Among anti-colonial nationalists, Bhagat Singh and M.K. Gandhi are seen to exemplify absolutely contrasting strategies of resistance. Bhagat Singh is regarded as a violent revolutionary whereas Gandhi is the embodiment of non-violence. This paper argues that Bhagat Singh and his comrades became national heroes not after their murder of a police inspector in Lahore or after throwing bombs in the Legislative Assembly in New Delhi but during their practice of hunger strikes and non-violent civil disobedience within the walls of Lahore's prisons in 1929–30. In fact there was plenty in common in the strategies of resistance employed by both Gandhi and Bhagat Singh. By labelling these revolutionaries ‘murderers’ and ‘terrorists’, the British sought to dismiss their non-violent demands for rights as ‘political prisoners’. The same labels were adopted by Gandhi and his followers. However, the quality of anti-colonial nationalism represented by Bhagat Singh was central to the resolution of many of the divisions that racked pre-partition Punjab.

Late nineteenth-early twentieth century Punjab has been commonly regarded as a space for 'competitive communalism' whereby each of the province's major religious communities participated in activities that increased hostilities between the communities. Such an assertion has been substantiated with reference to an increasing number of publications that were quickly deemed offensive to one or the other religious community of the Punjab and then banned. This article examines the controversies following the publication of one such pamphlet 'Rangila Rasul'. These ultimately necessitated the addition of section 295A to the Indian Penal Code ( IPC), a section that would punish those who, 'with deliberate and malicious intention,' insulted or attempted to insult 'religious beliefs' of any class of His Majesty's subjects. Reading contemporary newspaper commentaries alongside debates in the legislative assembly, I show that legislators were able to rise above the interests of their religious communities (as Hindu orMuslim publicists) to speak for a larger putative 'Indian' community, collective, or nation. Far from being a textbook example of communalism, the debates bring into sharp relief an alternate moment in the making of an 'Indian' nation.

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