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The story says that Bhagat Singh, at about three years old, was digging in a field and told his father he was “sowing guns” to drive out British rule. It is a widely repeated anecdote, not a verified transcript of words recorded at the time.
What happens in the ‘sowing guns’ story?
In a 2023 excerpt from Swati Sengupta’s children’s biography, the scene is set in 1910 in fields at Banga, Lyallpur, Punjab. Bhagat’s father, Kishan Singh, is walking with Mehta Anand Kishore when they find the boy digging in the soil. The excerpt gives the child’s reply as: “I am sowing guns, so that when they sprout, we will be able to get rid of the British.” Read the excerpt at Scroll.
That wording belongs to this particular retelling. Other versions differ, so it is best quoted with attribution rather than presented as a fixed historical transcript.
Was Bhagat Singh really three when he said it?
The children’s biography presents the episode as happening when Singh was three. But the available accounts do not establish that the conversation was recorded when he was a toddler. Scholarly analysis by Chris Moffat says early versions of the story cited an interview with Singh’s mother, Vidyawati, in the 1960s—decades after the event was supposed to have taken place. Moffat’s discussion of the anecdote traces its transmission as a remembered story, not a contemporaneous record.
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A scholarly excerpt hosted by University of Minnesota Press also places the episode among stories told about Singh, rather than treating it as independently verified dialogue. Read the excerpt from University of Minnesota Press.
Why does the anecdote endure?
The image of a small child planting imaginary guns makes a vivid beginning to a story about a revolutionary. Moffat’s analysis notes that repeating the episode can make Singh’s anticolonial politics seem innate or destined from birth. That is one way the anecdote functions in public memory; it does not prove that a three-year-old had a fully formed political ideology.
For children, the scene can introduce the contrast between a child’s play and the violence of colonial rule. For historical understanding, it is more useful as an example of how later biographers and family recollections shaped Singh’s public story than as direct evidence of exactly what he said or thought at age three.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Where does the version for young readers come from?
Swati Sengupta’s The Incredible Life of Bhagat Singh: The Indomitable Freedom Fighter, published by Speaking Tiger Books LLP in New Delhi in 2023, is a 136-page biography for young readers, according to the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration Library catalog. The catalog summarizes the book with the “sowing guns” episode, and Scroll published an excerpt containing the Banga scene.
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Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Read the scene, then, as a reported childhood anecdote: memorable and revealing about how Bhagat Singh has been remembered, but not a word-for-word record from 1910.
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