On the occasion of the 86th martyrdom day of Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Raj Guru on March 23 we are reproducing an interview given by his compatriot, Shiv Verma, which was published in ‘The Daily’ on March 26, 1985. The interview was taken by Sudheendra Kulkarni in 1985, much before he joined the BJP.

MARCH 23 marked the 54th year of the martyrdom of Bhagat Singh, the immortal hero of the Indian independence movement. Shiv Verma, his close associate who spent 17 years in the dreaded Andaman jail for his involvement in the famous Lahore Conspiracy Case—for which Bhagat Singh was sent to the gallows—was in Bombay last week. He has written moving biographical sketches on Bhagat Singh, Chandra Shekhar Azad, Raj Guru and others in his celebrated book Samsrmritiyan.

In the record 63 day fast unto death inside the Borstal jail, which claimed the life of Jatin Das, Shiv Verma had a narrow escape. A member of the CPI(M) for many years he edited its Hindi weekly “Swadhinata”.

Bhagat Singh has since been his hero. “Moving closely with him in the thick and thin of those times, you couldn’t really see his true height”, he says. “But now, from a historical distance, I find he was a giant.”

When asked about his age, Shiv Verma, frail and clad in simple pyjama kurta, jocularly answered, “18” and then added, “One doesn’t keep a count of the years that are knocked out, only those one is yet to cover.” Actually he is 83. Remarkably agile, both physically and mentally, his is still active, lecturing across the country and written books. In a 90 minute interview, Shiv Verma spoke to the ‘DAILY’ on a variety of issues.   

Q: You are comrade-in-arms of Bhagat Singh. Could you give a personal account of the man and his qualities?

SV: I first came across him in 1926 in Kanpur. The first thing that struck me was his frankness, sincerity of the purpose and a personal approach to friends. He was very fond of books. I do not remember a single day when he didn’t carry books with him. He had a lust for study and learning. Hugo, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Bernard Shaw, Gorky and Dickens were his favourites. But what attracted me most was his quick grasp, clarity of thought and his total dedication to the cause. He was hardly 20 then. His capacity to summarise his ideas in simple, short slogans was amazing. He gave three slogans to the Party (Hindustan Socialist Republican Party): “Long Live revolution”, “Long live the proletariat” and “Down with Imperialism.” These days, however, some people quietly drop the second slogan while talking about Bhagat Singh.

Q: What were you in the Party? And could you tell us something about the other revolutionaries?

SV: I entered politics through Gandhiji’s non-cooperation movement in 1921. But after the Chowri-Chowra incident, I couldn’t see eye to eye and came out.

I was made one of the central committee members in the founding meeting of the Party in 1928. I was in charge of the activities in UP. Sukhdev was made the organiser in Punjab. Chandrashekar Azad was the Commander in Chief. He was a master tactician and Bhagat Singh followed him fully in all military matters. Though Azad was a much senior member, he accepted Bhagat singh as his political leader.   

Q: What about Raj Guru, who hailed from Maharashtra?

SV: He was very close to me. He was not a good organiser. He was in a great hurry to build the party in Maharashtra, and in his impatience he recruited some undesirable people who were later responsible for getting him arrested. But as a soldier he had sterling qualities. His only desire was that Bhagat singh should not die before him. Indeed, there was a competition amongst revolutionaries those days as to who died first.

Q: Different political currents contended with each other in the freedom movement. What place do Bhagat Singh and other revolutionaries hold in this movement?

SV: The revolutionaries were the first to give the slogan of complete independence. The Anushilan group started it in Bengal in 1902. At that time, the Congress was not even demanding Dominion Status. In the non-cooperation movement, Gandhi gave a call only to students, teachers, lawyers, etc, but not to peasants and workers. And as soon as the people began to retaliate, he withdrew the movement.

However, when the revolutionaries entered the scene, the situation changed radically. Militant struggles of workers and peasants began all over the country and their demands were not economic only. Youth became assertive inside the Congress. And when Bhagat Singh gave the slogan of “Inquilab Zindabad” in 1929, it replaced the slogan “Gandhiji ki Jai”.

