The letter that Bhagat Singh wrote

Among Bhagat Singh’s scattered writings and letters, one relatively obscure piece addressed to his friend Amar Chand, then living in America, in mid-1928 offers a revealing moment of inner tension. In it, Singh thrice invokes God, a gesture that seems at odds with the resolute atheism he would later declare in his 1930 essay, ‘Why I Am an Atheist’. The phrases “Ishwar jane”, “Ishwar chaha to” and “Jis tarah Ishwar ko manzoor hoga” appear within a tender and emotionally intimate letter — one that discusses his mother’s illness, conveys goodwill to a friend overseas, and reflects on personal aspirations and hardships. There is no political polemic or ideological proclamation, only an unguarded voice briefly heard. And yet, these casual invocations of Ishwar, however faint, are windows into the dynamic, human process of ideological transformation. Bhagat Singh’s atheism was forged in the fire — of struggle, surveillance and sacrifice, through arrest, censorship, hunger strikes, and death’s proximity. His stance was sculpted by lived experience.