Benevolent Despotism
'Montague-Chelmsford called the British Government a 'benevolent despotism' and according to Ramsay Macdonald, the imperialist leader of the British Labour Party, 'in all attempts to govern a country by a benevolent despotism, the governed are crushed down. They become subjects who obey, not citizens who act. Their literature, their art, their spiritual expression go'.
Government of India
'Rt Hon'ble Edwin S. Montague, Secretary of State for India, said in the House of Commons in 1917 : ' The Government of India is too wooden, too iron, too antedeluvian, to be of any use for modern purposes. The Indian Government is indefencible'
British Rule in India
'Dr. Ruthford's words: ' British rule as it is carried out in India is the lowest and most immoral system of Government in the world ' the exploitation of one nation by another'
| Liberty and English People 'The English people love liberty for themselves. They hate all acts of injustice except those which they themselves commit. They are such liberty-loving people that they interfere in the Congo and cry, 'Shame' to the Belgians. But they forget their heels are on the neck of India' Bhagat Singh was convinced that the British monarch was getting a fat salary at the expense of the common poor people of India for doing nothing excepting to support a Government in India which was only looting the nation and sucking the blood of the toiling millions. On page 16, Bhagat Singh observed as follows under the title King's Salary: 'It is inhuman to talk of a million sterling a year, paid out of the public taxes of any country, for the support of an individual, whilst thousands who are forced to contribute thereto, are pining with want and struggling with misery. Government does not consist in a contract between prisons and palaces, between poverty and pomp; it is not instituted to rob the needy of his mite and increase the worthlessness of the wretched'. On page 16, under the title 'Give me Liberty or Death', Bhagat Singh has quoted extensively from the most famous speech of Patrick Henry (1736 -1799). Patrick Henry was a prominent figure in the American Revolution. Henry is perhaps best known for the speech he made in the House of Burgesses in Virginia on March 23, 1775, urging legislature to take military action against the encroaching British military force. He ended his speech with his most famous words: 'Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! The crowd jumped up and shouted 'To Arms! To Arms!'. These great words have been quoted with acclaim by Bhagat Singh. |
On page 124 of the Jail Notebook, under the caption '
Aim of Life', Bhagat Singh wrote as follows : 'The aim of life is no more to control mind, but to develop it harmoniously, not to achieve salvation hereafter, 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 of the many; and spiritual democracy or universal brotherhood can be achieved only when there is an equality of opportunity in the social, political and industrial life�. Unlike Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru, Bhagat Singh did not quibble with words.
We find Bhagat Singh quoting extensively from the writings of Socrates (470 BC - 399 B.C), Aristotle (384 B.C - 322 B.C), Plato (427 B.C - 347 B.C), Zeno (490 B.C - 430 B.C), Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121 A.D - 180 A.D), Epicurus (341-270 B.C) and Seneca (4 B.C-65 A.D)
On page 165, Bhagat Singh has referred to Aristotle in these words: �He was the first to disentangle politics from ethics, though he was careful not to sever them. 'The majority of men' Aristotle argued, 'are ruled by their passions rather than by reason, and the State must therefore, train them to virtue by a life-long course of discipline, as in SPARTA. Until political society is instituted, there is no administration of justice..... but it is necessary to enquire into the best constitution and best system of legislation'.
On the same page, Bhagat Singh has said this about Plato 'He traces the origin of society and the State to mutual need, for men as isolated beings are incapable of satisfying their manifold wants. Plato while depicting a kind of idealized Sparta says, 'In an ideal State, philosophers should rule, and to this aristocracy are government of the best, the body of citizens would owe implicit obedience'. He emphasizes on the careful training and education of citizens'.
As a revolutionary leader, committed to the supreme cause of political and socio-economic emancipation and liberation of the oppressed and suppressed toiling masses, Bhagat Sing was greatly influenced by Victor Hugo's great novel Les Miserables. Bhagat Sing has quoted the following words of Victor Hugo from his preface to Les Miserables : �So long as there shall exist, by virtue of law and custom, a social damnation artificially creating hells in the midst of civilization, and complicating the destiny which is divine with a fatality which is human; so long as three problems of the age�the degradation of man through poverty, the ruin of woman through hunger, the crippling of children through ignorance'are not solved; so long as in certain regions, social asphyxia is possible ' in other words, and from a still wider point of view, ' so long as ignorance and wretchedness exist on the earth, books like this cannot be useless'.
As a keen student of all the Social Sciences, Bhagat Singh understood that he who learns but does not think is lost and he who thinks but does not learn is in danger. For him learning consisted of ideas, and not of the noise that is made by the mouth. He was of the view that learning and liberty should march hand in hand, or they do not march at all: the one is the condition of the other.
In November 1930, after he was sentenced to death, Bhagat Singh wrote to his comrade B.K. Dutta who had been sentenced to transportation for life: �The Judgment has been delivered. I am condemned to death. In these cells, besides myself there are many other prisoners who are waiting to be hanged. The only prior of these people is that somehow or other they may escape the noose. Perhaps I am the only man amongst them who is anxiously waiting for the day when I'll be fortunate enough to embrace the gallows from my ideal. I will climb the gallows gladly and show to the world as to how bravely the revolutionaries can sacrifice for the cause'.
Bhagat Singh was a great admirer of Thomas Paine (1737-1809), who influenced the French Revolution and later the American Revolution in many ways. Bhagat Singh often quoted the following words of Thomas Paine with passion and fervour: 'I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but he whose heart is firm and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles to death�. AND BHAGAT SINGH DID JUST THAT AND SO HE BELONGS TO THE AGES.
(To be contd...)
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