History and Art and Culture
In News: The Chandigarh International Airport was renamed as Shaheed Bhagat Singh Airport, on the occasion of the freedom fighter’s birth anniversary and the controversy between Punjab and Haryana over their claims on the airport has finally ended.
- Earlier, Haryana had stated that the airport should only be named after Chandigarh, as it is the joint capital of both the states.
- An agreement was signed between the Airport Authority of India (AAI) and Punjab.
About Shaheed Bhagat Singh:
- Bhagat Singh was born on September 27, 1907 in Lyallpur, Western Punjab (now in Pakistan).
- He was a revolutionary hero of the Indian independence movement.
- He attended Dayanand Anglo Vedic High School, which was operated by Arya Samaj. He quit education at the age of thirteen and got admitted to the National College in Lahore, where he studied European revolutionary movements. He worked as a writer and editor in Amritsar for Punjabi- and Urdu-language newspapers espousing Marxist theories.
- The Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919 had a tremendous impact on Bhagat Singh who was just 12-years-old, he took the sand soaked with blood of the Indians killed at the garden and kept it with him to remind him of the ruthlessness of the British government.
- Nationalist activities:
- He is credited with popularizing the catchphrase “Inquilab zindabad” (“Long live the revolution”)
- Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) was founded in 1928 by Chandrashekhar Azad, Bhagat Singh and others.
- In 1928, Bhagat Singh and Rajguru shot dead a British police officer, John Saunders, in Lahore, mistaking Saunders, for the British senior police superintendent, James Scott. They held Scott responsible for the death of Lala Lajpat Rai in a lathi charge of Simon Commission.
- On 8 April, 1929, Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt threw bombs at the Central Legislative Assembly at Delhi ‘to make the deaf hear’.
- In the Lahore conspiracy case, Bhagat Singh along with, Rajguru and Sukhdev were sentenced to death. Bhagat Singh was in one-year imprisonment. He was in the Lahore jail when he was hanged in March 1931.
- Widespread coverage in Indian-owned newspapers about his courage and spirit—turned him into a household name in India and after his execution into a martyr of Indian Freedom Struggle.
- Philosophy: He was an avid reader of the teachings of Mikhail Bakunin and also read Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky. In his last testament, “To Young Political Workers“, he declares his ideal as the “Social reconstruction on new, i.e., Marxist, basis. Singh regarded Kartar Singh Sarabha, the founding-member of the Ghadar Party as his hero.
- Books: Why I am an Atheist, Letter to my father, Jail Notebook
Source: Indian Express
Previous Year Question
Q.1) The Ghadr (Ghadar) was a: (2014)
- revolutionary association of Indians with headquarters at San Francisco
- nationalist organization operating from Singapore
- militant organization with headquarters at Berlin
- communist movement for India’s freedom with headquarters at Tashkent
