Description
This is a path-breaking work on the political life and times of Bhagat Singh and his associates, and the organizations of which they were a part – the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) and the Naujawan Bharat Sabha. It highlights many hitherto neglected aspects of the evolution of Bhagat Singh as a national hero, including the definite shift towards socialism in his outlook. This is also among the best works on the revolutionary nationalists and their role in India’s freedom movement. Documents and short writings crucial to understanding the essential core of their ideology and programme are included as appendices. This is that rare book of history that scholars and the general reader alike could enjoy and appreciate, and which no student of modern south Asian history can do without. Above all, it describes incredibly well those momentous decades of the 1920s and early 30s when the left-radical agenda came to occupy a huge space on the Subcontinent.
CONTENTS
Preface
Essays
- Chapter One: Programme and Ideology of the Early Revolutionaries
- Chapter Two: Towards a Revolutionary Programme and Socialist Outlook
- Chapter Three: Trials, Congress and the Revolutionaries
- Chapter Four: Ideology and Programme of the HSRA
- Chapter Five: Conclusion
Appendices
A – The Reading list of Sardar Bhagat Singh
B – Some important Statements and Writings of Bhagat Singh
- To Make the Deaf Hear: Notice of Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (Army)
- Statement in the Sessions Court (Read out by Mr Asaf Ali)
- Why I Am An Atheist
- Introduction to The Dreamland
- To the Young Political Workers
C – Some important documents
- Manifesto of the Hindustan Republican Association
- Manifesto of the Naujawan Bharat Sabha
- Philosophy of the Bomb: Manifesto of the Hindustan
D – Socialist Republican Association
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
Front cover: Bhagat Singh with Batukeshwar Dutt. The couplets in Urdu, in Bhagat Singh’s handwriting, are from his prison diary. Back cover: young Bhagat Singh. Pictures courtesy Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi.
S. Irfan Habib
S. Irfan Habib works with the National Institute of Science, Technology and Development Studies (NISTADS). At present he holds the Maulana Azad Chair at NEUPA, New Delhi. He has researched in the area of history of science, and issues in science, society and education. His books include Domesticating Modern Science (co-authored with Dhruv Raina). He has also co-edited with Dhruv Raina Situating the History of Science: Dialogues with Joseph Needham and A Social History of Science in Colonial India.
