The Martyr's song

How I wonder, my mighty foe
If thou ever would get to know
In all the blows thou struck to kill
T'was our aspiration you helped fulfill.
                      

The sight of our flesh, torn and bleeding                   
Filled you with triumph's blind ecstasy
Thus thou couldn't see, busy rejoicing

Your prey that lay still, too was smiling.         
                   

How I wonder, my mighty foe
If thou ever would get to know 
Though your shackles we couldn't breach
Our spirits soared beyond your reach.

Alone we were breathing your air hostile,
Yet to intimidate us, an attempt futile
For in your very valley of dread and horror
She revealed Her Presence, unleashed Her Power.

At Her was fixed our moist gaze,
Her we sought through our tear's haze. 
Even when our eyes for a while, shut in pain,   
Unable to bear the burden of your harm                   
We were carried in the grace of Her arm.           
At Her feet we gathered our strength again.

And when awareness returned, what do we see
My exhausted enemy, for rest he plea.
And we couldn't help but laugh

As we waited for him to play his part.
Thus, he took turns to complete his task,
Doing what we neither recall nor care,
As Her hands slipped into ours
 Our pain She began to share.

How I wonder, my mighty foe
If thou ever would get to know
Defeat echoed in every cry of your victory
If not for thee, how would I offer my suffering?

The Quest

In a statement issued to the ‘Young Political Workers’ Bhagat Singh warned his readers to be careful when reading his words, and avoid reading in between the lines.  I guess he could preempt the difficulty, the confusion and the mental mess they were bound to lead one to. And the scarcity of authentic written material would add on to the bewilderment while trying to entangle the web of opinions, ideologies and philosophies and truth. Whether or not it is worth decoding this enigma is a separate issue, one that can be addressed only when we have managed to scathe the surface and finally lay our hands on the depths of an inner revelation.

Bhagat Singh was not the first nor the last man to have lived martyrdom. But at a time when a battle was being fought at planes other than just the physical, he became a face of the resistance humanity could offer to darkness. And this was a daunting task. The country was seething under oppression, the means to retaliate was scarce and the challenge to awaken national consciousness was unimaginably difficult. Sri Aurobindo writes-

"The mere logical superiority of Nationalism to Moderation cannot be reasonably expected to revolutionize Indian politics; that superiority must be supplemented by the full measure of personal sacrifices on the part of the exponents of the new faith.

Sacrifice- the base on which the doctrine of martyrdom lies.

In a private letter to his closest friend we find  Bhagat Singh’s expression of sacrifice- “I emphasize that I am full of ambition and hope and of full charm of life. But I can renounce all at the time of need, and that is the real sacrifice. These things can never be hindrance in the way of man, provided he be a man. You will have the practical proof in the near future”. A confession and a resolution made with rare honesty and conviction. This was him, at the age of 21, just before they took the plunge into the valley of pain and suffering.

A second letter to the same friend was written two years later, in very different circumstances, The act had been performed, the consequences were being lived. The friend lost his resolve and wanted to end his life. A rebuke and repulsion was what enveloped this letter by Bhagat Singh as he reminded the wavering souls the true purpose of their fight. He writes-
“We loved the motto of the Naujawan Bharat Sabha - "to suffer and sacrifice through service". I believe that you served as much as was possible. Now is the time when you should suffer for what you did.”

When one leads by example, one has to rise above his personal weaknesses and stand strong for the ones who follow. 


Sri Aurobindo's words resonate-"The time is now come for them to make good their words; they must convince the country that they are willing to struggle and sacrifice for the sake of the faith that they ask their fellowmen to embrace".

