Bhagat Singh: “Crown vs Sukh Dev, Lahore Conspiracy Case 1929-1931”
Lahore, Pakistan: Lahore central Jail on Ferozpur Road near Ichhara is the place where activism was hanged 80 years ago but people of Lahore have not forgotten Bhagat Singh and still trying to name intersection close to this jail after Bhagat Singh.
“It is easy to kill individuals but you cannot kill the ideas. Great empires crumbled, while the ideas survived”, said Bhagat singh as he believed in his words. Yes time and history failed to kill him—he is still alive everywhere —in the wind of subcontinent and even far away.
New generation does not find anything about Bhagat Singh in books available in local markets but only main source for information is Indian films made on Bhagat Singh life and Internet sources like Wikipedia.
However the role of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi for not playing any role to stop hanging of Bhagat Singh is not mentioned in films mostly.
Bhagat Singh was a young man striving for independence of his homeland from British Raj and he was fascinated and influence by events going around Russian Revolution therefore he believe that independence could be taken away with force.
According to Wikipedia, , Singh and two others had written a letter to Lord Irwin, wherein they asked to be treated as y believed that he was fighting a war for his homeland as true soldier of motherland.
Prannath Mehta, a close friend of Bhagat Singh visited him in the jail on March 20 with a draft letter for clemency, but Bhata declined to sign it.
According to Wikipedia:
“There have been suggestions that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi had an opportunity to stop Singh’s execution, but refrained from doing so. A variation of this theory is that Gandhi actively conspired with the British to have Singh executed. Gandhi’s supporters argue that Gandhi did not have enough influence with the British to stop the execution, much less arrange it, but claim that he did his best to save Singh’s life. They also assert that Singh’s role in the independence movement was of no threat to Gandhi’s role as its leader, and so Gandhi would have no reason to want him dead. Gandhi, during his lifetime, always maintained that he was a great admirer of Singh’s patriotism. He also stated that he was opposed to Singh’s execution (and for that matter, capital punishment in general) and proclaimed that he had no power to stop it. On Singh’s execution, Gandhi said, “The government certainly had the right to hang these men. However, there are some rights which do credit to those who possess them only if they are enjoyed in name only.” Gandhi also once remarked about capital punishment, “I cannot in all conscience agree to anyone being sent to the gallows. God alone can take life, because he alone gives it.” Gandhi had managed to have 90,000 political prisoners who were not members of his Satyagraha movement released under the Gandhi-Irwin Pact.
