Freedom Struggle Revisited-Revolutionary Terrorists- An Intellectual Quest-Part 1

In a message from the death cell, Ramprasad Bismil had appealed to the youth to give up
" The Desire to keep revolvers and pistols, not to work in revolutionary conspiracies and to participate in the open movement"

A die-hard communist, a rebel, a revolutionary, appealing people not to emulate his own path, why?
Going through the pages of the most reverred factual acount of the Indian struggle for freedom, by noted Historian Bipin Chandra,I was dumbstruck when I came across these quotes from Ram Prasad Bismil.
How can heores of our past debate their own stance so easily, did they repent the path they choose for themselves?
As I continued to read further, I came across one of the tallest figures of Indian freedom struggle, a young lad named Bhagat Singh. I was amazed to discover that this fellow had quite an apetite for books, and even at the tender age of 20 years, he was a giant of an intellectual.
His political ideology was shaped significantly by three things:

• The Jalian Wala Bagh incident, which showed him the naked nature of British Imperialism
• The taking back of Non-Violence Movement by Gandhiji when the movement was in it's full swing, which demolished his hopes for a free India at the prime of his youth
• In depth readings on Socialism, Communism, the Russian Revolution, Marxism and Capitalism

Before his arrest in 1929, Bhagat Singh had abondoned his belief in terrorism and individual heroic action. He had turned to Marxism and had come to believe that popular broad-based mass movements alone could lead to a successful revolution.

Prior to his execution, the great Indian rebel, wrote to his young political workers:

"The real revolutionary armies are in the villages and in factories.

Apparently, I have acted like a terrorist. But I am not a terrorist.Let me announce with all strength at my command, that I am not a terrorist and I never was, except perhaps in the beginning of my revolutionary career. And I am convinced that we cannot gain anything through these methods."

Few weeks before his death, he wrote an article, "Why I am an Atheist"

I would love to grab one copy.

And what did the word revolution meant for them:

The draft of the famous statement of revolutionary organisation HRSA, THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE BOMB, co-authored by Chandra Shekhar Azad, Yashpal, and Bhagwati Charan Vohra, defined a revolution as:
"Independence, social, political, economic, aimed at establishing a new new order of society in which political and economic exploitation will be an impossibility"

Are we anywhere near to this colossal definition?