Chandigarh, April 26 -- Reducing Bhagat Singh to a single ideological label does injustice both to the man and to Marxism itself, historian Salil Misra said at a public forum here on Saturday, arguing that the revolutionary, who was hanged at 23, is best understood as a "thinker in unfinished dialogue with ideas," rather than someone who can be confined into rigid categories. The forum, titled 'Reckoning with Bhagat Singh in the Battle of Ideas', was organised by Adara 23 March, a forum named after the date of Bhagat Singh's martyrdom in 1931, and thePunjab Solidarity Group at People's Convention Centre, Sector 36-B. Eminent Punjabi poet Swarajbir and historian Sumail Singh Sidhu also addressed the gathering. Misra structured his address around three questions: what images of Bhagat Singh we actually possess, where he stood within the broader freedom struggle, and whether he was a Marxist. He noted that only four authentic photographs of Singh exist, each layered with symbolic meaning, shaped as much by later interpretations as by history itself. On Singh's role in the Independence movement, Misra said the struggle was "multi-stranded", and the young revolutionary consciously positioned himself against both the dominant strands of the time - Swaraj Party and Gandhi's non-violence. His position was clear - no accommodating the British, no compromise, no constitutional negotiation. "Singh saw Gandhi's path not merely as different but as an active obstacle to genuine liberation," said Mishra while adding, "For Singh, the struggle was never just for Independence, it was for a comprehensive transformation of the country." On Marxism, Misra cautioned against oversimplification, explaining that the Soviet doctrine, European theory, and Indian interpretations of the ideology are often conflated despite being distinct. Listing out the four cores of Marxist thought - materialism, evolutionism, scientism, and optimism - he concluded that Singh was indeed a Marxist, but in the widest Enlightenment sense. "He was broadly a product of the Enlightenment tradition," Misra said, "of which Marxism is one expression." Swarajbir, playwright, poet and one of Punjab's most eminent literary voices had a simple provocation for the historians in the room - Bhagat Singh does not belong to them. He argued that the historian's Bhagat Singh and the people's Bhagat Singh have never been the same figure, and that literature-verse, drama, story, not scholarship, has been the real site where Singh's legacy has been fought over, renewed and kept breathing. Through his own body of work spanning poetry and theatre, Swarajbir said, he has returned to Singh repeatedly, not to archive him but to interrogate him. Singh, he said, was never a buried, dead-end figure; he lived on in the hearts of the people long after the history books were closed. Sumail Singh Sidhu, a historian associated with Adara 23 March, said that Singh should be understood not as a finished product but as a phenomenon of transition - a mediating figure between distinct ideological trends, between old forms of political mobilisation and new ones, between Punjab and the world. Singh, he argued, is best approached as a process, still unfolding....