ABSTRACT
What makes Bhagat Singh an internationalist – the fact that he was readings and quoting from European and Russian texts; or he dreamt of a society where the proletariat was sovereign; or that his sources of inspiration were not simply local and provincial? This category of ‘internationalist’ is often invoked to explain, categorise and classify Bhagat Singh on the Indian political spectrum. What is never spelt out is what this category actually means, what is its historical import and how does it help us understand the actions of a historical character. This chapter questions the use of identity labels such as internationalist or nationalist to understand the lives of historical actors. In doing so, this chapter enlivens us to the limitations of historical categories and frameworks that historians use to analyse the past. These limitations are not those of the historical actors who successfully, and sometimes not so successfully, straddle different worlds, lives, identities, visions and ideas. It is the limitation of the historians to transcend historically constituted identities.
