Amid a sea of “basanti” turbans, the venue of Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann's swearing-in ceremony at Bhagat Singh's village Khatkar Kalan reverberated with the iconic revolutionary song “Mera rang de Basanti chola” on Wednesday.
This was in line with the Aam Aadmi Party's (AAP) designated theme of “Rang de Basanti” for the oath ceremony — illustrating the party's strategy of not allowing only the BJP to lay claim to nationalist iconography. Mera rang de Basanti chola was penned by Bhagat Singh's fellow revolutionary Ram Prasad Bismil and other prisoners in 1927 while they were incarcerated in a jail in Lucknow.
Who was Ram Prasad Bismil?
The revolutionary leader was born on June 11, 1897, in a village in Uttar Pradesh's Shahjahanpur district, and was associated with the Arya Samaj from an early age.
From quite early on, he wrote powerful patriotic poems in Urdu and Hindi and became active in the anti-colonial struggle under the guidance of his guru Swami Somdev.
Bismil was 18 years old when he wrote the poem Mera Janm (My Birth) in protest against the death sentence handed to nationalist leader Bhai Parmanand in the 1915 Lahore conspiracy trial following the failed Ghadar plan to instigate a mutiny in the British Indian Army. The poem illustrated Bismil's commitment to revolutionary ideals and ending colonial rule in India.
Bismil prominently showed up on the colonial government's radar three years later at the time of the Mainpuri…
