Bhagat
Singh
Writings by Shaheed Bhagat Singh in Jail
Kindly produced by Web Punjab
Bhagat Singh, a great reader and thinker was able to break the jail conditions,
even when officially not allowed he was reading and writing but finally after
long hunger strike got the right of reading & writing included in Jail Manuals.
Thus he maintained a note book of 404 pages and kept notes & quotes from the
books he read. Here are few of these.
"Ah my beloved, fill the cup that clears
Todays of past Regrets and future Fears
Tomorrow? _ why, Tomorrow I may be
Myself with yesterdays Sevn's thousand year."
***
Here with a loaf Bread beneath the Bough
A flask of wine, a Book of verse-and thou
Beside me signing in the widerness
And wilderness in paradise now!
"Ummar Khayyam"
Natural and Civil Rights
Man did not enter into society to become worse then he was before, but to have
those rights better secured. His netural rights are the foundation of all his
civil rights.
Natural rights are those which appertain to man in right of his existence
(intellectual mental etc.)
Civil rights are those that appertain to man in right of his being a member of
society.
Rights of Man-Thomas Paine
Morality
"Morality and religion are but words to him who fishes in gutters for the means
of sustaining life and crouches behind barrels in the street for shelter from
the cutting blasts of a winter night."
Right of labour
We consider it horrible that people should have their heads cut off, but we have
not been taught to see the horror of life - long death which is inflicted upon a
whole population by poverty and tyranny.
- Mark Twain
The Old labourer
"….He (the old labourer out of employment) was struggling against age, against
nature, against circumstences, The entire weight of society, law and order
pressed upon him to force him to loose his self respect and liberty.. He knocked
at the doors of the farms and found good in man only - not in law and order, but
in individual man alone.
-Richerd Jefferies.
Free Thought
"If there is anything that cannot bear free thought, let it crack"
-Windell Phillips
One Against All
The present social order is a ridiculous mechanism, in which portion of the
whole are in conflict and acting against the whole are in conflict and acting
against the whole. We see each class in society desire, from interest, the
misfortune of the other classes, placing in every way individual interest in
opposition to public good. The lawyer wishes litigation and suits. Particularity
among the rich; the physician desires sickness (The leter would be ruined if
every body died without disease as would The former if all quarrels were settled
by arbitration) The soldier wants a war which will carry off half of his
burrials; monopolist and forestallers went famine, to double or treble the price
of grain; the architect, the carpenter, the mason want conflagration, That will
burn down a hundred houses to give activity to their branches of business.
(Charles Fourier 1772-1837)
Liberty
Not a grave for the murder'd for freedom, But grow seeds for freedom, in its
turn to bearseeds
Which the wind carry a far and resow, and the rains and the snows nourish.
Not a disembodies spirit can the weapons of tyrant let loose
But it stalc invincible over the earth whispering counselling, cautioning.
-(Walt Whitmen)
Will of Revolutionary
" I also wish my friends to speak little or not at all about me, because idols
are created when men are praised and this is very bad for the future of the
human race…..Acts alone, no metter by whom committed out to be studied, praised
or blamed. Let them be praised in order that they may be initiated when they
seem to contribute to the common weal; let them be ceusured when they are
regarded as injurious to the general well being, so that they may not be
repeated."
"I desire that on no occasion, whether near or remote, nor for any reason
whatsoever, shall demonstrations of a political or religious character be made
before my remains as I consider the time devoted to the dead would be better
employed in improving the conditions of the living, most of whom stand in great
need of this."
Will of Frenscisco Ferrer Spanish educator (1859-1909)
Glory of the Cause
Ah! Not for idle hatred, not
For honour, fame, nor self applause
But for the glory of the cause
You did, what will not be forgot
- (Arthur clough)
The mechine is social in nature, as the tool was individual
***
"Give us worse cotton, but give us better men" say Emerson
"Deliver me those rickety perishing souls of infants, and let the cotton trade
take its chance."
The men cannot be sacrificed to the machine. The machine must serve mankind, yet
the danger to the human race lurks, menacing, in the industrial region
- (Poverty & Riches Scott Nearing)
Man and Mankind
"I am a man and all that affects manking concerns me"- (Page 43 of Jail
notebook)
Aim of life
"The aim of life is no more to control mind, but to develop it harmoniously, not
to achieve salvation here after, but to make the best use of it here below, and
not to realise truth, beauty and good only in contemplation, but also in-the
actual experience of daily life; social progress depends not upon the
ennoblement of the few but on the enrichment democracy or universal brotherhod
can be achieved only when there is an equality of opportunity of opportunity in
the social, political and individual life."
