Evaluate the contribution of revolutionary terrorism represented by Bhagat Singh to the cause of India’s Struggle of independence. (250 Words)
Bhagat Singh played a dominant role in revolutionary activities in the post noncooperation movement. Earlier he was drawn to Gandhi's peaceful movement when he got disturbed by the Jalianwala Bagh massacre. But due to the sudden cancellation of the movement after Chauri Chaura incident, he lost faith on Gandhi and his technique, along with other revolutionaries.
Bhagat Singh joined Hindustan Republican Association. He led, in August 1925, to a train hold up at Kakori, a small station near Lucknow, where the Hindustan Republican association revolutionaries looted government money as a direct challenge to the British authority. Along with other members of the Association he joined Lala Lajpat Rai to protest the Simon Commission. Lajpat Rai was severely injured by the police in lathi charge and died. Bhagat Singh killed Saunders, responsible for Lathi charging Lal.
Though portrayed as a terrorist, Sardar Bhagat Singh was critical of the individual terrorism which was prevalent among the revolutionary youth of his time and called for mass mobilization. Bhagat Singh gave a new direction to the revolutionary terrorist tradition in India. He differed from his predecessors on two counts.
- Revolutionary leaders had not been able to accept the logic of atheism and much less to publicly proclaim it.
- There had been no conception of a post-independence society. The immediate goal being the destruction of the British Empire there had been no inclination to work out a political alternative.
For Bhagat Singh the decisive break came in the post-1926 period when the Hindustan Republican Association leadership fell on his shoulders. He lost no time in articulating the necessity of having a political ideology and that was to be Marxism. Thus he had a visioned revolutionary principle. On March 23, 1931, Bhagat Singh was hanged in Lahore with his fellow comrades Rajguru and Sukhdev. His supporters, who had been protesting against the hanging, immediately declared him as a shaheed or martyr.
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