More than 20% of Japan’s population is over 65 years old which is the highest proportion in the world. It is projected that by 2030, one in every three people will be above 65 years or older and one in every five will be 75 years or older.
The fertility rate has fallen to 1.4 children per woman in Japan which has been attributed to a host of factors including changing lifestyles, people marrying late, not marrying at all, and the economic insecurity of the younger generation. It is projected that by 2050, Japan’s population will decline by twenty million while the world population is expected to increase by two billion.
Japan has traditionally been quite homogenous with very little diversity to show. This trend now appears to be changing as today nearly three million migrants live in Japan which is three times more than the figures of 1990. As the country struggles with a rapidly aging population and severely declining domestic labor, the number in all likelihood is only going to increase.
Conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe based his support for the reforms in immigration policy on demographic arguments.The conservative section of the parliament has been a staunch supporter but the left opposition has been critical of the bill citing concerns about a lack of regulation on the employers which could lead to over-exploitation of the workers. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government promised to set up a hundred consultation centers nationwide for dealing with issues related to workplace abuse specifically for the migrant workers.
However, that’s as far as those resisting the bill have gone. Nationalist and xenophobic voices protesting the bill have failed to gather steam. In fact, according to a survey by Nikkei in January 2020, almost 70 percent of Japanese said it is “good” to see more foreigners in the country.
Japan’s aging population has made it difficult to find the workers and some companies have more than 120 job openings for every 100 job seekers nationwide. Quite evidently, immigration now appears to be the most feasible solution for Japan- a country that has traditionally been restrictive with its borders when it comes to ethnic diversity.
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Bhagat Singh is one of the ‘big names’ immortalised in the history of India’s freedom struggle and eternally cherished even after almost ninety years of his martyrdom. What makes him stand out is his popularity among the masses being almost on par with the likes of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, despite his beliefs and actions being diametrically opposite to theirs.
Of the freedom fighters who remain mainstream in today’s India— a crowd predominantly made up of politicians with center or right of centre leanings, Bhagat Singh occupies a relatively lonely spot as a young, staunchly left-wing revolutionary who outrightly rejected Gandhi’s philosophy, and preferred direct action over politics.
Newspaper headline after Central Legislative Assembly non-lethal bombing
Bhagat Singh is most commonly and widely remembered in association with an incident where he, along with his friend and comrade B.K. Dutt dropped non-lethal smoke bombs into the Central Legislative Assembly from its balcony in 1929. They also scattered leaflets by the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA), which he was a major part of and was aided by in orchestrating the bombings. He is said to have been inspired by French anarchist Auguste Vaillant, who had bombed the Chamber of Deputies in Paris in 1893.
The bombing gathered widespread negative reaction due to the use of violence, especially from those who supported the Gandhian method. While Bhagat Singh and the HSRA wanted to protest exploitative legislatures such as the Public Safety Act and the Trades Disputes Bill, it is also widely accepted that they additionally intended to use the drama and public attention of the ensuing trial to garner attention to socialist and communist causes. Bhagat Singh and Dutt did not escape under the cover of panic and smoke despite the former carrying a pistol, and waited for the police to find and arrest them. During the trial Bhagat Singh frequently chanted a variety of slogans, such as ‘Inquilab Zindabad,’ which is even today often raised in protests across India.
March 25th Newspaper carrying the news about execution of Bhagat Singh | Source: Tribune India
However, this was not the trial that ended in Bhagat Singh receiving his execution sentence. Before the Assembly bombings, Bhagat Singh had been involved in the shooting of police officer John Saunders, in connection to the death of freedom fighter Lala Lajpat Rai. At that time he and his associates had escaped, but after Bhagat Singh was awarded a life sentence for the Assembly bombing, a series of investigations led to his rearrest as part of the Saunders murder case. It was this trial— generally regarded as unjust— that led to his much protested execution sentence.
Bhagat Singh was hanged to death on the eve of March 23rd, 1931 and he was just twenty-three years old.
Despite the criticism he received for his actions, his execution sentence was widely opposed and many attempts were made to challenge it. In fact, his execution came on the eve of the Congress party’s annual convention, as protests against it worsened. He was memorialised nationwide as a martyr, and is often addressed with the honorific Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh.
Apart from being a socialist, Bhagat Singh was attracted to communist and anarchist causes as well. In ‘To Young Political Workers,’ his last testament before his death, he called for a “socialist order” and a reconstruction of society on a “new, i.e, Marxist basis.” He considered the government “a weapon in the hand of the ruling class”, which is reflected in his belief that Gandhian philosophy only meant the “replacement of one set of exploiters for another.” Additionally, he wrote a series of articles on anarchism, wanting to fight against mainstream miscontrusions of the word and explain his interest in anarchist ideology.
Bipin Chandra, who wrote the introduction to Why I am an Atheist by Bhagat Singh | Source: Wikimedia
“Bhagat Singh was not only one of India’s greatest freedom fighters and revolutionary socialists, but also one of its early Marxist thinkers and ideologues. Unfortunately, this last aspect is relatively unknown with the result that all sorts of reactionaries, obscurantists and communalists have been wrongly and dishonestly trying to utilise for their own politics and ideologies the name and fame of Bhagat Singh and his comrades such as Chandra Shekhar Azad.”
Bhagat Singh is often admired and celebrated for his dedication to the cause of liberation. However his socialist, communist and anarchist beliefs were suppressed by the successive governments in Independent India. This in a way is the suppression of a revolutionary who has the potential to inspire, unite and motivate the growing population of a spectrum of activists all over India, in direct response to the fast-spreading divisiveness and intolerance in the country, often patronised by the groups and organizations professing the right-wing fascist ideology.
Bhagat Singh’s dreams of a new social order live on, not just in his writings, but also reflected in the hearts of every activist, protester, and dissenting citizen. The fight for freedom, revolution, Inquilab, may have changed in meaning, but itis far from over.
