Q12 · UPPSC PCS Mains 2022 · GS I · 12 marks · ~200 words in the hall · 2 min read

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Throw light on the 'Revolutionary Philosophy' formulated by Bhagat Singh.

Topic: World history. Syllabus: History of the world from the 18th century to the middle of the 20th century. Same official PYQ from year-wise 2022 and World history.

Revision summary

HSRA (1928) renamed revolution as a socialist republic, not only the killing of officials. The Assembly bomb was publicity ‘to make the deaf hear’; later notes reject terror as a substitute for the mass. Why I am an Atheist asks revolutionaries to drop religious consolation. Communalism and caste were treated as splits in the people, not as side issues. Martyrdom at 23 is the end of a life, not the whole of the philosophy.

Model answer

Introduction

Bhagat Singh’s revolutionary philosophy is a reasoned socialism, not a cult of the pistol. From Naujawan Bharat Sabha and the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association to the Assembly bomb, the jail hunger strike, and essays such as Why I am an Atheist, he tried to turn assassination-era nationalism into a programme for the people.

Body

From romantic revolt to socialist republic

  • Early influence of the Ghadar memory, Kartar Singh Sarabha, and Lala Lajpat Rai’s death after the 1928 lathi-charge pushed Singh from personal revenge toward organised politics.
  • The Hindustan Republican Association was renamed Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (1928) so that revolution would mean a socialist republic, not only the end of British officers.
  • The slogan Inquilab Zindabad, borrowed and popularised in this circle, named a continuing process of change, not a single heroic date.
  • To Young Political Workers and related notes argue that bombs cannot substitute for a class-conscious mass; the Assembly action (8 April 1929) was meant ‘to make the deaf hear’, not to kill.

Atheism, communalism, and the social question

  • Why I am an Atheist (1930) rejects a personal God as a crutch and asks revolutionaries to face death without religious consolation; this is philosophy, not teenage shock.
  • Singh treated communal riots as a political disease that split workers and peasants; Hindu and Muslim revivalism were both enemies of a common revolutionary front.
  • Caste humiliation and peasant-labour misery sit in his reading of Marx and of Indian conditions; freedom without social equality was, for him, incomplete swaraj.
  • He admired aspects of Lenin’s organised party and of European socialist literature circulating in Lahore and Kanpur jails, while remaining an Indian anti-colonial militant.

Method, Gandhi, and the critical light

  • The Saunders killing was still individual terror; Singh’s later writings criticise that method even as he refused to recant in court.
  • He respected Gandhi’s mass reach but rejected what he saw as a compromise with empire and with Indian capital; the philosophy is a debate with Gandhi, not a cartoon of him.
  • Jail hunger strikes with Jatin Das made the body a political argument for prisoner status and for public awakening.
  • A fair light therefore reads Bhagat Singh as a socialist, atheist, and anti-communal organiser whose martyrdom is the last chapter, not the whole book.

Flow diagram

flowchart TD
  H[HSRA 1928] --> S[Socialist republic]
  H --> A[Atheism anti-communal]
  H --> M[Mass not only bomb]
  S --> I[Inquilab as process]
  A --> I
  M --> I

Conclusion

Bhagat Singh formulated a revolutionary philosophy of socialist republic, reasoned atheism, and mass awakening. The bomb and the gallows were tactics and fate; the lasting doctrine is that freedom must unseat empire, communal hate, and class rule together.

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