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Photo: Rajeev Bhatt

Experience speaks Veteran journalist Kuldip Nayar

Agrees Kuldip Nayar, whose book “Without Fear: The Life and Trial of Bhagat Singh” has recently hit the stands.

Nayar says Bhagat Singh is relevant because same kind of conditions exist in this country which enraged him to enter in the freedom movement.

“There is large scale poverty, apathy of the general public, class and caste disparity. The only difference is that the British are no longer ruling us.”

Nayar cites a portion of a letter that Bhagat Singh wrote to his mother, “My only fear is when these gora sahibs will go their place would be taken by brown sahibs.”

And Nayar feels this is what exactly happened. “The bureaucracy and the political parties are operating to make money. This is where I believe the views of Gandhiji and Bhagat Singh coincide, despite their obvious differences on the means to achieve independence. Soon after independence, Gandhiji had said: We have achieved political independence, the economic freedom has yet to come.”

Nayar agrees to an extent that Bhagat Singh was marginalised because he drew his political ideology from communism and was an atheist.

“He was an atheist but had his ethical values in place. He was among the first one to proclaim the separation of religion and state.” As for Gandhiji’s failure to save Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru from death, Nayar says he personally feels that Gandhiji could have saved them.

“We didn’t achieve much from Gandhi-Irwin pact and I believe the Gandhiji could have refused to sign the agreement till the death sentence was commuted. At the same time it is highly unlikely that the British government would have allowed Bhagat Singh to be free. Because here was a man, all of 23, determined to wake up Indian youth from their slumber. They were really afraid of him.” Nayar, who is personally against the bomb ideology, has brought forth the softer side of the young revolutionary. “The aim to throw bombs in the Central Assembly was not to hurt anybody but to explain the revolutionaries’ point of view that the inquilab was aimed to achieve the sovereignty of the common man by an armed struggle rather than writing pamphlets and petitions.”

Written in the form of a narrative, Nayar has kept the text lucid and conversational, which he owes to all his years in journalism. Talking of journalism who can forget Hans Raj Vohra, the approver, whose testimony changed the course of the case?

Nayar, who joined The Statesman when Vohra had retired, says it was the police who misled Vohra into believing that Sukhdev had turned into an approver. “This is a usual tactic used by the police. I pity Vohra who died with the belief that Sukhdev compromised the cause of revolution. Had he compromised, Sukhdev would not have been hanged. It was Vohra, an insider, who spilled the beans.”

ANUJ KUMAR

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