Indian revolutionary and a major figure in the Indian independence movement of the early Twentieth Century. Singh was active in revolutionary struggle from an early age and he was briefly affiliated with the Mohandas Ghandi’s “Non-Cooperation” movement, although Singh would break with Ghandi’s philosophy of non-violent resistance later in life.
Singh embraced atheism and Marxism-Leninism and integrated these key components into his philosophy of revolutionary struggle. Under his leadership, the Kirti Kissan Party was renamed the Hindustan Socialist Republican Organization. As Singh and his organization rose to new prominence in the Indian independence movement, they became the focus of public criticism from Ghandi himself, who disagreed with their belief that violence was a necessary and vital component of revolutionary struggle.
Singh’s secularism was perhaps his most important contribution to the socialist and independence struggles. During those turbulent times, British Imperialism used every tactic to create antagonism among the different religions of India, especially between Hindus and Muslims. The Sanghatan and Shuddi Movements among Hindus; and tableegh and many sectarian movements in Muslims bear witness to the effects of this tactic. Bhagat Singh removed his beard which was a violation of Sikh religion, because he did not want to create before the public the image of a ‘Sikh’ freedom fighter. Nor did he want to be held up as a hero by the followers of this religion. He wanted to teach the people that British Imperialism was their common enemy and they must be united against it to win freedom.
On April 8, 1924, Baghat Singh and his compatriot B. K. Dutt hurled two bombs on to the floor of the Central Delhi Hall in New Delhi. The bombs were tossed away from individuals so as not to harm anyone and, in fact, no one was harmed in the ensuing explosions. Following the explosions, Singh and Dutt showered the hall with copies of a leaflet that later was to be known as “The Red Pamphlet.” The pamphlet began with a passage which was to become legendary in the Indian revolutionary struggle:
“It takes a loud voice to make the deaf hear, with these immortal words uttered on a similar occasion by Vaillant, a French anarchist martyr, do we strongly justify this action of ours.”
Singh and Dutt concluded the pamphlet with the phrase “Long Live the Revolution!” This phrase (translated from “Inquilab Zindabad!” became one of the most enduring slogans of the Indian Independence Movement.
Singh and Dutt turned themselves in following the bombing incident. Following the trial, they were sentenced to “transportation for life” and while imprisoned, Singh and Dutt became outspoken critics of the Indian penal system, embarking on hunger strikes and engaging in agitation and propaganda from within the confines of the prison. Shortly after the commencement of his prison sentence, Singh was implicated in the 1928 death of a Deputy Police Superintendent. Singh acknowledged involvement in the death and he was executed by hanging on 23 March 1931.
Bhagat Singh is widely hailed as a martyr as a result of his execution at the hands of oppressors and, as such, he is often referred to as “Shaheed (Martyr) Bhagat Singh.”
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solarpunk. Re-reading this, I was pretty imprecise with some terminology, but I also had a lingering illness/lack of sleep thing. I shouldn’t have said “Real” to ground it, but that there is either no small objecta (read: small “eigene” imperfection that makes a thing unique/enjoyable) or that it can’t be mapped back onto a “Real” (i.e. traumatic core that can’t be fully represented).
Maybe the foundational crimes of america are at once repressed and yet provide the background for the most direct readings of a lot of american made media.
You make a good point about “Lore” obsession. Have you read this article by Michael Moorcock?
https://libcom.org/article/starship-stormtroopers-michael-moorcock
You are correct in that you are describing hauntology. Because all the signifiers are being built solely off other signifiers the possibility for radically different imaginations is encircled.
I think the hypertension is in a sense the lamest attempt to build something out of a totally encircled imagination, an intuitive desire to break out of the prison of capitalist realism without the vision to see the bars. I see multiverse lore as the final and most obvious layer of this, where the concept is every single thing possibly imaginable and yet multiverse are always constrained by the same immortal logic of capitalist realism.
I think that these things actually are a genuine reaction to the Real, and all of the horrors beyond human comprehension we come into contact with on the daily, particularly WWIII and climate apocalypse looming on the horizon. The symbolic matrix of ideology does it’s best attempt at imagining solutions to impending danger, but the tools of the algorithm have withered off any logic that could threaten to destroy the reproduction of the relations of production, rendering the output lame farces of imagination that even the most ideologically confused person can libidinally infer as more of the same.
I would actually say that this pathetic and sad output cycle is the Objet A, where everything around us is slop and yet the slop nature of it makes it all the more consumable, even and perhaps especially to ideological communists who see it as such.
Thanks, yeah, makes sense.
Substance shit
I was hungover from a pathetically small amount of alcohol yesterday. Either getting old or have successfully lowered my tolerance limits to non existant again and it made it almost impossible to think
Even hungover you’ve got a better grasp on it than most people I think hahaha