Formation and activities of Naujawan Bharat Sabha - I
Chaman Lal
Sometime in 1924, Bhagat Singh returned to Lahore to be with her ailing grandmother. Following his return to Lahore, Bhagat Singh started going to college, though maybe not regularly. In the meantime, college teachers had conceived of a forum for the youth to enhance their education and national consciousness. Chhabil Das, the then principal of National College, Lahore, recalled in an interview years later that the Naujawan Bharat Sabha was formed around 1924 by senior professors, he being one of them. Chhabil Das said he, along with Comrade Ram Chandra, Bhagat Singh and Bhagwati Charan Vohra, took active part in its activities in the initial stages.
Comrade Ram Chandra, in his book Naujawan Bharat Sabha and HSRA, backed the version of Chhabil Das and confirmed that activities of the Naujawan Bharat Sabha started in 1924. He provided some details of early discussions. The idea was to form an organisation of the youth on the lines of Irish Youth, Young Italy, and Young Turkey. So the name Young India was discussed. Ram Chandra suggested the name to be in Hindustani as Naujawan Bharat Sabha. A consensus was reached at having the name in both Hindustani and English -- Naujawan Bharat Sabha and Young India Association. Bhagat Singh as its general secretary got letterheads printed. Bhagat Singh had another great idea of having a motto of the organisation and he coined three letters ‘SSS’ which stood for ‘Service, Sacrifice and Suffering’. The age limit for membership was fixed at 16 to 35 years. By early 1925, its Constitution was also finalised. Guru Dutt Vidyarthi, then an M.Sc student, was elected as the founder president of Naujawan Bharat Sabha (NBS) and Bhagwati Charan Vohra as the propaganda secretary-cum-treasurer. Guru Dutt Vidyarthi did not take much interest in NBS activities and he resigned after getting a job.
Ram Chandra says that he was even expelled from the Sabha. After his exit, Bhagat Singh insisted that Ram Chandra must take the responsibility of president. So, Comrade Ram Chandra became president of the Sabha after Guru Dutt left. Its branches were formed in different cities by the end of 1924. Dr. Saifuddin Kitchlew has mentioned in his memoirs that he was invited to share ‘langar’ (community meal) with the Sabha community. NBS started its activities by organising community lunches and dinners, in which all communities – Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims and Christians -- all castes, from Brahmins to Dalits, would cook and eat together. They used to cook both non-vegetarian and vegetarian food but separately. The Sabha believed in the free choice of food for everyone. But it wanted to break the social barriers of religion and caste. So, the community meals were a means of social reform for the Sabha.
The real activities of the Sabha began in 1926 only. Between August and October of 1926, magic lantern shows and lectures were organised in different cities. The Sabha used to keep a photograph of young Ghadar Party hero Kartar Singh Sarabha on the dais for such programmes. S R Bakshi, in his book Bhagat Singh and His Ideology, has mentioned that NBS published three important pamphlets in Urdu -- The Wealth of Nations by Lala Hardayal, India and the Next War by Agnes Smedley, and Bharat Mata ka Darshan by Chhabil Das.
Chhabil Das has discussed NBS in detail in his 1971 interview to Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML). He observed that there were two groups in NBS. One was the Irish group and the other was the Russian group. He observed that Bhagat Singh was in the Irish group initially, but later he went over to the Russian group. The Irish group believed in quick actions, whereas the Russian group was ideologically oriented and Socialist.
In the 1926 meeting of the Sabha, Kedarnath Sehgal was elected its president and Bhagat Singh as general secretary. Propaganda secretary-cum-treasurer of NBS Bhagwati Charan Vohra printed the manifesto of the Naujawan Bharat Sabha. There were communal tensions in society in those days, against which NBS held meetings over ‘langar’. In 1927, S A Dange and Philip Sprat, a British Communist, addressed an NBS meeting in Bradlaugh hall in Lahore. In 1927, Bengal revolutionary Bhupendranath Datta, the younger brother of Swami Vivekananda, was also invited to address an NBS meeting. They also held meetings in favour of those arrested in the Kakori Conspiracy Case. In the NBS Constitution, religion was underlined to be a matter of personal faith.
The Sabha decided to celebrate 10th May as the First War of Independence Memorial Day. Bhagwati Charan Vohra wrote an essay for the occasion: 10 May ka shubh din (The auspicious day of 10th May). It was the day in 1857, when army units in Meerut had rebelled and walked to Delhi to request Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar to lead the revolt, which he accepted. In 1926, Bhagat Singh had to write to the chief secretary of Punjab about his correspondences being censored at the Lahore post office. The chief secretary had to personally respond to the allegations.
It was evident that Bhagat Singh’s heart and soul was in the Sabha. It was a mass organisation of the youth, which was a nucleus to involve other sections such as workers, farmers, students and women in the national movement. The real talent of Bhagat Singh as an organiser, as a speaker and as a motivational leader came alive through the Naujawan Bharat Sabha.
