Bhagat Singh
The man who goes on a hunger strike has a
soul. He is moved by that soul, and he believes
in the justice of his cause... However much you
deplore them, and however much you say they
are misguided, it is the system, this damnable
system of governance, which is resented by
the people.
—Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1929)
With batons they beat his comrade
Lala Lajpat Rai, whose heart would surrender
to the blows. In the foam spilling
from the dying man’s mouth Bhagat heard
the voices of Douglass and Du Bois,
and he wept at the sheer nobility of the oppressed,
be they Indian or American, and thereafter
he resolved to die a free man.
That the Angrez so wholeheartedly believed
their blue eyes were divine favors
rubbed him all wrong. They were first-class
thieves, the whole lot, and it mattered
not what their laws said about revolution,
nor which of them caught a bullet.
If it would cost him his life to reclaim
his life, then why hesitate? I can kill you too,
he shouted, and I will. And he did,
despite the Mahatma’s insistence on nonviolence.
His version of dignity had room enough
for bombs. For bludgeoning hunger and thirst.
For 116 days he refused all sustenance,
and in the hallucinations that ensued,
his soul traveled to Mount Meru
where it spoke directly to Guru Nanak,
who asserted there is nothing holier
in God’s eyes than Truth. But Bhagat Singh
blinked away the vision, insisting
the only real truth was a man’s own self.
At twenty-three, he and two others were hanged
in Lahore, their bodies secretly cremated at night,
their ashes tossed into the Sutlej River
just as dawn was breaking.
First published in Narrative, Spring 2017
The man who goes on a hunger strike has a
soul. He is moved by that soul, and he believes
in the justice of his cause... However much you
deplore them, and however much you say they
are misguided, it is the system, this damnable
system of governance, which is resented by
the people.
—Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1929)
With batons they beat his comrade
Lala Lajpat Rai, whose heart would surrender
to the blows. In the foam spilling
from the dying man’s mouth Bhagat heard
the voices of Douglass and Du Bois,
and he wept at the sheer nobility of the oppressed,
be they Indian or American, and thereafter
he resolved to die a free man.
That the Angrez so wholeheartedly believed
their blue eyes were divine favors
rubbed him all wrong. They were first-class
thieves, the whole lot, and it mattered
not what their laws said about revolution,
nor which of them caught a bullet.
If it would cost him his life to reclaim
his life, then why hesitate? I can kill you too,
he shouted, and I will. And he did,
despite the Mahatma’s insistence on nonviolence.
His version of dignity had room enough
for bombs. For bludgeoning hunger and thirst.
For 116 days he refused all sustenance,
and in the hallucinations that ensued,
his soul traveled to Mount Meru
where it spoke directly to Guru Nanak,
who asserted there is nothing holier
in God’s eyes than Truth. But Bhagat Singh
blinked away the vision, insisting
the only real truth was a man’s own self.
At twenty-three, he and two others were hanged
in Lahore, their bodies secretly cremated at night,
their ashes tossed into the Sutlej River
just as dawn was breaking.
First published in Narrative, Spring 2017