Bhagat Singh’s letter further reads-“Committing suicide - to cut short the life just to avoid some pain - is cowardice. I want to tell you that obstacles make a man perfect. Neither you nor I, rather none of us, have suffered any pain so far. That part of our life has started only now”.
The ‘now’ here comprises of months of imprisonment, days of hunger strike and hours of inhuman torture. And though there is very little record of what exactly was the nature of suffering since none of them penned down their prison life, there is an official statement mentioning that once something had gone wrong in the violent attempt to force feed Bhagat Singh and he lay unconscious for 15 minutes. We are left to our imaginations as we infer the magnitude of the hardships.  But to reconstruct this scene in our minds produces a hair raising experience. A mortal body succumbs to the forces of darkness and lies there as an offering, whereas the immortal fire in him soars to realms of bliss.
This is why HE holds this phenomenon to be so sacred  “because it demonstrates the innate superiority of human nature to death, because it brings the human mind face to face with its immortal spirit that transcends more the agonies of the mortal flesh”.
And for Bhagat Singh suffering indeed had a special place in his heart. Almost as if he was searching for something in this suffering, his quest lied in it.
He says –“In jail alone, can a person get an occasion to study empirically the great social subjects of crime and sin. I have read some literature on this and only the jail is the proper place for the self-study on all these topics. The best parts of the self-study for one is to suffer oneself”.
And this strange passion for ordeals and pain was what led to them making a complete mockery of death. As if it was a mere consequence and not anything worth dwelling upon. His father had appealed to higher courts for mercy, a move which had angered Bhagat. In a restrained yet raging letter he said- “My life is not so precious, at least to me, as you may probably think it to be. It is not at all worth buying at the cost of my principles.”

Sri Aurobindo writes-“Not mere conviction, but courage of conviction that dares to stare death in the face has been the secret of those passions and emotions that are immortally human”.

What other than an inner conviction can overcome personal interests, what other than psychic strength can produce such endurance ,what other than Divine Ananda of sacrifice can make someone sing using the shackles to produce the accompanying music while awaiting a death sentence is still unanswered.
And finding answers will be difficult especially when the instrument in question is in denial of a higher power.

His “Why I am an Atheist” was in response to accusations by Sardar Randhir Singh of vanity and ego leading to disbelief in God.  Though Sardar Randhir Singh mentions in his autobiography about his meeting Bhagat Singh and convincing him to give up this atheism, there are doubts of authenticity and his account cannot be verified. Nevertheless he says that Bhagat repented betraying his religion and cutting of his hair, and not saying prayers, and insulting Sikhism and so on as his death drew near.  He claims to have told Bhagat-
"For the joy of getting worldly praise you did not hesitate to fall from a higher spiritual ideal of becoming an apostate from Sikhism, nor did you ever repent over this fall from a much higher ideal. You gave up the Guru’s personality for false glory and empty ambition. If you felt that you made a mistake you should have repented and come back to the Khalsa ideal by maintaining a Sikh-like appearance again".

Somehow, the vibrations of falsehood here is more than the one contained in atheism itself! For such rigid concept of religion and rituals and such a shallow belief makes his opponent’s disbelief more worthy. For this orthodox and narrow mindset of religion was what perhaps made Bhagat drift away from it in the first place. When the country was sleeping in tamasic slumber or fighting over pettiness, a cry of rebel was the need of the hour.  His defence reads-

"Any man who stands for progress has to criticize, disbelieve and challenge every item of the old faith. Item by item he has to reason out every nook and corner of the prevailing faith. His reasoning can be mistaken, wrong, misled, and sometimes fallacious. But he is liable to correction because reason is the guiding star of his life."
Yes, reason devoid of vital influence can surely be a very productive weapon against falsehood and darkness. For an incredible quality about higher reasoning is that it leaves nothing unchallenged.  Thus, after he finished questioning the inequality of caste and religion and the hollow rituals, he was naturally led to questioning the very existence of God. And he does give his readers a lengthy argument about lack of a solid rational basis for God in this highly oppressed and chaotic world. Had these been written by anyone else, they could have been easily dismissed as ramblings of a crude,egoist mental seeking.  But this was different. This was ignorance no doubt, but sparkling with sincerity.

 He acknowledges-
“'Belief' softens the hardships, even can make them pleasant. In God man can find very strong consolation and support. Without Him man has to depend upon himself. To stand upon one's own legs amid storms and hurricanes is not a child's play. At such testing moments, vanity-if-any-evaporates and man cannot dare to defy the general beliefs. If he does, then we must conclude that he has got certain other strength than mere vanity”

“I know in the present circumstances my faith in God would have made my life easier, my burden lighter, and my disbelief in Him has turned all the circumstances too dry, and the situation may assume too harsh a shape. A little bit of mysticism can make it poetical. But I do not want the help of any intoxication to meet my fate. I have been trying to overpower the instinct in me by the help of reason. I have not always been successful in achieving this end. But man's duty is to try and endeavor, success depends upon chance and environments”.

