Difference between a terrorist & a revolutionary...

This thought lingered on in my head after watching Rang De Basanti way back in feb last year. In the movie, parallels were drawn between the current government and the British Raj, which, I feel is not so true unreelly. The movie highlighted one fact though-that branding someone as a terrorist, which one is most likely to do so when the case is of assasination of a Union Defense Minister, is a very relative fact indeed. Terrorists of one era can very well be revolutionaries of the next. Taking up the case of Bhagat Singh, who, by the incumbent Raj was branded a petty criminal/terrorists, and not a POW as he demanded, and was hanged till death rather than being given a firing sqad, we just get a confirmation of the point theorized above. Also, going a little far from our borders, and closer chronographically, the life and times of Che Guevara, and the fallout after his death, make me ponder over a very uncomfortable question indeed - Can we extrapolate the conclusions drawn, to a scenario some years hence, when the current crop of insurgents in various parts of India will be hailed as revolutionaries in their hinterland and the Indian armed forces fighting them condemned as the actual perpetrators of violence?
Well, the similarities look to be endless - angst against the incumbents, violence being the common modus operandi, most of the socio-economic problems being attributed to the "reppresive regime", etcetra. Everyone of us wishes to change the world, to make it a better place to live in, this "better" being classified as one of the most controversial and relative terms in human history. Some stay put. Others take actions to present their case/implement their wish. The former lot is most commonly spotted at the Jantar Mantar these days, and the latter is branded as terrorists. People like Che, who uttered- "A revolution without gunshots?!! Are you crazy!" and Bhagat Singh,of course belong to the latter one. But Bhagat Singh was more than what he is worshipped today for. He was more a man of mind than a man of gun; and his greatness lies in just the fact. He had a crystal clear reason for killing a fellow human being, and he himself went through various internal debates in order to reach the conclusion; his action was not a rush of blood, but rather some in which he believed. He was a man who was well aware that clutching power from the hands of one ruler and passing it on to a gun weilding man can not be classified as a revolution. A revolution is one that brings about changes in the mindset, alters the definitions of right & wrong, and causes upliftment of all in a society-an objective intellectually so high that a gunshot cant even dream to touch, let alone engulf. Bhagat Singh was a man who threw smoke bombs in the parliament and voluntarily surrendered, when he could have wiped off atleast half the Indian ruling class, and probably, could have gotten away with it too. This because ALL of his actions were directed towards this one particular goal - getting himself heard.
A revolution is all about, I'll repeat, changing the mindset, and this can be achieved not with a gunshot, but with a human voice full of logic, reason, confidence & honesty. And he was a man who used the courtroom as his propaganda office in the cleverest manner possible for achieving this objective. He was a man who, while being aware of all the consequences, was unflinched because of his sheer belief that he was RIGHT, and, more importantly, was ready to stand by what he thought till he died.
The whole world steps aside for the person who knows where he is going, and step aside it did for Bhagat Singh, as, even after his death, his thoughts continued to linger on in the society, proving that he indeed did end up bringing about a revolution. The age old adage - "You can kill a man, but not his ideology", which traces its origin from our very own Bhagwat Geeta in the chapters where it talks about soul and its immortality, came alive for him. Human thought is what soul is all about, something that is indestructable, something that doesnt need a body to exist, something which, in my humble opinion, can be effectively summed up in the following equation-
Soul = Thought
A man is what he thinks he is. Some people may use this theorization about soul in Geeta to prove some tangible concepts like reincarnation. I believe that reincarnation does happen, but not of a soul, rather of an ideology, as it did happen in Bhagat Singh's case, in fact while the physical reincarnati0n graph may be discrete, that of an ideology is always continuos.
Coming back to current times, I recently went through an an interview of Syed Salahuddin at http://www.rediff.com/news/2007/jan/07inter.htm, in which he says:
"Bhagat Singh is a national hero in India who bombed the Indian parliament in 1930 and killed British police officers. If a militant like Bhagat Singh is a freedom fighter for them then we also have the right to follow the same path to achieve our goals."
"How wrong can a man be!!!"- was my reaction as my mind grasped frantically for even an iota of support to hold on. Fair enough, I agree to try to draw paralells, and here is what I see:
I see silent acts of butchery, ie high on the gore but deprived of reasons; I see a slew of dead bodies being used as the only way to get your message across; I see television images of "terrorrists" cowering and shooting with masked faces, as if their mind knows that the act they are commiting is indeed heinous & it would be a hazard to go out in the open supporting their cause with bare faces; I see the same people who support them & when caught doing so, denying their involvement and frantically searching for loopholes to get out in the same law which their cause refuses to acknowledge, and thus ending up validating it.
These are impression drawn by me of the various separatist movements/"revolutions" being carried out in J&K, the North-East, and the Andhra-Bengal-Bihar Naxal corridor. True, I'm not their intended audience, and also the media may be heavily doctored in order to present a desired image, but, in my opinion, objective facts can't be modified, and it is an absense of a logic-intensive voice on their part that bothers me the most and puts a big question mark over their claims to the definition of a revolution.
In my opinion a revolutionary is someone like that woman from north east who has not drunk a single drop of water since 6 years, in protest to the Army being given absolutum dominium in her state, and who is jailed for a fair part of every year on charges of attemted suicide owing to the nature of her protest while spending the time she is out to again attempt the same. A revolutionary is someone like Muhammed Yunus, who is empowering the poor in Bangladesh through inventive schemes like Microcredit unlike his comrades on the other side of the border who believe that the solution to poverty lies in putting a gun to the zameendar's head. A revolutionary is someone like Capt. Manoj Pandey, PVC(posth.), who, at the age of 25, wrote in his diary - "Some goals are so worthy, its glorious even to fail" while trying to free Indian peaks during the Kargil conflict. People like these inspire, one of the most fundamental ingrediants in the broth of revolution.

A man who is sure that he is right doesn't cower, doesn't hide, doesn't wince while facing the consequences of his actions. Rather he proudly takes every bullet to his chest or marches smiling to the gallows, as Bhagat Singh did. As the Mahatma so aptly put it "You should be the change you wish to see in the world". A truth, only when accepted by your own mind, can be extended to enlighten the other "needy" souls, and a lie, however provocative, ALWAYS brings out only and only cowardice. You are your own judge to your own truths and lies, and only the path you choose to follow with reason & determination can lead you to your goal.
Yes, u may perish as the protagonists of Rang De Basanti, and YES, you would end up bringing about a revolution!