Seeing Bhagat Singh’s activities, the British colonial government decided to trap him in some cooked-up case. There was a bomb blast during Dussehra celebrations in Lahore in 1926. NBS or Bhagat Singh had nothing to do with it, as they detested such activities to kill innocent people. In the meantime, some pamphlets were distributed in Partapgarh in Uttar Pradesh in favour of the Kakori prisoners by the Hindustan Republican Association (HRA) and police wanted to trap Bhagat Singh in the Kakori case, but they had no evidence as Bhagat Singh did not participate in that action nor was part of its discussion. (Ram Krishn Khatri, a Kakori case convict, however, noted that Bhgat Singh was part of the action but in an unknown manner.)
One day when Bhagat Singh was walking on a road after alighting from a train in Amritsar, he was having a revolver with him. He suspected someone was following him, so he entered the chamber of advocate Sardul Singh. He clearly told him who he was and put his revolver on his table. Incidentally Sardul Singh had been part of the Lahore Students Union. Advocate Sardul Singh, in an interview to the Oral History Cell of the History department of Punjabi University, Patiala, observed that it was the NBS which had raised the issue of nationalism for the first time. He hid the revolver and sent Bhagat Singh to another room. When police came to enquire about him, he guided them to the wrong side. Later Bhagat Singh left his place and kept the revolver at some safe location, but he was arrested on 29th May. He was kept in police custody for five weeks till 4th July when he was bailed out with Rs 60,000 as sureties, given by two advocate friends of his father Kishan Singh: Duni Chand and Lala Amar Nath. A picture of Bhagat Singh in handcuffs sitting on a cot with a police official, Gopal Singh, interrogating him is widely shared. Bhagat Singh was tortured during the custody, he was threatened by CID officials to be trapped in the Kakori case and be hanged. Bhagat Singh had told his comrades that skin on his arm was burnt during the torture, but they could not break him. Later when Dr. Gopi Chand Bhargava and other members raised the sureties’ issue in the Punjab Assembly, the case was withdrawn. His father had to open a dairy farm for him. He used to bring milk from the village to Lahore city on a horse cart. He did not like this business and he kept on reading books most of the time even during cart rides.
When Sohan Singh Josh announced that on 13th April 1928 a youth convention would be held in Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar, Bhagat Singh went to him and discussed youth issues. As per Josh, Bhagat Singh met him on 6th or 7th April. It was the first of four meetings, which Josh had held with Bhagat Singh, which he later jotted down in book form: My Four meetings with Bhagat Singh’. Bhagat Singh told him about the Naujawan Bharat Sabha’s existence and its activities in Lahore, of which Josh was unaware. Bhagat Singh convinced Josh to adopt the name Naujawan Bharat Sabha for the convention and thus continue the legacy of NBS formed in 1924.
Comrade Ram Chandra has also mentioned that the first provincial conference of NBS was held on 13th and 14th April 1928 at Jallianwala Bagh Amritsar. The Congress party was also holding its provincial conference in Amritsar on 13th April, which was presided over by Jawaharlal Nehru. There was some confusion about the NBS conference as some activists had invited Mahatma Gandhi’s son Devdas Gandhi to preside over the youth conference. Devdas Gandhi declined the invitation and the NBS conference was presided over by Kedarnath Sehgal. As per Comrade Ram Chandra, many important resolutions were passed in the conference, including one on separating religion from politics and treating religion as a personal matter. It was also emphasized that no one with communal affiliation will be allowed to become a member of the Sabha. Other resolutions included boycott of the Simon Commission and of foreign goods, demand of law against untouchability. The conference hailed and supported the Kakori prisoners and the Bardoli farmers’ struggle led by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.
Bhagat Singh got involved in the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) from September onwards and by the end of the month, he trimmed his long hair at the Ferozepur centre of HSRA, which was set up by Gaya Prasad Katiyar posing as Dr. Nigam. Most comrades of Bhagat Singh visited and stayed in that centre. Even Chandrashekhar Azad had visited the place. Comrade Ram Chandra wrote that Bhagat Singh met him in October 1928, before or after the anti-Simon Commission procession and the attack on Lala Lajpat Rai who was leading the procession in Lahore, and told him that he cannot perform the duties of NBS general secretary anymore and Ram Chandra could choose any other comrade in his place. So, Ram Chandra chose Dhanwantri to replace Bhagat Singh for the Naujawan Bharat Sabha secretariat. Ram Chandra says that later he came to know that even Dhanwantri had joined HSRA but was also sincere towards NBS. Ram Chandra feels that the year 1928 was a watershed year for NBS. As the British colonial power arrested senior NBS leaders Kedarnath Sehgal, Ram Chandra and Abdul Majid, Ram Kishan succeeded Ram Chandra as the Sabha president. Dhanwantri had already taken Bhagat Singh’s place as the general secretary of the Naujawan Bharat Sabha.
(To be concluded)
