Abstract
This chapter examines how the protagonists accepted personal risk as a part of their chosen mission, but without a desire for martyrdom; how, having witnessed Punjab rebuild itself painfully after its 1947 Partition, they honored self-preservation and survival.
The chapter details how in 1992 retired High Court Justice Ajit Singh Bains was kidnapped from outside the elite Chandigarh Golf Club and joined the multitudes of Punjab’s “disappeared.” The abduction came immediately on the heels of the swearing-in of a new state government, which also oversaw a spike in killings. The reader will thus witness the throes of a critical pivot in Punjab conflict history: the mysterious boycott of the 1992 election, which followed the 1991 election that was postponed by the Indian government. We see how events that were even then shrouded in mystery are today peddled as history.
The earlier timeline returns to the newly partitioned Punjab of 1948, dizzied with resettlements and reunifications amidst titanic loss. Pre-Partition assurances to Sikh politicians immediately met new resistance by the postcolonial government, thus seeding the next decade-long civil disobedience movement in Punjab.
It is forbidden to kill;
therefore all murderers are punished
unless they kill in large numbers
and to the sound of trumpets.
:Voltaire:
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Notes
- 1.
Inderjit Singh Jaijee, Politics of Genocide: Punjab, 1984–1998 (Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 2002), 163–64.
- 2.
See, for example, Sanjoy Hazarika, “Sikh Militants in Punjab Impose Boycotts on Work and on Voting,” The New York Times, February 19, 1992.
- 3.
Article 356 of the Indian Constitution allows the federal government, in times of emergencies, to take over direct administration of a state, suspending the state’s elected government. “It is of note that President’s Rule has been imposed in Punjab between March 1953 and March 1954; June 1951 and April 1952; July 1966 and November 1966; August 1968 and February 1969; June 1971 and March 1972; April 1977 and June 1977; February 1980 and June 1980; October 1983 and September 1985; and June 1987 and February 1992.” Angana P. Chatterji, Shashi Buluswar, Mallika Kaur, eds., Conflicted Democracies and Gendered Violence: The Right to Heal (Berkeley: Haas School of Business/University of California, 2015), 110.
- 4.
Gurharpal Singh, Ethnic conflict in India: A case-study of Punjab (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 152.
- 5.
Gurharpal Singh, 149.
- 6.
Gurharpal Singh, 152.
- 7.
Ram Narayan Kumar, Amrik Singh, Ashok Aggarwal, and Jaskaran Kaur, Reduced to Ashes: The Insurgency and Human Rights in Punjab (Kathmandu, Nepal: South Asian Forum for Human Rights, 2003), 51, 152–53.
- 8.
Gurharpal Singh, Ethnic Conflict in India, 153.
- 9.
Jaijee, Politics of Genocide, 140.
- 10.
Jaijee, 140.
- 11.
Jaijee, 116–17.
- 12.
Gurharpal Singh, Ethnic Conflict in India, 153–54.
- 13.
Jaijee, Politics of Genocide, 139.
- 14.
Gurharpal Singh, Ethnic Conflict in India, 154.
- 15.
Which also saw the demolition of the Babri Masjid and subsequent violence as well as India’s sharp turn toward a rabid capitalism.
- 16.
Gurharpal Singh, Ethnic Conflict in India, 156–57.
- 17.
Gurharpal Singh, 157.
- 18.
See, for example, Jaijee, Politics of Genocide, 97, 213.
- 19.
Gurharpal Singh, Ethnic Conflict in India, 165.
- 20.
Gurharpal Singh, 166. See also, Ved Marwah, Uncivil Wars: Pathology of Terrorism in India (New Delhi: Harper Collins, 1995), 195–97.
- 21.
Gurharpal Singh, 103.
- 22.
Gurharpal Singh, 90.
- 23.
See, Khushwant Singh, A History of the Sikhs, Vol II; 1839–2004 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), 280.
- 24.
See, Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy (New York: Ecco, 2007), 100.
- 25.
Khushwant Singh, History of the Sikhs II, 289.
- 26.
See, Sangat Singh, The Sikhs in History, 2nd ed. (New Delhi: Uncommon Books, 1996), 268.
- 27.
Khushwant Singh, History of the Sikhs II, 291.
- 28.
Khushwant Singh, 288.
- 29.
Paul R. Brass, Language, Religion and Politics in North India, reprint, (Lincoln, NE: iUniverse Inc., 2005), 293.
- 30.
Khushwant Singh, History of the Sikhs II, 295.
