| Publication |
2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Narratives about the revolutionary movement have largely been the preserve of the popular domain in India, as Christopher Pinney has recently pointed out. India's best-known revolutionary, Bhagat Singh-who was executed by the British in 1931 for his role in the Lahore Conspiracy Case-has been celebrated more in posters, colourful bazaar histories and comic books than in academic tomes. These popular formats have established a hegemonic narrative of his life that has proved to be resistant to subsequent interventions as new materials, such as freshly-declassified intelligence reports and oral history testimonies, come to light. This paper accounts for why Bhagat Singh's life story has predominantly prevailed in the domain of the popular, with special reference to the secrecy of the revolutionary movement and the censure and censorship to which it was subjected in the 1930s.
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