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6 - Life and Death in Monuments

from Part II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2018

Chris Moffat
Affiliation:
Queen Mary University of London
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Summary

Chapter 6 considers the anxieties produced by Bhagat Singh’s promiscuous, posthumous wanderings in the postcolonial nation-state, exploring attempts to consolidate the martyr as a figure of the national past. I cast a sideways glance at state sponsorship of public memorials and commemorative events honouring the revolutionary, avoiding the temptation to take these blithely as perpetuating Bhagat Singh’s memory and recognizing them instead as ‘exorcisms’ of sorts: a means to entomb the dead. The chapter provides an ethnographic account of three major memorial sites in North India and explores in particular the martyr’s festival that takes place every year on the revolutionary’s death anniversary, 23 March. The chapter also considers the place of Bhagat Singh in contemporary Lahore, Pakistan, juxtaposing calls for a memorial with the rich tradition of political street theatre in the city and its animation of the martyr in public space. While the young revolutionary lived and died in Lahore, he has been exorcised from this space due to his dissonance with Pakistani history and its narrative of Muslim becoming. His spectre, however, continues to haunt the city.
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Chapter
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India's Revolutionary Inheritance
Politics and the Promise of Bhagat Singh
, pp. 201 - 245
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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  • Life and Death in Monuments
  • Chris Moffat, Queen Mary University of London
  • Book: India's Revolutionary Inheritance
  • Online publication: 21 December 2018
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108655194.010
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  • Life and Death in Monuments
  • Chris Moffat, Queen Mary University of London
  • Book: India's Revolutionary Inheritance
  • Online publication: 21 December 2018
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108655194.010
Available formats
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To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Life and Death in Monuments
  • Chris Moffat, Queen Mary University of London
  • Book: India's Revolutionary Inheritance
  • Online publication: 21 December 2018
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108655194.010
Available formats
×