IN RESPONSE TO ABHISHIKTA ANUSKA MUKHERJEE'S COMMEMORATIVE POST ON SUKHDEV THAPAR

Glorious work Abhishikta Anuska Mukherjee! The birthday of Sukhdev Thapar is now a commemorative occasion not much beyond the garlanding of the statue of the hero, perhaps, and a pretentious speech by a politician thereafter. To give a LIKE to the post seems almost like a betrayal of the nation for who can forgive the British for their oppression of our forefathers and the desecration and pillaging of our motherland? Shame unto independent India that she fails to recognize the valour of these supreme heroes of the Spirit for want of virility! To even contemplate the sacrifices made by our valiant youth in those days of servile dependence 'to shake off the sterile curse' of alien tyranny, and then to reflect on the perfidious political scene prevailing today and the utter lack of character in the aspirant youth who can barely look beyond their immediate personal gains to the utter indifference about the appalling living condition of the masses, fills one with pain, disgust, abhorrence and hope, that yet the Sukhdevs of yesteryears will seek rebirth in their hallowed motherland for their mission of her regeneration remains unfulfilled.

A member of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Organization, co-founder of the Naujawan Bharat Sabha, accomplice in the inadvertent assassination of J.P. Saunders, the Assistant Superintendent of Police, and, thus, the avenger of the brutal death of Lala Lajpat Rai from police lathi charge (baton charge), Sukhdev Thapar belonged to a rare breed of revolutionaries who dared the British eye to eye, without hatred or malice but with virtuous violence as befits a kshatriya, to extricate the motherland from the tentacles of British imperialism. He was arrested along with Bhagat Singh and Shivaram Rajguru for criminal involvement in the assassination of J.P. Saunders. Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutta were also apprehended for exploding bombs in the Central Assembly Hall in New Delhi on 8 April, 1929. Singh and Dutta had thrown two bombs and floated protest leaflets in the Assembly Hall to stir up the nation into engaging in a vigorous movement for independence. That they deliberately avoided escape and embraced arrest was to set up their trial which, they were convinced, would spread the revolutionary fervour across the country and ignite the fire of freedom everywhere.

Sukhdev, Bhagat Singh and Rajguru---that all three of them were under 24 years of age when their valiant end came makes their mature revolutionary thinking all the more remarkable and lends a lustre to their sacrifice that remains undimmed in the annals of the freedom struggle despite the passage of time. A few days before the day of their hanging, Sukhdev wrote a letter to Mahatma Gandhi dissuading him from appealing to the British government for commutation of the death sentence passed on them as it was their conviction that their death would be far more potent in igniting the revolutionary spirit in the masses than a reduced sentence of imprisonment. There was no reprieve for them though. The Court order of their prospective hanging on 24 March, 1931 was overruled and the date summarily preponed to the previous evening by the Home Secretary of Punjab. On the fateful evening of 23 March, 1931 at 7:30 the three heroes passed into folklore. The triumphant trio, deathless and defiant, raised the revolutionary slogan and, laughing full of glee, passed into eternity as if life were but a consecration at the altar of freedom of the motherland. Hail heroes, thy victory shines in the afterglow of thy sacrifice! Inquilab Zindabad! Azad Hind Zindabad!

P.S. The heroes were hanged till death; then their bodies were dismembered, packaged and passed through a hole in the real wall of the prison, transported to the outskirts of Ganda Singh Wala village under the cover of darkness where they were kerosene-cremated and their ashes then cast away in the Sutlej (Shatadru) river some 10 km from Ferozepur.