Why Bhagat Singh is Punjab's chosen bro

He simply refuses to grow old. He would have been a 108-year-old this September day, but across India and through the three-to-four generations since he was martyred on March 23, 1931, Bhagat Singh has lived on as an awe-inspiring brother, unwavering friend, and of course, the extraordinary hero that he was. 

In Punjab, where he was born, even today youngsters address him as "bai-ji, veer-ji" or "mittar" (read as "bro" in English). Such salutation infuses countless folksy pop songs belted out by virtually every Punjabi singer and musician who has had the good fortune of making it into a recording studio. Yo Yo Honey Singh, the hugely successful Punjabi rapper who's rocking everything from Bollywood to Birmingham and Toronto with borderline and often in-your-face pornographic lyrics, seems to redeem himself with "Soorme hath pistaulan wale, karde fire firangi te…", a ballad describing the John Saunders assassination.

The flourish at the end of the song: "This is for the quami (national) hero, the one and only - Sardar Bhagat Singh!" never fails to rouse Yo Yo's ever-growing fan following among the youngsters. 

"He was a youth icon 80 years ago and remains one today." Yogendra Yadav, now leading the Swaraj Samwad after parting ways with Arvind Kejriwal and the Aam Aadmi Party, says that Bhagat Singh has had a "longer shelf-life than any other figure in the national freedom movement."

Men like Chandrashekhar Azad, or even Raj Guru and Sukhdev who went to the gallows alongside Bhagat Singh, he points out, have gradually faded from popular consciousness. Many, in fact, believe that Bhagat Singh lives on in public memory despite "deliberate attempts to undermine his contribution" to the freedom movement. 

My friend Pritam Singh, professor of economics at Oxford Brookes University, says that even though there have been innumerable attempts from across the political spectrum - from the extreme left wing Naxalite fringe to rightwing ultranationalists like the Khalistanis - to appropriate Bhagat Singh's political legacy, almost every political group has had to contend with contradictions in claiming the martyr. 

"Gandhi-inspired Indian nationalists find Bhagat Singh's resort to violence problematic; Hindu and Sikh fundamentalists find his atheism troubling; the parliamentary Left sees his ideas and actions as more close to the perspective of the Naxalites; and the Naxalites find Bhagat Singh critique of individual terrorism an uncomfortable historical fact," Pritam says. 

But the inescapable fact that he has continued to fascinate and inspire young Indians across language, region and community, has ensured that political parties of every hue sought to retain claim, if only to a "suitable" portion of Bhagat Singh's legacy. 

But the new millennium witnessed unprecedented efforts to resurrect Bhagat Singh ahead of his birth centenary in 2007. Our parliamentarians, in a long belated gesture, finally agreed to install his statue in Parliament House.

Even the RSS, which had debunked the martyr from the time of its founder HB Hegdewar and MS Golwalkar, in 2008, embraced Bhagat Singh as a national hero perhaps "most befitting" of being honoured with the Bharat Ratna. Even Bollywood chipped in with as many as five biopics on the life of Bhagat Singh. 

But none of this was a coincidence or mere acknowledgement of the martyr in his centenary year. 

The renewed rush by political parties to reclaim Bhagat Singh, the longest sustaining national youth icon, is concurrent with the emergence of a younger India, now home to the largest under 25-year-old population in the world, which is slated to grow to over 500 million by the end of the current decade. 

On Sunday (September 27), a galaxy of Punjab BJP leaders including union minister Vijay Sampla and Hamirpur MP Anurag Thakur hosted the Panchkranti Rally at Bhagat Singh's ancestral village Khatkar Kalan to mark his birth anniversary. This morning (September 28), Congress leaders in Chandigarh followed suit. But as Pritam Singh says, Bhagat Singh lives on in people's hearts, his heroism and undeniably handsome looks perhaps inspiring "a Che Guevara-like enthusiasm amid young Indians". 

And back here in Punjab, Bhagat Singh will always be our best bro.

Family folklore

- Bhagat Singh's mother Vidyavati never tired of talking about her brave son. The Martyr's nephew, Professor Jagmohan Singh, who was born long after Bhagat Singh was hanged, recalls some of the stories he heard from his grandmother and later his mother (Bhagat Singh's sister). 

- In 1924, while still a student at Lahore's National College, a local miraasi (storyteller, genealogist) came to Bhagat Singh's grandfather Arjan Singh with a match for the boy."The sardars of Manawala are very rich. They propose to offer an elephant as part of the dowry for their daughter," he said. All of 17 years old, Bhagat Singh, who by that time was deeply committed to the national movement, retorted: "Won't it be fun. The animal will eat through all our sugarcane fields and we will all be picking up the dung!" 

- After dropping out from school to join Mahatama Gandhi's Non-cooperation Movement in 1921, Bhagat Singh was devastated by Gandhi's decision to call off the movement in wake of the 1922 Chauri Chaura incident. Both Jaidev Gupta, a close friend, and he, refused to go back to school. Instead, Bhagat Singh pored over his books for 30 straight days to top the uncompromising test put together by Principal Chhabeel Das, to gain entry into the newly established National College in Lahore. 

- Bhagat Singh often signed as "Bhagat Singh Dutt," in testimony of his devotion and friendship with Batukeshwar Dutt, the man who was chosen to accompany him for the Central Legislative Assembly bombing in 1929. Outliving all his comrades, Dutt passed away after prolonged illness at Delhi's AIIMS on July 20, 1965.

- Early in 1980, when a former freedom fighter Dr. Kali Charan came to inform Bhagat Singh's mother, Mata Vidyavati, of the Punjab Government's intention to install statues of Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev at three separate crossings in Ludhiana City, she turned quiet. "My son will never be himself or look good standing alone," she responded. Today, Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev stand proudly, side-by-side in Ludhiana.