused oral history interviews, recollections, photographs and colonial records.
Intelligence reports did not indicate that the HSRA was unable to cooperate and reach a consensus with the Congress. However, Kama Maclean of the University of New South Wales Sydney says that even though the relationship lasted only a short time, it was not merely superficial. Both sides were very careful not to leave any evidence of their communications. British intelligence sometimes failed to trust the information it received.
Almost every member of the HSRA was a Congress volunteer and participated in the non-cooperation movement. Even though the HSRA stopped functioning, some members continued to attend the annual meeting of the Congress, "not only to meet supporters, but to assess their activities". It was only after India became independent that some of the most prominent Congressmen of Punjab commented on their relationship with Bhagat.
MacLean claims that there were many instances of very cordial interactions between Congress officials and revolutionaries. MacLean states that many interactions between Congress leaders and revolutionaries were extremely cordial.
Jawaharlal Bose and Subhas Chandra Bose are known for their supportive comments about the revolutionaries. Motilal Nathu was a well-known liberal, but he secretly supported the revolutionaries. This evidence came to light after India's independence. Chandrashekhar Azad is the supreme head of the HSRA. He secretly gave them money and maintained relations with them. Jawaharlal Nehru, Jr. Nehru also donated money to Azad. Jawaharlal's money was still in Azad's pocket when he was assassinated by the British army in Allahabad on November 1, 1931. Madan Malviya had originally condemned the bombing of the Punjab Assembly by Bhagat Singh and B.K. Dutt had pledged Rs 1,000 of the Seva Samiti to help the accused in the Lahore Conspiracy Case. Maclean claims that the prison hunger strike of the revolutionary prisoners brought them even closer to the Congress. The body of the hunger striker Jatindranath was taken to Calcutta by representatives of the Bengal Congress after his death. Members of the Punjab Congress escorted him through Lahore. Even the revolutionaries claimed that the violence they used would give the Congress more bargaining power with the British. This short-lived partnership between the revolutionaries and the Congress has been largely ignored due to the dominance of non-violence in nationalist histories. It is true that the political violence of the HSRA set an example of non-violence, which was why the Mahatma became a popular and desired option for the British. This is a very exciting and entertaining novel, which is rare for books of this genre.
You may be surprised by the sudden interest in the Bhagat Singh phenomenon among Western academics, possibly even more so in Indian universities!
Professor Christopher Pini of University College London, Chris Moffatt, an Australian who did a PhD on Bhagat Singh at Cambridge University, and Dr. Kama Maclean, have discussed the Bhagat Singh phenomenon by studying photographs, posters and paintings in their book Photos of Gods. Several Indian academics have worked on the subject in Western universities, including Neeti Nair in her article 'Bhagat Singh, Satyagrahi' and Simona Sahni in "Bhagat Singh, A Politics of Death and Hope".
Dr. Kama Maclean started working on the project in 2007 when, on a holiday with her university in Amritsar, she saw photographs of Bhagat Singh in every shop window. At the time, the popular film Rang De Basanti starring Aamir Khan was running in theatres and the young researcher wanted to do a paper about the impact of revolutionaries on national movements. When she did not get the necessary funds to complete her research, she was disappointed. This is a true comment about the state of academics in Indian universities sixty years after independence. Even though Bhagat was a popular figure in Indian society, Indian historians did not take the issue seriously at the academic level despite his immense popularity. Some Indian academics paid attention to the neglected part of the history of the Indian freedom struggle. Bhagat's seminal article along with the preface of Bipin Chandra's "Why I am an Atheist" and some of his other articles were the first in a series of works focusing on the impact of Bhagat and other revolutionary figures on the national movement. Scholars from different fields, such as Sumit Sarkar with his book "Modern India", A.G. Noorani with his book "The Trial of Bhagat Singh", S. Irfan Habib with his book "To make the deaf hear" contributed to the study of Bhagat Singh's role during the freedom struggle. This is not a new phenomenon. Shiv Verma and Bijoy Kumar Sinha were among the many Bhagat-Singh associates who wrote about him and revolutionaries in general since the 1950s. However, academic institutions paid little attention to their research. A biography of the Bhagat family written by Bhagat's nephew Virendra Sandhu in Banaras in 1967 did not receive much attention because it was published in Hindi. In the 1970s, the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library conducted many interviews of former revolutionaries. These are considered the best source of information for research on revolutionaries. Researcher Kama Maclean has made full use of this material in her book. In fact, the author has collected more source material than any other researcher before. She has at her disposal the papers of the National Archives of India and particularly the Home (Political) Department. Kama Maclean collected 23 oral histories from the Centre for South Asian Studies at the University of Cambridge, where she also examined personal papers.
Dr. Kama Maclean also obtained Bradley's documents from the People's History Museum Manchester. The author also used newspapers of the time such as Abhudaya Bhavishya Chand Tribune Civil and Military Gazette Abhudaya Bhavishya Chand. The bibliography of this project includes both old and current publications. She collected posters and photographs from various institutions including the National Archives of the Supreme Court of India, NMML British Library and many private sources.
The researcher faced a tough task in organizing and using so many sources.
As a researcher with a wealth of knowledge, Kama Maclean organized her book into three sections, each section containing three chapters. The preface, epilogue and technical information such as the Acknowledgements section, Glossary of abbreviations, List of Illustrations with notes for spelling, Bibliography, Index, etc. are also written by Dr. Kama Maclean.
