Abstract
This essay re-examines one of Bhagat Singh’s most impactful writings: his October 1930 letter to his father, Sardar Kishan Singh, protesting an unauthorized petition submitted to the colonial tribunal on his behalf. Though widely circulated in English, the letter’s original language has often been assumed rather than analysed. Through textual, stylistic, and contextual evidence, this article argues that the letter was composed in English from the outset—a deliberate choice reflecting Bhagat Singh’s strategic engagement with the colonial public sphere. Situated alongside his other English writings, including Why I Am an Atheist and the Assembly Bomb Statement, the letter demonstrates how Singh wielded English not as a colonial affectation but as a rhetorical weapon of clarity, defiance, and ideological precision.
Introduction: Letters, Language, and Revolutionary Intent
Among Bhagat Singh’s writings, few carry as much emotional and political weight as the letter he wrote to his father in October 1930, rejecting a petition submitted to the Special Tribunal without his consent. In it, Singh condemns what he saw as a betrayal of his principled refusal to defend himself within the colonial legal framework.
Its bluntness— “Let me be candid, I feel as though I have been stabbed at the back… Let me say, father, you have failed”—transforms a personal rebuke into a political statement.
But an overlooked question remains: in what language did Bhagat Singh write it? The received text is in English. Yet was this the original, or was it translated from Urdu or Hindi, like many of his other personal letters?
This is not a mere philological curiosity; it is a political inquiry. The medium chosen for this letter reveals how Bhagat Singh navigated the linguistic terrain of colonial modernity. By demonstrating that the letter was originally written in English, we see how he deliberately used the coloniser’s language as a site of contestation, making it a tool for revolutionary authorship and public positioning.
