Ishfaq-ul-Hassan

Nagrota/Jammu: A trained para-commando, avid reader, qualified civil engineer, media-shy revolutionary and an idealist soldier — Major General Sheonan Singh is all this and more. He is also the son of Shaheed Bhagat Singh’s younger brother, a secret he kept close to his heart for 30 years.

The 58-year-old general from a family of revolutionaries is a content man as he retires this November.

“Our family believes in ideals. None of us has used Bhagat Singh’s name ever for personal purposes. None has sought government pension. My father told me he will donate all property to a trust because he believed in ideals,” Sheonan says.

The general’s prize possession are the books on Bhagat Singh. From Kuldeep Nayar’s Without Fear, The Life and Trial of Bhagat Singh to AG Noorani’s The Trial of Bhagat Singh, he has read it all. He knows the minutest details about Bhagat Singh from the books and essays written by his uncle himself.

“Today’s youth is with him. He was voted Indian No. 1 by India Today,” Sheonan says.

The general tries to set the record straight about Bhagat Singh’s alleged communist leanings.

“He was not a communist. He studied the communist revolution in USSR just to know about their struggle. He was dubbed a communist because his organisation’s name was Hindustan Socialist Republic Association,” he says.

According to him, Bhagat Singh’s inspiration was Kartar Singh Sartaba who too was hanged by the British.

“He always used to carry a photograph of Sartaba and the bloodsoaked earth of Jallianwala Bagh, which gave him the motivation to fight the British,” the general says.

Sheonan was born in Ludhiana in 1950 to Bhagat Singh’s brother, Sardar Ranbir Singh. Ranbir had married a widow, Leela Rani, to break the taboo.

“My father was a revolutionary. He firmly believed we needed to free ourselves from bad customs. Therefore, he married a widow who too was a freedom-fighter. When my mother gave birth to her second child, they went for family planning because my father believed population control was necessary,” he says.

During the independence struggle, the general’s father was on the run for 12 years to avoid arrest by the British, who had declared him a proclaimed offender. This order stayed for six months even after independence.

“It was only after my mother met Rajinder Prasad, that the order was withdrawn,” Sheonan says.

Such was the revolutionary mindset of his father, he named his son after a Kamikaze pilot who carried out a suicide mission and sunk the ship Prince of Wales during World War II.

“The Japanese too were fighting the British. He named me after the pilot and Indianised the name by suffixing Singh to it,” he says.

Sheonan’s second uncle Ajit Singh, too was a revolutionary who fought for independence and remained out of the country for 41 years in 14 countries.

“He died on the same day we got independence in 1947 at Dalhousie. When he was asked to unfurl the flag, he refused saying they had fought for a united India, not a divided India, referring to the partition,” he says.

An engineering graduate from Roorkee University, Sheonan was commissioned into the engineering regiment of the Army in 1973.

“But because I had a penchant for adventure, I switched to infantry. I had nine jobs to choose from when I completed my studies, but I decided to join the Army,” he says.

Excerpts from an interview with Sheonan Singh

How do you remember uncle Bhagat Singh, who sacrificed his life for the country?

Shouldn’t the country remember him? Which it does in spurts, at times even the government of India gets selectively involved

How does it feel to be related to Bhagat Singh?

How should one feel? Isn’t it an accident of birth? The real relationship lies in the identity of thoughts, not genetics.

Did Bhagat Singh’s martyrdom motivate your family to send you to the army?

No. It was purely my decision, which thankfully nobody objected to.

Why did you keep your relation a secret?

To avoid being under the scanner all the time

What is your message to the youth?

It is not enough to know what is wrong, we must struggle to set it right

Source : DNA