(Page 124 of Jail notebook)
Bhagat Singh's Last Petition
To
The Punjab Governor
Sir,
With due respect we beg to bring to your kind notice the following:
That we were sentenced to death on 7th October 1930 by a British Court, L.C.C
Tribunal, constituted under the Sp. Lahore Conspiracy Case Ordinance,
promulgated by the H.E. The Viceroy, the Head of the British Government of
India, and that the main charge against us was that of having waged war against
H.M. King George, the King of England.
The above-mentioned finding of the Court pre-supposed two things:
Firstly, that there exists a state of war between the British Nation and the
Indian Nation and, secondly, that we had actually participated in that war and
were therefore war prisoners.
The second pre-supposition seems to be a little bit flattering, but nevertheless
it is too tempting to resist the desire of acquiescing in it.
As regards the first, we are constrained to go into some detail. Apparently
there seems to be no such war as the phrase indicates. Nevertheless, please
allow us to accept the validity of the pre-supposition taking it at its face
value. But in order to be correctly understood we must explain it further. Let
us declare that the state of war does exist and shall exist so long as the
Indian toiling masses and the natural resources are being exploited by a handful
of parasites. They may be purely British Capitalist or mixed British and Indian
or even purely Indian. They may be carrying on their insidious exploitation
through mixed or even on purely Indian bureaucratic apparatus. All these things
make no difference. No matter, if your Government tries and succeeds in winning
over the leaders of the upper strata of the Indian Society through petty
concessions and compromises and thereby cause a temporary demoralization in the
main body of the forces. No matter, if once again the vanguard of the Indian
movement, the Revolutionary Party, finds itself deserted in the thick of the
war. No matter if the leaders to whom personally we are much indebted for the
sympathy and feelings they expressed for us, but nevertheless we cannot overlook
the fact that they did become so callous as to ignore and not to make a mention
in the peace negotiation of even the homeless, friendless and penniless of
female workers who are alleged to be belonging to the vanguard and whom the
leaders consider to be enemies of their utopian non-violent cult which has
already become a thing of the past; the heroines who had ungrudgingly sacrificed
or offered for sacrifice their husbands, brothers, and all that were nearest and
dearest to them, including themselves, whom your government has declared to be
outlaws. No matter, it your agents stoop so low as to fabricate baseless
calumnies against their spotless characters to damage their and their party's
reputation. The war shall continue.
It may assume different shapes at different times. It may become now open, now
hidden, now purely agitational, now fierce life and death struggle. The choice
of the course, whether bloody or comparatively peaceful, which it should adopt
rests with you. Choose whichever you like. But that war shall be incessantly
waged without taking into consideration the petty (illegible) and the
meaningless ethical ideologies. It shall be waged ever with new vigour, greater
audacity and unflinching determination till the Socialist Republic is
established and the present social order is completely replaced by a new social
order, based on social prosperity and thus every sort of exploitation is put an
end to and the humanity is ushered into the era of genuine and permanent peace.
In the very near future the final battle shall be fought and final settlement
arrived at.
The days of capitalist and imperialist exploitation are numbered. The war
neither began with us nor is it going to end with our lives. It is the
inevitable consequence of the historic events and the existing environments. Our
humble sacrifices shall be only a link in the chain that has very accurately
been beautified by the unparalleled sacrifice of Mr. Das and most tragic but
noblest sacrifice of Comrade Bhagawati Charan and the glorious death of our dear
warrior Azad.
As to the question of our fates, please allow us to say that when you have
decided to put us to death, you will certainly do it. You have got the power in
your hands and the power is the greatest justification in this world. We know
that the maxim "Might is right" serves as your guiding motto. The whole of our
trial was just a proof of that. We wanted to point out that according to the
verdict of your court we had waged war and were therefore war prisoners. And we
claim to be treated as such, i.e., we claim to be shot dead instead of to be
hanged. It rests with you to prove that you really meant what your court has
said.
We request and hope that you will very kindly order the military department to
send its detachment to perform our execution.
Yours'
BHAGAT SINGH