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Life should be great rather than long is a famous quote of Ambedkar. The 23 years of meaningful life of Bhagat Singh (1907-1931) is a fitting example of this idea of life. Today, after 92 years of his martyrdom, he is being greatly acknowledged as the most respected son of the soil by all irrespective of political affiliations whether Left, Right or Centrist.His statue was installed at the Indian Parliament in 2008. The Government of India has built a national martyrs memorial at HussainiWala on the bank of river Sutlej. India got this place in exchange for 12 villages with Pakistan in 1961. Both in India and Pakistan, the revolutionary life of Bhagat Singh and many of the stories, songs, dramas and films have become folk tales.Post Independent India has been engaged more on his ideas of India and its vital relevance to address many of the contemporary challenges. The socio-political ideas are available in the articles, letters, jail diary and leaflets written by him in the heyday of his extreme radical political activism. His ideas of India and political action were not merely limited to a case of revenge action against the colonial mighty British Empire of those days to counter the death of Lala Lajpat Ray who was protesting the Simon Commission and died due to brutal police action. Even freedom for him also was not just getting liberated from the yoke of the British. The idea of India for which he was committed to in the true spirit of a patriot is very much available in his writings and through his political actions of those days.In the year 1928, he wrote articles on the issues of untouchability and communalism for its complete eradication as these issues were the main stumbling block of social unity of the Indians. While discussing such urgent issues of national importance, he said, We have to decide that all human beings are equal and there is not at all any necessity for any gradation of human society based on birth or occupation. He said the untouchables were the main soldiers of Guru Gobind Singh and Chhatrapati Shivaji and they are the main organic proletariats of India. He was not fully in favour of any reform movement; rather he was engaged more in the act of a political action for a fundamental and revolutionary structural change in politics, economics and social life without any compromise with the outdated old ideas. He called for the unity of the untouchables as the most oppressed proletariats to move on the path of revolution for an all-out change.He was strongly opposing communalism in any form and arguing for the religious rights of every one of any religion or faith to enjoy equal rights in a multicultural and multi-religious country such as India. His most famous book was Why I am an atheist, written some time in 1930. In a long essay there he built a sustained argument that if we all want to build a progressive nation then we have to accept logic, argumentative mind, free thinking and mostly the atheist way of thinking. While building a nation the people have more of a role to play than the gods and goddesses, he said. Along with free thought, free thinking, a questioning mind and criticism, a revolutionary transformation in a society is possible, he said. No one even if the so-called Mahatma must not be above criticism and question, he said.The great views of Bhagat Singh were admired and supported by Periyar EV Ramasamy and he wrote an editorial in his magazine Kudi Arasu. Periyar said the ideas of Bhagat Singh were very much necessary for the country. Periyar translated the book Why I am an atheist into Tamil and published it for Tamil readers. Ambedkar opposed the injustice done to Bhagat Singh by the British Government of those days. He also wrote an article in the magazine Janata edited by him in defence of Bhagat Singh, Sukhadev Thapar and Sivaram Rajguru, the three famous martyrs at young age.Bhagat Singh also was influenced by the political developments of his time across the world, mostly by the socialist revolution of the former Soviet Union in 1917 and the later progress in the world. The political ideas of Karl Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Bakunin and many others on the same line influenced the young mind of Bhagat Singh. At a very young age, he was much worried and getting pained over the issues of suffering of the people in the lower ladder, especially about economic exploitation and inequality, social discrimination and about the inaction of the so called Governments representing the interest of the capitalist, feudal lords and imperialist forces.While clarifying his political position once in a meeting of young political workers, he said, I am not an extremist, I am a revolutionary and revolution means to change the present decadent society to a new social order based on ideas of socialism that ensures equality for all. The individualistic way of life and personal comfort has to be dismantled to become revolutionaries in politics.

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Bhagat Singh: A committed atheist, socialist - Daily Pioneer