JALANDHAR: The BJP may have leapt at the idea of claiming martyr Bhagat Singh ’s legacy – with its PM candidate Narendra Modi agreeing to release a book on his prison diary – but its content may not exactly be music to the saffron brigade’s ears.

The book reproduces extensively the martyr’s diary jottings, essentially quotes from Marx, Trotsky and philosophers like Bertrand Russell , laying bare his love for the Leftist ideology and his strong views on religion. The coffee table book, published by the All-India Shaheed Bhagat Singh Memorial Trust, has raised a storm with some members of Bhagat Singh’s family objecting to Modi invitation.

On Tuesday, TOI had reported that the grand nephew, Yadwinder Singh Sandhu, met Modi in Gandhinagar in September with the invitation. Sandhu told TOI that Modi had agreed to release the book. Those familiar with Bhagat Singh’s thought say the contents of the book, with its strong views on religion and capitalism, may not be to the liking of the Hindutva mascot.

On page 40 of his jail notes, Bhagat Singh had reproduced Marx’s quote on religion: “Man makes religion; religion does not make man. Religion, indeed, is the self consciousness and the self feeling of man who either has not yet found himself or else has lost himself once more…

“Religion is the sigh of oppressed creature, the feelings of a heartless world just as it is the spirit of unspiritual conditions,” the note continues on the next page, where he underlines the famous quote: “It’s the opium of the people…. People cannot be really happy … until it has been deprived of illusory happiness by the abolition of religion…”

His study about the Left worldview is further reflected from a quote from Trotsky’s work ‘The Lessons of October 1917’ from which he quoted preface by A Susan Lawrence: “…And it is … rather curious to note that even Trotsky is not revolutionary enough to say that Marx had made mistake; but feels obliged to devote a page or so to the task of exegesis -- that is, proving that the sacred books meant something quite different from what they said.”

Another quote from the same work referred to Lenin, written in 1917: “It so often happens, that when events take a sudden turn, even an advanced party cannot adapt itself for some time to the new conditions. It goes on repeating yesterday’s watch words which under the new circumstances have become empty of meaning and which have lost meaning ‘unexpectedly’, just in proportion as the change of events has been unexpected.”

Bhagat Singh quoted Bertrand Russel’s views on religion in the beginning of his Notes on Page 12: “I regard it a disease born of fear, and as source of untold nuisance to the human race. I cannot however deny that it has made some contribution to civilization. It helped in early days to fix the calendar and it caused the Egyptian priest to chronicle eclipses with such care that in time they become able to predict them…”