Bhagat Singh’s Statue in Parliament: Disturbing Questions
(Below are excerpts from a letter to the Speaker (Dt/- 17 August 2008), Parliament of India, by Prof. Chaman Lal, (editor, Complete Documents of Bhagat Singh in Hindi), protesting against the distortion of Bhagat Singh’s image in the statue installed in Parliament:
Not only family members of Bhagat Singh, even eminent freedom fighter Shashi Bhushan felt that the statue looks like that of a 50-60 year old man and not of 23-24 years young person.
...For long, Bhagat Singh’s ideas remained shadowed by various fishy interpretations and many paintings, particularly in Punjab, based on these shady interpretations came up. One of these paintings has been of Bhagat Singh wearing yellow turban with pistol in hand, confirming the colonial image of ‘a terrorist’. Some of us like Prof. Bipan Chandra, Prof. Sumit Sarkar, Prof. Irfan Habib, myself and others, who have worked for many years to resurrect the real image of Bhagat Singh as a brilliant socialist thinker, through his writings, feel cheated, when some of these painted images take precedence over real pictures of Bhagat Singh. Punjab Government has been guilty of publishing a painted picture of Bhagat Singh as real picture in media in its official advertisements for last more than three decades, including the advertisement issued on 15th August this year.
..An unsavoury controversy however was created by those, who had nothing to do with the ideas of Bhagat Singh to communalize the issue of statue of a confirmed atheist. The whole world knows Bhagat Singh by one of his last photographs, with hat and dozens of statues throughout the country—Indore, Kolkata, Partapgarh, Delhi (Ferozeshah Kotla) and dozens of other places, are based on this world popular known photograph, which is popular even in Pakistan. The irony of the matter is that, the place where he created history by his action on 8th April 1929, in this very photographic shape, he was denied the same shape by the new rulers.
...Even if one grants that a statue with turban was the decision of certain committee, then it was imperative that the real picture with turban was to be sculpted, that has not been done. The popular picture with turban is of College drama group. In this picture Bhagat Singh is wearing white Kurta Pyjama with white falling turban, which is not a typical Sikh (close, tight) way of wearing turban. Bhagat Singh was almost six feet tall with robust health, but he was not fat. In his turbaned photo, he has very small beard and moustaches, as he was just sixteen then. (The sculpture is not faithful even to this photo.)
...Bhagat Singh is like a Phoenix, however he may be tried to be buried and killed at the level of body or ideas, he will resurrect himself with renewed vigour, as Che Guevara’s resurrection has happened in all Latin American countries, shaking the neo colonial powers of the earth.
– Chaman Lal
Bhagat Singh’s Statue
There is news from Delhi
Alas! Shame!
What a mess the sarkari sculptor has made
Of Bhagat Singh
In the Parliament Complex!
For sixty years they sent petition upon petition
The British rejected him
You, our own government,
You, at least ought not to reject him.
At last the government beat its breast
and said, sure, why not!
And erected the statue in the parliament square.
The veil was lifted –
Hey, what’s this?
In dismay you find, this isn’t Bhagat Singh,
That beautiful 24 year old lad
Whose young limbs they could not properly burn
On the fateful night when they hanged him.
It is some fellow in his sixties,
Flabby and tired looking,
With upturned mustaches.
Who the hell is he?
...
And in his city Lahore
Bhagat Singh is a Sikh
Who perhaps left for India in ‘47
Such names make people nervous
Is the god-damn man coming back?
to claim his property??
We shall never let that happen
After all we left fields and barns
shops and houses
in Ludhiana.
Bhagat Singh was a pure Hindustani
His times are swept away with the wind
He was a purely Hindustani heart-flame
Light in the water
rustling in the wind
He was a purely Hindustani passion of his time
And times have changed.
Let his statue remain where it has been for 60 years
Across both sides of the border
In a heart or two.
There every morning
Longings as innocent and ignorant as little children
Cover his young body with fresh garlands of marigold
Bathe his limbs with tears of love and adoration
He belongs there
He is happy there.