The Influence of Ghadar Movement on Bhagat Singh’s Thought and Action-Harish K. Puri

Shaheed Bhagat Singh is one of the few heroes who continued to excite interest among scholars and the common people in both parts of Punjab. He was born and brought up in this part of Punjab and received his education here in Lahore. All the major events of his political activity, his trial in what was named Lahore Conspiracy Case, his imprisonment, the legendary hunger strike for the rights of political prisoners that he and his comrades went through, and finally his execution in the Lahore Central Jail were are all centred here. So indeed was a major part of the history of the Ghadar rebellion that was the subject of First Lahore Conspiracy Case of 1915. A visit to Lahore for participation in this conference becomes for a researcher of that period of modern history of Punjab, a sort of pilgrimage.
Bhagat Singh’s birth centenary celebration last year became a reason for a revival of research interest in Bhagat Singh, in his thought and action and in issues related to the history of his time. One would also notice a degree of fresh interest in the Ghadar movement among the Punjabis settled abroad those in the two Punjabs in the wake of the movement’s centenary celebration in 2013. The influence that the Ghadar movement had in the making of Bhagat Singh and his movement has been a less closely studied subject. It was in a deeper sense the question of the attitude they brought to the understanding of the social and political conditions of their times and to what, to borrow the words Barack Obama, is called “the audacity of hope”. The historical political context of the post WW1 decade was vastly different from that of the preceding decade. Bhagat Singh’s political ideas and actions reflected a transaction between those of the Ghadarites and the new ones thrown up by the post-war political turmoil in India and by the message of the Russian revolution.

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