- 31.
Gurharpal Singh, Ethnic Conflict in India, 91.
- 32.
See, for example, Khushwant Singh, History of the Sikhs II, 290, “The Muslims got Pakistan, the Hindus got Hindustan; what did we Sikhs get out of it?”
- 33.
Order by J.B. Garg in response to Criminal Writ Petition No. 229 of 1992 Mrs. Rachpal Kaur Bains vs. State of Punjab and ors.
- 34.
Judge for criminal matters in India’s trial courts.
- 35.
Amnesty International, 7 April 1992. “Urgent Action: India: Ajit Singh Bains, Human Rights Activist and Retired Judge.” (AI Index: ASA 20/26/92), London.
- 36.
See, for example, “No Mention of Bains in FIR,” The Tribune, April 8, 1992.
- 37.
See, for example, “Tilting at Windmills,” The Tribune, April 8, 1992.
- 38.
Jaijee, Politics of Genocide, 149.
- 39.
Jaijee, 151.
- 40.
See, Prabha Jagannathan, “Judge in the Dock for Speaking Out,” The Sunday Observer, April 12, 1992.
- 41.
Sessions Judge Ropar, Report per Criminal Writ Petition No. 229 of 1992. Mrs. Rachpal Kaur Bains Vs. State of Punjab and ors., 22 May 1992, para 15.
- 42.
Sessions Judge Ropar, Report, para 24.
- 43.
Sessions Judge Ropar, Report, para 25.
- 44.
Supreme Court of India, Order in response to Writ Petition No. 186/92 with SLP (Crl) No. 1526/92 Mrs. Rachpal Kaur Bains vs. State of Punjab and Ors., August 14, 1992.
- 45.
Lieutenant Colonel Partap Singh, Khalistan: The Only Solution (Chandigarh: Self-published, 1991).
- 46.
Lt. Col. Partap Singh v. U.T. Chandigarh, Judgment in matter of Criminal Misc. No. 11926-M of 1991, High Court of Punjab and Haryana, December 18, 1992.
- 47.
See, for example, Joyce Pettigrew, The Sikhs of the Punjab: Unheard Voices of State and Guerilla Violence (London: Zed Books, 1995), 123.
- 48.
Pettigrew, 112.
- 49.
Pettigrew, 187.
- 50.
“During 1992 police made people fed up with the militants, all the better to control them. Thus there was in the end no sanctuary for them. Many were created by the police or by the chaos that the police had been happy to see flourish. So since they did not belong to the people, it was the people who informed on their whereabouts. When they were eventually killed, there was no protest from the people.” Pettigrew, The Sikhs of the Punjab, 117.
- 51.
Baljit Kaur video archive.
- 52.
See, for example, Pettigrew, The Sikhs of the Punjab, 121.
- 53.
See, for example, Pettigrew, The Sikhs of the Punjab, 73–74, which notes that if not by their own design, Babbar militants—complete with their stricter code of living—were especially manipulated and propped up to divide the ordinary people’s support of the movement.
- 54.
The public destruction of a Muslim mosque in 1992, resurgent calls to build a Hindu temple on the land, and attendant riots. The committee to “liberate” the land where the mosque stood was first convened in winter 1984.
- 55.
See, Barbara Crossette, “India’s Sikhs: Waiting for Justice,” World Policy Journal, Summer 2004; Sangat Singh, 512–13.
- 56.
See, also, Jugdep Chima, The Sikh Separatist Insurgency in India (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2010), 238–39.
- 57.
See also Ram Narayan Kumar, “The Matter of Mass Cremations in Punjab: A Window into the State of Impunity in India,” in Landscapes of Fear, eds. Patrick Hoenig and Navsharan Singh (New Delhi: Zubaan, 2014), 239–47. Kumar details the Bhatti case, the eventual CBI investigation that only confirmed all the lies and cover-ups by senior police officials, and the CBI’s astounding conclusion: that the case be closed.
- 58.
See Justice Sodhi’s example cited by Pettigrew, The Sikhs of the Punjab, 53.
- 59.
The State v. Kuldip Singh et al., Session Case No. RT-10 of 2.7.1992, Rupnagar, November 27, 1996.
- 60.
Judgment in the matter of Crl. W. P. No. 71 of 1997, High Court of Punjab and Haryana, December 11, 2001.
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© 2019 Mallika Kaur
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Kaur, M. (2019). Next, Kill All the Lawyers. In: Faith, Gender, and Activism in the Punjab Conflict. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24674-7_5
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