Writings by Shaheed Bhagat Singh in Jail
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Bhagat Singh, a great reader and thinker was able to break the jail conditions, even when officially not allowed he was reading and writing but finally after long hunger strike got the right of reading & writing included in Jail Manuals. Thus he maintained a note book of 404 pages and kept notes & quotes from the books he read. Here are few of these.
"Ah my beloved, fill the cup that clears
Todays of past Regrets and future Fears
Tomorrow? _ why, Tomorrow I may be
Myself with yesterdays Sevn's thousand year."
***
Here with a loaf Bread beneath the Bough
A flask of wine, a Book of verse-and thou
Beside me signing in the widerness
And wilderness in paradise now!
"Ummar Khayyam"
Natural and Civil Rights
Man did not enter into society to become worse then he was before, but to have those rights better secured. His netural rights are the foundation of all his civil rights.
Natural rights are those which appertain to man in right of his existence (intellectual mental etc.)
Civil rights are those that appertain to man in right of his being a member of society.
Rights of Man-Thomas Paine
Morality
"Morality and religion are but words to him who fishes in gutters for the means of sustaining life and crouches behind barrels in the street for shelter from the cutting blasts of a winter night."
Right of labour
We consider it horrible that people should have their heads cut off, but we have not been taught to see the horror of life - long death which is inflicted upon a whole population by poverty and tyranny.
- Mark Twain
The Old labourer
"….He (the old labourer out of employment) was struggling against age, against nature, against circumstences, The entire weight of society, law and order pressed upon him to force him to loose his self respect and liberty.. He knocked at the doors of the farms and found good in man only - not in law and order, but in individual man alone.
-Richerd Jefferies.
Free Thought
"If there is anything that cannot bear free thought, let it crack"
-Windell Phillips
One Against All
The present social order is a ridiculous mechanism, in which portion of the whole are in conflict and acting against the whole are in conflict and acting against the whole. We see each class in society desire, from interest, the misfortune of the other classes, placing in every way individual interest in opposition to public good. The lawyer wishes litigation and suits.
Particularity among the rich; the physician desires sickness (The leter would be ruined if every body died without disease as would The former if all quarrels were settled by arbitration) The soldier wants a war which will carry off half of his burrials; monopolist and forestallers went famine, to double or treble the price of grain; the architect, the carpenter, the mason want conflagration, That will burn down a hundred houses to give activity to their branches of business. (Charles Fourier 1772-1837)
Liberty
Not a grave for the murder'd for freedom, But grow seeds for freedom, in its turn to bearseeds
Which the wind carry a far and resow, and the rains and the snows nourish.
Not a disembodies spirit can the weapons of tyrant let loose
But it stalc invincible over the earth whispering counselling, cautioning.
-(Walt Whitmen)
Will of Revolutionary
" I also wish my friends to speak little or not at all about me, because idols are created when men are praised and this is very bad for the future of the human race…..Acts alone, no metter by whom committed out to be studied, praised or blamed. Let them be praised in order that they may be initiated when they seem to contribute to the common weal; let them be ceusured when they are regarded as injurious to the general well being, so that they may not be repeated."
"I desire that on no occasion, whether near or remote, nor for any reason whatsoever, shall demonstrations of a political or religious character be made before my remains as I consider the time devoted to the dead would be better employed in improving the conditions of the living, most of whom stand in great need of this."
Will of Frenscisco Ferrer Spanish educator (1859-1909)
Glory of the Cause
Ah! Not for idle hatred, not
For honour, fame, nor self applause
But for the glory of the cause
You did, what will not be forgot
- (Arthur clough)
The mechine is social in nature, as the tool was individual
***
"Give us worse cotton, but give us better men" say Emerson
"Deliver me those rickety perishing souls of infants, and let the cotton trade take its chance."
The men cannot be sacrificed to the machine. The machine must serve mankind, yet the danger to the human race lurks, menacing, in the industrial region
- (Poverty & Riches Scott Nearing)
Man and Mankind
"I am a man and all that affects manking concerns me"- (Page 43 of Jail notebook)
Aim of life
"The aim of life is no more to control mind, but to develop it harmoniously, not to achieve salvation here after, 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 democracy or universal brotherhod can be achieved only when there is an equality of opportunity of opportunity in the social, political and individual life."
