More to Bhagat Singh's legacy than martyrdom: Irfan Habib

Historian Irfan Habib says celebrating Bhagat's Singh's legacy as "mere martyr" is not enough as the freedom fighter was an intellectual who had a political as well as a social vision.
"The legacy which we people want to recognise of Bhagat Singh is martyrdom. Most of the people just want to celebrate him as a martyr alone, which is not true.
"He had a revolutionary legacy and it is hard to celebrate it because it is not theoretical, you have to implement it in our lives, ideas and system to actually celebrate it," Habib said last evening during a discussion on "The Idea of Bhagat Singh".

The author, who has penned the book "To Make the Deaf Hear: Ideology and Programme of Bhagat Singh and His Comrades", said being a prolific writer, the freedom fighter also fought for social evils and his ideas are relevant even today.
"He wrote articles in Kirti on issues of untouchability, communalism, role of religion in politics. We are facing these issues even in present times.
"His ideals are alive even today because we are coping with the same problems which he talked about. Despite that we just do not want to recollect what he stood for," he said.

According to Habib, in fighting British tyranny, the freedom fighter initially identified himself to be a terrorist.

"When you read Bhagat Singh, he says, 'I may have used such methods because British occupied this country by terrorising all of us, and their terrorising methods can be countered only by terrorism'.
"He said that this is what we believed and tried to do but gradually realised that the best way was to mobilise people and youth, and that terrorism won't work," he said.
The historian, who was speaking at Oxford Book Store here, pointed out about the slogans which Bhagat Singh thought were secular and said he finds problem with 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' being called as an "ultimate slogan".

"We have a debate today on nationalism, about the slogans to be chanted. I have no issue with Bharat Mata Ki Jai, but to use it as an ultimate slogan, as a symbolism of idea of nation, of nationalism test is something which needs to be questioned, whereas according to Bhagat Singh there were only two secular slogans, Inqlab Zindabad and Hindustan Zindabad.
"He wanted revolution which was not merely political but also a social revolution to break age old discriminatory practices," he said.