Commonplace Anti-Colonialism: Bhagat Singh’s Jail Notebook and the Politics of Reading

Abstract

© 2016 South Asian Studies Association of Australia. Bhagat Singh (1907–31) is popularly celebrated as one of the major leaders of the Indian anti-colonial movement. Scholars have pointed to his writings to demonstrate his philosophical mastery. One of the primary texts used to support this claim is the activist’s jail notebook, a collection of reading notes Bhagat Singh produced while in jail. The existence of the jail notebook, however, has only been used as proof of Bhagat Singh’s mastery, rather than as possibly articulating its own philosophy for anti-colonial revolution. This essay analyses Bhagat Singh’s jail notebook in order to offer a theory of ‘commonplace anti-colonialism’ and inconsequence. Rather than use the jail notebook to corroborate Bhagat Singh’s ‘mastery’ as an anti-colonial revolutionary thinker, this essay argues that the jail notebook reveals a more radical revolutionary politics: of reading. Bhagat Singh’s reading practices, especially in the face of death, suggest a new way to theorise ‘revolution’ as the perpetual deferment of authority and mastery, rather than the eventual assumption of those positions. Consequently, ‘inconsequential reading’ may, in turn, reveal a more radically egalitarian politics of revolution than previously ascribed to Bhagat Singh.