CM Rekha Gupta Pays Tribute to Bhagat Singh on Birth Anniversary
Synopsis
Key Takeaways
He was 23 years old when the British empire silenced him — but Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh has never stopped speaking. On his 119th birth anniversary, Monday, 28 September 2026, Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta offered a tribute to the revolutionary, invoking his legacy of courage, sacrifice, and the fire that lit India's freedom movement.
In her post, CM Gupta wrote: 'Punjab ki mitti mein janma shaurya, Delhi ki dharti par goonji jiski hunkar' — 'The valour born in Punjab's soil, whose roar echoed across Delhi's land, and whose name became immortal in the heart of Mother India.' She described Bhagat Singh's youthful resolve as 'as vast as ages' and his vision as having ignited the consciousness of freedom across the nation.
Born in Punjab, Hanged at 23 — A Life That Shaped a Nation
Bhagat Singh was born on 28 September 1907 in Lyallpur, Punjab (present-day Faisalabad, Pakistan), into a family already steeped in the independence struggle. By his early twenties, he had become the most electrifying face of armed resistance against British rule — his actions in the Central Legislative Assembly bombing of 1929 and the shooting of British officer John Saunders turning him into a national icon almost overnight. He was hanged on 23 March 1931 in Lahore, alongside Rajguru and Sukhdev, at an age when most young men are just beginning.
What has made Singh endure across nearly a century is not just the martyrdom but the intellect behind it. He was a voracious reader, a committed socialist, and a sharp-penned thinker who wrote from his prison cell until the end. His pamphlet 'Why I Am an Atheist' remains studied in universities today. CM Gupta's tribute captured this duality — the warrior and the dreamer — calling him 'the eternal consciousness of India's valour, courage, and self-respect.'
Why Delhi's CM Pauses on This Date Every Year
Bhagat Singh's birth anniversary has a particular resonance for Delhi, the city whose colonial-era heart he shook with the 1929 Assembly bombing — a deliberate act designed to be heard, not to kill. The roar that CM Gupta invokes — 'Delhi ki dharti par goonji jiski hunkar' — is a direct reference to that moment. Tributes from political figures on 28 September are a near-universal ritual across India's party spectrum, but BJP leaders have consistently framed Singh's memory within a broader narrative of cultural nationalism and national duty.
Commemorative events, school programmes, and public memorials typically mark the day in both Delhi and Punjab, keeping Singh's story alive for generations who inherit a free country he never lived to see.
A young man from Punjab who gave everything so that a nation could have everything — that debt, CM Gupta reminds us, is never fully repaid.