Once somebody asked Bhagat Singh: “Why are you not giving the slogan of Vande Mataram, instead of Inquilab Zindabad?” His reply was characteristic: “Your slogan is a worship of the mother with folded hands. But we have no right to worship her as long as she is in bondage. Our first job is to liberate her, and not to do namaskara to her and pass. And only revolution can liberate her.”    

Even though the struggle died down after 1933, the spirit of sacrifice continued. That is why in 1942, it was not just “Do or Die”. In line with the spirit of the revolutionaries in 1920-30, it became do or die or, when necessary, kill also. That is why in 1946-47 Bhagat Singh’s spirit became the mass spirit. Workers took it, peasants, army, navy, youth and students all took it.

Q: What were the major influences on Bhagat Singh’s intellectual and political development?

SV: Till 1924, he was influenced by Babbar Akalis. But by 1929, he was a full-fledged Marxist. The spirit to read and learn enabled him to reach the correct goal.

Q: Then, how is it that his world outlook has remained largely unknown?

SV: You see, today the RSS wallahs say that the revolutionaries were only nationalists and that too Hindu nationalists. They are distorting and suppressing history. Now you’ll mark it, it is easy to distort Azad, because he has not written down anything. But Bhagat Singh had put his ideas in black and white on almost all subjects—politics, religion, ethics, love, science, literature and so on.

But for this state of affairs, the leftists are also responsible to some extent. Because, the heritage which ought to have been theirs is being allowed  to be distorted and exploited by reactionaries.

Q: The question of communal harmony and national integration has become unprecedently crucial today. Did Bhagat Singh and his compatriots have any perspective on his question?

SV: The manifesto of Navjawan Bharat Sabha, which was jointly drafted by Bhagat Singh and Bhagawati Charan, is very clear on this. For them, Hindu-Muslim-Sikh amity was not just an accepted principle but they practiced it too.

In this context, I could mention the name of Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi, our biggest aid in Kanpur. He was a Gandhian but held that whoever was sincerely fighting for the country’s liberation, deserved support. He was a strong advocate of Hindu-Muslim unity. When the news of Bhagat Singh’s execution reached Kanpur and a Bandh call was given, some anti-social elements engineered a communal riot. Vidyarthi, who was respected by both the communities, personally moved about in the city rescuing Muslims from the Hindus areas and Hindus from the Muslim areas. But in the process he himself had to lay down his life. Incidentally it was on March 25, 1931.

Q: Generally, Bhagat Singh is today seen in Punjab as a Sikh by the Sikhs and a Hindu by the Hindus. Does he have any added relevance in today’s troubled situation in Punjab?  

SV: Of course! It is at this time that he is of the utmost relevance. After all, he did not give his life for Khalistan, but for the liberation of the entire country. As an atheist, he stood not for Sikhs alone or Hindus alone. For him all were Indians. Therefore, if you respect Bhagat singh, it becomes your first duty to boldly combat all kinds of separatist forces—whether they come in the name of religion, caste, language or region. After all, if we lose our country’s unity, where  will we build socialism? In the air?

Q: What are your present activities?

Today, I mainly work on compiling and researching the works of Bhagat Singh and other revolutionaries, which I am doing at the Martyrs Memorial and Freedom Struggle Research centre. Recently, I discovered an as-yet-unknown writing of Bhagat Singh in which he clearly stated that the Congress was heading on a path of compromise and that after independence it would stop representing the interests of the entire nation, but protect the interests, only of some vested interests. In this, he also gives a call to the youth to accept Marxism as their guiding ideology and build the Communist Party.

Q: In this International Year of Youth, what do you have to say to, and about the Indian Youth?

SV: About the youth, the general complaint is that they are non-political. But my point is, observing the Youth Year and not telling the youth about their own role in the freedom struggle is meaningless. First, tell them that freedom is their achievement. Instead, in a planned manner, the glorious, death-defying role of the youth at every stage in the freedom is being deleted from the pages of history. And it is propagated by the official machinery that only some leaders, by their magic, brought freedom to the country.

These days, youth are used only at the time of elections. Elections come and go but year after year the poison is going on accumulating. After 40 years, communalism, caste politics and regionalism, instead of dying out, have become nauseatingly common.

So, my advice to the youth is fight communal poison, fight casteism, fight everything that divides the people and the country.