Kama Maclean has clarified the duration and scope of her project in her introduction. His research has primarily focused on 1928-1931 and the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association. He has defined the period 1928-31 as the 'inter-war period', starting from the Simon Commission's visit to India in 1928 to the Karachi Congress in late March 1931, which was held soon after the hanging of Bhagat Singh-Rajguru-Sukhdev. He has questioned how the dominant narrative about the non-violent freedom movement is dominated by Gandhian ideologies and has linked the influence of revolutionary movements on the national struggle through the struggle of the HSRA during the inter-war period. He has used a variety of 'unarchived materials' to study the role played by the HSRA. These include oral histories, satires and hearsay as well as visual artefacts such as photographs and posters. He has used authentic documents and archival materials to complete the history. In their introduction, they acknowledge that - "The revolutionary HSRA has long been marginalised in the academic historiography of nationalism, despite the extraordinary popularity of their forbidden literature and posters in colonial India and contemporary India.
They have in a way carried forward the multidisciplinary research that Pini began with this combination of aesthetics and the social sciences. Maclean used a poster supplied by Dr Pini, which had a garland of Chandrashekhar Azad's picture superimposed over Bhagat Singh's. Their work has been described as 'This book represents the beginning of a collective effort to better understand the history of the revolution through the perspectives of various "post-subturn" and "post-colonial" scholars.' In her conclusion, Dr. Kama Maclean defines her research methodology as a "post-subaltern scholarly perspective" which historians can debate. She has respected historians of subaltern schools, such as Dipesh Chakrabarty, whose comments about this book are behind the title. In her introduction, the researcher humbly admits that she was not able to read all the records or oral histories. She mentions in the book that since 1996 the British Library India Office has opened its archives to researchers. These archives include 'Indian Political Intelligence Files - 21,660 volumes and 224 data boxes'.
This author has divided her main book into three sections. Part-1, titled 'Revolutionaries of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army: History, Functions, Activities'. The first part is divided into three sections: i. This part contains three chapters: i. CAP: Notoriety and Social Communication and Strategy. Revolutionary Unknown: The Secret Life of Durga Deohara. The author has used the word 'Army' instead of Association, which is the abbreviation of HSRA. As the 'military wing' of the political group Association, the revolutionary movement used the word Army. The three initials were HSR. Chandrashekhar Azad, under the pseudonym Balraj, was the Commander-in-Chief of the "Army". This chapter presents a brief history of the revolutionary groups of Bengal such as Anushilan, Yugantar and the Hindustan Republican Association (HRA), the predecessor of the HSRA, which was formed by Sachindranath Sanyal in late 1923, including all the characters of the HSRA as well as Ram Prasad Bismil-Ashfaqulla-Roshan Singh and Rajendra Lahiri who were hanged in late 1927 for the Kakori train robbery in 1925. The chapter gives an overview of Bhagat's life based on his secret, forbidden and painful past. Kama Maclean tells not only Bhagat's story but also the story of the later years of Bhagat's life. Bijoy Sinha mentioned the film in his autobiography and a motion was moved in Parliament to ban the film. The film was not made illegal but certain changes were made to it which were not acceptable to the revolutionary family or the people living at that time. It is also unknown that the second film of Bhagat Singh was made in 1963, in which Shammi Kaur played the lead role and Kidar Bansal was the director. The third film in 1965 starring Manoj Kumar brought both fame and acceptance to Bhagat Singh as he was the star of this film. Three films about Bhagat were released in 2002. The Legend of Bhagat was the most popular and accepted. Rang De Basanti starring Aamir Khan in 2006 was the seventh and final film. In the second chapter, the researcher reveals an interesting detail about Bhagat's hat. Posters were made based on this information and according to her, this increased Bhagat's popularity. The researcher argues that revolutionaries like Bhagat were well aware of how the media could be used to spread their ideas. They planned in advance to make the most of this power. She highlights the fact that many revolutionaries were photographed in studios and their images were recorded by the media. Artists used these photographs to create attractive posters. Photographer Ramnath took the photograph at Kashmiri Gate in Delhi, probably on April 4, a few days before Bhagat and B K Dutt bombed the Delhi Assembly. At the same time, the photographer also photographed B K Dutt in the studio. Ironically, the same Ramnath was employed by the Delhi Police at the site of the Assembly bombing. The author believes that the same photographer Ramnath was assigned by the Delhi Police to take photographs of Bhagat and B K Dutt after his arrest on April 8. However, these photographs are still unidentified. Bhagat's fame spread across India after the photographs taken on April 4 were published in Lahore's Urdu newspaper Bande Mataram, then in Delhi's Hindustan Times and on April 12 in Aaj Ka Samay. The photograph of Bhagat wearing a cap became an icon in the future. Christopher Pini continues his earlier photographic study of the revolutionaries in the second chapter, which is based on the photograph with the cap. The third chapter of this part tells the story of Durga Bhabhi (also known as Durga Bhabhi). In this part of the book, the author has discussed in depth the close relationship between Nehru-Motilal as well as Jawaharlal and Subhas Bose and the revolutionaries. Many hidden facts come to light. In this part of the book, Kam Maclean continues to present and interpret the posters collected during her research. Motilal's relatively unfamiliar speech "Balraj or Gandhi" is examined in the context of the Delhi Bomb Case. Motilal was far more generous with the revolutionaries' money than Jawaharlal was. The third part of the book - The Aftermath: Gandhism and the Challenge of Revolutionary Violence focuses on the Karachi Congress 1931, which was held soon after the hanging of Bhagat Singh-Sukhdev-Rajguru and shows how skilfully Gandhi handled the anger of the youth and succeeded in preventing a split in the Congress Party. The epilogue focuses on the situation of 1945-46 and the revolutionaries' refusal to compromise with the Congress governments.
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