What exactly was he trying to achieve though this inner battle of belief and reason appears confusing.  Was the psychic being wanting to experience the pinnacles of suffering and thus initiated the denial of any solace?
 Or perhaps, he did not want to give in to the sentimentality of a vital devotion and said “For selfish motives I am not going to pray”.  And  his intellectual capacities could obviously not provide him with an experience of  devotion in its pure and Divine form, leading him to completely negate its existence.
So the most accurate placement of him in the graph of evolution would be above the narrow confines of religion and below the vast expanse of spirituality. More like someone who has overcome the lower impulses but is still awaiting the advent of a higher Truth to replace it. For a few glimpses of impersonal and selfless Karmyoga can be found in his writings. There is a subtle awareness of his being a mere instrument as well, albeit unintentionally.

He questions his companions-“Do you mean to imply that had we not entered the field, no revolutionary work would have taken place at all? If this be your contention, then you are mistaken, though it is right that we also proved helpful to an extent in changing the environment. But, the, we are only a product of the need of our times.”
I (and you too) did not give birth to the ideas of socialism and communism in this country; this is the consequence of the effects of our time and situations upon ourselves. Of course, we did a bit to propagate these ideas…..”
 A more profound and moving description of his state of mind can be found in his final writings.
“Judgement is already too well known. Within a week it is to be pronounced. What is the consolation with the exception of the idea that I am going to sacrifice my life for a cause? A God-believing Hindu might be expecting to be reborn as a king, a Muslim or a Christian might dream of the luxuries to be enjoyed in paradise and the reward he is to get for his suffering and sacrifices. But, what am I to expect? I know the moment under my feet, that will be the final moment-that will be the last moment. I, or to be more precise, my soul as interpreted in the metaphysical terminology shall all be finished there. Nothing further. A short life of struggle with no such magnificent end, shall in itself be the reward, if I have the courage to take it in that light. That is all. With no selfish motive or desire to be awarded here or hereafter, quite disinterestedly, have I devoted my life to the cause of independence, because I could not do otherwise.”

What an irony. If one actually heeded to his request of not reading in between the lines, one would never sense that the garb of atheism actually concealed a much higher ideal- A spirit of true surrender and selfless service.

Amusing Divine play! A man denying the existence of the One whose highest ideal he himself embodies.

But yet, there is no contradiction if one manages to avoid the blur and look at it from a wider angle. All these beliefs, opinions, and ideologies were originating from a 23 year old mind.  And not to forget a mind with an insatiable intellectual thirst. He said-"Study" was the cry that reverberated in the corridors of my mind. Study to enable yourself with arguments in favour of your cult. I began to study”. And till the very last moment, he was rushing to finish a book.  A vulnerable mind was honest enough to admit that all his beliefs stem from the literature he was exposed to. Which implies, had time been on his side, he himself would have sort out the conflict and contradictions in his ideologies. For what we have is his questionings of a belief system within his very short life span. We could not witness the event of his challenging his very questions and arriving at higher truths. For if his reason had indeed been as sincere as it appears then very soon he would have been led to the doors of a Higher understanding of existence. And from there on would begin a new quest, leading to a new set of struggles and sacrifices. A life had been cut shot tragically from the viewpoint of his personal evolution. But as his most worthy quote says- "When the fate of the country is being decided, the fate of individuals should be forgotten".

Indeed. His soul's seeking and journey would perhaps continue across lifetimes. His significance in that lifetime lay in the country’s awakening. For when all these mental gymnastics are kept aside, one notices his actual last words before going to the gallows were-

“Dil se niklegi, na mar kar bhi, watan ki ulfat,
 Meri mitti se bhi khushboo-e-watan aayegi’’

Could the mind he held in such a high esteem actually come up with those soul stirring lines? Not worth dwelling on that answer for the purpose of his life did not lie in that.

What exactly do men like him achieve through their life can be found in HIS words- “The sight of the man who makes light of sufferings, even of death, for the sake of an idea or a faith, turns the thoughts of his fellowmen to that for which he thus suffers”. 

Minds which shirk at the thought of strife and suffering are drawn to an ideal for which a man can readily wed sacrifice. 

Thus, the mystery is solved. It is nothing but  Light which invites the ones who cannot help repeatedly revisiting these pages of history trying to make sense of this Divine play.