Born to never die: The martyr in popular culture
THE ETHOS OF BHAGAT SINGH GOES BEYOND
HIS POSTER-BOY IMAGERY, HE REMAINS A HERO FOR HIS CHARISMA AND COMMITMENT
CHANDIGARH: It is rare for anyone to pass from history into legend as quickly as it happened to Bhagat Singh, a revolutionary freedom fighter who, along with his comrades Rajguru and Sukhdev, was hanged to death on March 23, 1931, at the age of 24, in British India. Bhagat Singh stood out from among his friends for his zest for life and the clarity of thought, vision and writing at so young an age.
Bhagat Singh remains an undisputed national hero for his sheer charisma and commitment. His pictures and posters can be found in remote villages all over the country. Ever since his martyrdom, people have taken pride in naming their children after him. In Punjab, of course, he is an icon of unsurpassed popularity. Punjabi poet Amarjit, who has built an archives of the martyr’s contemporary iconography, says: “Bhagat Singh is arguably the greatest icon of the 20th century Punjab. There is hardly any town, which has not his statue, neighbourhood or a street named after him.”
MASS APPEAL
Interestingly, the iconography of Bhagat Singh emerged as early as the year of his martyrdom. Christopher Pinney, a senior lecturer at Material Culture, University College, London, has pointed out: “Bhagat Singh’s popular appeal was, and still is, enormous and this is usually presented as an intriguing anomaly. Jawaharlal Nehru’s is usually cited noting vis-a-vis Bhagat’s ‘sudden and amazing’ popularity.” Bhagat Singh has been the subject of chromoprints since 1931. From 1954 to 2002 as many as seven popular films have been made on his life. The year 2002 saw the release of three films on this theme.
Although his image has always represented the muchlauded human values of courage, struggle and sacrifice, yet very often one has seen the image being misappropriated to highlight issues that had no place in the martyr’s ideology. In Punjab, we have been witness to the tussle of the use of his clean-shaven photograph with a hat as against his turbaned image. The effort on one side to
DISTORTED IMAGERY
What has pained many admirers of the martyr is his portrayal as a gun-totting hero or a vain moustache-twirling macho male. This has happened because of his glorification without an eye to his ethos. Chandan says: “The Punjabi urban landscape is dotted with crudely sculpted statues many with permanent metal ladders fitted on them for the convenience of politicians who profusely garland them on his birth and death anniversaries. Everywhere his face is seen with all sorts of distortions on T-shirts, stickers and at odd places.”
In fact, Anand Patwardhan’s 1990 film ‘In Memory of Friends’ that focussed on the resistance against fundamentalism in a turbulent Punjab says: “Today the State eulogizes him as a nationalist while Sikh separatists portray him as a Sikh militant. In fact, Singh was neither. Just prior to his death he wrote a book which he entitled ‘Why I Am An Atheist’.”
What is required is a deeper look at the philosophy and commitment of this great hero rather than treat him as a poster boy. But then legends have their own limitation, taking the better of the patriot that he was.