Bhagat Singh's Jail Notebook

It is always inspiring to read the notes Bhagat Singh kept in jail before he was hanged to death. Bhagat Singh's greatness is usually restricted to his heroic hanging. The fact that this young 24 year old was a great thinker is always missing from the narrative. Read his notes keeping his age in mind.

http://www.shahidbhagatsingh.org/index.asp?linkid=30

My favourite entry in his notebook:

Child Labour:

No fledgling feeds the father bird !
No chiken feeds the hen,
No kitten mouses for the cat -
This glory is for men.
We are the Wisest , Strongest Race -
Loud may our praise be sung !
The only animal alive
That lives upon its young !
[ Charlotte Perkins Gilman ] { now C F J p442}

Coming close is this quote on Democracy

Democracy : ----
Democracy is theoratically a system of political and legal equality . But in concrete and practical operation it is false, for there can be no equality , not even in politics and before the law , so long as there is glaring in equality in economic power. So long as the ruling class owns the worker’s jobs and the press and the schools of country and all organs for the moulding and expression of public opinion; so long as it monopolise all trained public functionaries and disposes of unlimited funds to influence elections , so long as the laws are made by ruling class and the courts are presided over by members of that class, so long as lawyers are private practitioners who sell their skill to the heighest bidder and litigation is technical and costly , so long will the nominal equality before the law be a hollow mackery.
In a capitalist regime the whole machinary of democracy operates to keep the ruling class monority in power thrugh the sufferage of working class majority, and when the bourgeois goverment feels itself endangered by democratic institutions, such institutions re often crushed without compunction.