(Page 124 of Jail notebook)
Bhagat Singh's Last Petition
To
The Punjab Governor
Sir,
With due respect we beg to bring to your kind notice the following:
That we were sentenced to death on 7th October 1930 by a British Court, L.C.C Tribunal, constituted under the Sp. Lahore Conspiracy Case Ordinance, promulgated by the H.E. The Viceroy, the Head of the British Government of India, and that the main charge against us was that of having waged war against H.M. King George, the King of England.
The above-mentioned finding of the Court pre-supposed two things:
Firstly, that there exists a state of war between the British Nation and the Indian Nation and, secondly, that we had actually participated in that war and were therefore war prisoners.
The second pre-supposition seems to be a little bit flattering, but nevertheless it is too tempting to resist the desire of acquiescing in it.
As regards the first, we are constrained to go into some detail. Apparently there seems to be no such war as the phrase indicates. Nevertheless, please allow us to accept the validity of the pre-supposition taking it at its face value.
But in order to be correctly understood we must explain it further. Let us declare that the state of war does exist and shall exist so long as the Indian toiling masses and the natural resources are being exploited by a handful of parasites. They may be purely British Capitalist or mixed British and Indian or even purely Indian. They may be carrying on their insidious exploitation through mixed or even on purely Indian bureaucratic apparatus. All these things make no difference.
No matter, if your Government tries and succeeds in winning over the leaders of the upper strata of the Indian Society through petty concessions and compromises and thereby cause a temporary demoralization in the main body of the forces. No matter, if once again the vanguard of the Indian movement, the Revolutionary Party, finds itself deserted in the thick of the war.
No matter if the leaders to whom personally we are much indebted for the sympathy and feelings they expressed for us, but nevertheless we cannot overlook the fact that they did become so callous as to ignore and not to make a mention in the peace negotiation of even the homeless, friendless and penniless of female workers who are alleged to be belonging to the vanguard and whom the leaders consider to be enemies of their utopian non-violent cult which has already become a thing of the past;
the heroines who had ungrudgingly sacrificed or offered for sacrifice their husbands, brothers, and all that were nearest and dearest to them, including themselves, whom your government has declared to be outlaws. No matter, it your agents stoop so low as to fabricate baseless calumnies against their spotless characters to damage their and their party's reputation. The war shall continue.
It may assume different shapes at different times. It may become now open, now hidden, now purely agitational, now fierce life and death struggle. The choice of the course, whether bloody or comparatively peaceful, which it should adopt rests with you. Choose whichever you like. But that war shall be incessantly waged without taking into consideration the petty (illegible) and the meaningless ethical ideologies.
It shall be waged ever with new vigour, greater audacity and unflinching determination till the Socialist Republic is established and the present social order is completely replaced by a new social order, based on social prosperity and thus every sort of exploitation is put an end to and the humanity is ushered into the era of genuine and permanent peace. In the very near future the final battle shall be fought and final settlement arrived at.
The days of capitalist and imperialist exploitation are numbered. The war neither began with us nor is it going to end with our lives. It is the inevitable consequence of the historic events and the existing environments. Our humble sacrifices shall be only a link in the chain that has very accurately been beautified by the unparalleled sacrifice of Mr. Das and most tragic but noblest sacrifice of Comrade Bhagawati Charan and the glorious death of our dear warrior Azad.
As to the question of our fates, please allow us to say that when you have decided to put us to death, you will certainly do it. You have got the power in your hands and the power is the greatest justification in this world. We know that the maxim "Might is right" serves as your guiding motto. The whole of our trial was just a proof of that.
We wanted to point out that according to the verdict of your court we had waged war and were therefore war prisoners. And we claim to be treated as such, i.e., we claim to be shot dead instead of to be hanged. It rests with you to prove that you really meant what your court has said.
We request and hope that you will very kindly order the military department to send its detachment to perform our execution.
Yours'
BHAGAT SINGH
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