Despite their competition literally to hijack a portion of the martyr’s legacy, each one of them faces a contradiction in making that claim. An icon that almost every political grouping-from the extreme left Naxalites to the right-wing ultra-nationalist fringe, the Khalistanis for instance-have over the years attempted to appropriate, though always conveniently re-versioning or using only the parts of his legacy that suit their individual ideologies. But Bhagat Singh remains the most sustaining symbol of the national freedom movement. It is 84 long years since that fateful day on March 23, 1931, more than time enough for even the most endearing memories to fade away. ”Lover, lunatic and poet are made of the same stuff,” the martyr wrote on the second page of a notebook issued to him in Lahore Jail, months before he chose to go to the gallows alongside Shivaram Rajguru and Sukhdev Thapar. Bhagat Singh, however, would perhaps have approved: his uncle’s trousers, rather than uselessly lying in a glass-topped showcase, were keeping a poor, homeless man warm on a wintry January night. Balbir Singh, a harmless simpleton, was sentenced to an 18-month jail term. Punjab’s outraged authorities, the Shiromani Akali Dal-BJP dispensation which was ruling the state then, were unforgiving. ”I am Bhagat Singh!” he declared zealously trying to protect his looted ’treasure’. ”Stay away from me,” he shouted to a posse of burly Punjab policemen that tracked him down two days later. Ignoring anything of real monetary value, he made off with the ashes of Bhagat Singh, his socks, wristwatch and a tattered pair of trousers that had belonged to the martyr’s uncle Ajit Singh, also a revolutionary of the freedom movement. In early 1997, an emotionally challenged man, driven by the daily din marking 50 years of India’s Independence, managed to break into the then unguarded martyrs’ museum outside Khatkar Kalan village.
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