Bhagat Singh Birth Anniversary: Quotes, thoughts & facts about the revolutionary freedom fighter

Bhagat Singh, a charismatic Indian revolutionary, professing socialism and atheism was born on September 28 in Banga, Punjab, now in Pakistan, to Vidyavati and Kishan Singh Sandhu. 

The nation would celebrate Bhagat Singh’s 114th birth anniversary this year. The country still remembers the revolutionary ideas. He died at a young age but he gave a new direction to the independence moment. 

His first rendezvous with the spirit of revolution happened in 1919 when he visited the site of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre at the age of 12. He became one of the protestors in his village at the age of 14 and then, there was no looking back.

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Jawaharlal Nehru wrote about Bhagat Singh, “Bhagat Singh did not become popular because of his act of terrorism but because he seemed to vindicate, for the moment, the honour of Lala Lajpat Rai, and through him of the nation. He became a symbol; the act was forgotten, the symbol remained, and within a few months each town and village of the Punjab, and to a lesser extent in the rest of northern India, resounded with his name.” 

Bhagat Singh Birth Anniversary: Facts

• Singh began to question religious ideologies after witnessing the Hindu–Muslim riots.
• In 1928, he and Shivaram Rajguru shot the British officer John Saunders in Lahore, British India, mistaking him as British Police superintendent, James Scott, who killed popular nationalist Lala Lajpat Rai.
• In 1929, Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt exposed two low-intensity homemade bombs inside the Central Legislative Assembly. They shouted slogans and allowed the British authorities to arrest them. 
• He wrote for, and edited, Urdu and Punjabi newspapers, published in Amritsar and also contributed to low-priced pamphlets published by the Naujawan Bharat Sabha that excoriated the British.
• In jail, Singh and his fellows sat on hunger strike, for 116 days, demanding better prison conditions for Indian prisoners, the strike ending in Jatin Das's death from starvation in September 1929.
• In prison his daily work included reading and writing books, visiting court every day and even singing.
• The popular quotation “Inquilab Zindabad” was coined by Legend Bhagat Singh. 
•  On 23 March 1931, Bhagat Singh was hanged with his mates, Sukhdev and Rajguru, at that time he was just 23 years old. 
• His resting place is Hussainiwala National Martyrs Memorial, at Hussainiwala village in Punjab, India.
• Singh never married and the aim of his life was independent India.

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Bhagat Singh Birth Anniversary: Quotes 

• “They may kill me, but they cannot kill my ideas. They can crush my body, but they will not be able to crush my spirit.”
• “If the deaf has to hear, the sound has to be very loud.”
• “Merciless criticism and independent thinking are two traits of revolutionary thinking. Lovers, lunatics and poets are made of the same stuff.”
• “It is beyond the power of any man to make a revolution. Neither can it be brought about on any appointed date. It is brought about by special environments, social and economic. The function of an organised party is to utilise any such opportunity offered by these circumstances.”
• “The sword of revolution is sharpened on the whetting stone of ideas.”