Things Shaheed Bhagat Singh Wrote and What They Mean to Me

 

Things Shaheed Bhagat Singh Wrote and What They Mean to Me

The following are culled from an anthology of Bhagat Singh’s writings as given in Why I am an atheist? What they mean to me is at the minuscule level of my comprehension. Bhagat Singh was not a littérateur, but his anthology appears to be by one. If I am wrong in my judgment, so be it.

Dive in …

‘They can crush my body, but they will not be able to crush my spirit’

What would “spirit” mean to an atheist that Bhagat Singh was? Not a surprise, he was also a rationalist. An unbeatable combination of negation of a deity and the so-called “inner flame”, the soul. The way I see it, the “spirit” Bhagat Singh mentions is the set of ideals he has lived by, in his very short life span of 23 years. Merely 23 years. How did he get to be what he was at such a young age?

His “spirit” must have been floating like a butterfly; and it also stung anyone who came near him. Ask Cassius Clay who became Muhammad Ali. Also because, Bhagat Singh willingly entered the boxing ring, as he was ready as he ever was going to be.

‘Philosophy is the outcome of human weakness or limitation of knowledge’

Bhagat Singh has quoted someone saying the above who still dared not deny the existence of God. This did not sit well with Bhagat Singh. The context is where he seeks any kind of proof or confirmation of belief in God bringing into the world what he was then seeking or would soon be, release from the “yoke of serfdom”.

I am not sure I understand, even in the context in which Bhagat Singh wrote this or how I read it, the human weakness he refers to; the limitation of knowledge is OK. The only escape valve is that man abhors uncertainty and he desperately wants to find it, through God, a concept that is more uncertain than anything else one can think of, he must have decided.

About 500 years ago, in Europe, philosophy was what drove people of courage into finding any level of certainty. Socrates did not venture there, nor did the Buddha, both more than two thousand years earlier. The Buddha, indeed, eschewed philosophy altogether, but sought and found a way to reduce suffering a man, any man experiences. What did surprise me was that Bhagat Singh had not mentioned in his writings chosen in this anthology, anything about the Buddha. Had he done it elsewhere? Give him the benefit of doubt.

‘I am a man and nothing more. None can claim to be more’

This statement took me by a storm, for its piercing honesty and humility. It is not for him alone but for everyone ever born, he is claiming that a man (a human being) is no more than that. He did not, ever, pronounce himself ‘Shaheed’, as he could not have! An honorific given to a martyr, who is dead fighting for a cause, after all. What is he saying in clear terms?

A human being cannot give in to temptations that veer him away from the personal morality that he has developed within himself, after he has studied the issue to his satisfaction. This could be incomplete, even be wrong, but it is what it is at a given time, his conviction.

There is nothing more to a man, I hear him saying.

Indeed, such an understanding is what led me to the life of the Buddha (to the little I am aware of) to seek a parallel. The Buddha left his life of luxury, his wife, and his infant son seeking for himself a truer knowledge than the one he was imparted. This is almost precisely the same with Bhagat Singh and it come out in stark relief in what he wrote to his father (another of his writing in the anthology). He writes to his father, “My life is not so precious, at least to me, as you may probably think it to be.” Such a thought that gives the lie to the importance of ancestors is almost explicitly forbidden in our “ancestor-venerating” society.

‘Study to enable yourself to face the arguments advanced by the opposition. Study to arm yourself with arguments in favor of your cult.’

There was a time I used to attend student debates held in the university in the evenings, and I, in a conversation on the sidelines, initiated a conversation with the faculty member who was in charge, asking him about how he prepares the students, both sides. It is the crux of the conversation that came to my mind when I read the quoted sentences. You should, of course, be thorough with the points of your arguments, but while that is necessary, it is not sufficient. To avoid being bull-dozed by your opposite number from surprising directions, you also need to bone up on the points of the people who are seated opposite to you. This is not a deep point in the statement, but the sting is in the tail, the word “cult”.

Bhagat Singh is beyond invading your mind space unannounced. He would rather you do it yourself. His position is a “cult”, not quite a fully developed “religion”, like Scientology on which I had posted, (as though any religion at any point is fully developed!). He then gives a few points in a debating strategy: Be nimble in your mind. Think on your feet. Be prepared. Do not be cocky. Most important of all, be respectful to the opposition. All of the above are inside the word “cult” that is antipodal to all the suggestions.

‘The coalition amongst religious preachers and possessors of power brought forth jails, gallows, knouts [Russian whips] and these theories’

Merely note what he fails to mention about religion – it did not bring forth love, morality, honesty, basically anything to do with the positive side of humanity. Then, how did these elements come forth in the world that humans inhabit? For this to be tentatively explained, one has to reach for Darwin’s take on Natural Selection, as detailed by Richard Dawkins, the foremost neo-Darwinist. One particular instance that Dawkins cites has stayed with me.

One individual in a herd of deer, as soon as it notices a predator in the neighborhood, jumps high. Why? Two ways to think on the matter. One, it signals to the predator, “Look I can jump this high and run equally fast … you are not going to get me … focus on the weaklings in the herd”. Two, it signals its comrades in the herd, “Look folks, this is an early warning …there is a predator nearby … run, run …”

Any religion takes the first: The predator is not the atheist, whom we may safely ignore, but another religion with meaningless and weak anchors. We can safely sacrifice them to the predator.

Hence, “religious preachers…” in the plural.

That is about the limit of my ability to exercise my brain cells. I stop here. Another day, another post, perhaps.

Raghuram Ekambaram