Abstract
This chapter illustrates how Kaur, Jaijee, and Bains were prepared to use their bodies as resistance; believed in showing up during times of dire need; and remained in touch with people they had met in the worst of circumstances, without pretending to share those situations or experiences.
In July 1989 the three protagonists were joined by others in surrounding a police station to demand the release of young “Kid.” The chapter thus enters a time not so long ago where Members of Parliament running on the platform of Sikh self-determination, indeed separatism—Khalistan—won landslide electoral victories, due to a groundswell of support for candidates running against the status quo.
The chapter’s parallel timeline explores the turn into the 1970s, and how the demands for greater Punjab autonomy were neither secessionist nor new. The growing disparities in the country—promised by its Constitution to be a “socialist” republic—also drew many to a more strident leftism, the Naxal movement. The State response to Naxals first introduced “police encounters” to the countryside. At the same time, a document collating the demands to decrease centralization and increase autonomy for all states was prepared by Sikh leaders in 1973.
ਬਾਬਾਣੀਆ ਕਹਾਣੀਆ ਪੁਤ ਸਪੁਤ ਕਰੇਿਨ II
:Guru Amar Das:
Guru Granth Sahib, 951
The stories of ancestors nurture virtues in children
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Notes
- 1.
Human Rights Watch and Ensaaf, “Protecting the Killers: a Policy of Impunity in Punjab, India,” Volume 19, No. 14(C), October 2007.
- 2.
See, Sangat Singh, The Sikhs in History, 2nd ed. (New Delhi: Uncommon Books, 1996), 478 “It was extraordinary, firstly, that the conspiracy trial by Additional Sessions Judge and enquiry into Indira’s assassination by Justice M.P. Thakkar, a sitting judge of the Supreme Court, went hand in hand. And then, Thakkar’s two reports throwing valuable light were suppressed. These were not shown even to the President, Giani Zail Singh, much less to the Judges of either the High or the Supreme Court.”
- 3.
Inderjit Singh Jaijee, Politics of Genocide: Punjab, 1984–1998 (Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 2002), 334.
- 4.
Robin Jeffrey, “Punjab: Federalism, Elections, Suppression” in Diminishing Conflicts in Asia and the Pacific, Edward Aspinall et al., eds. (London and New York: Routledge, 2012), 92–93. “Pakistan support for the Khalisan movement had been equivocal from the start. Sikhs and Muslims have angry antagonistic memories of the killings at the time of Partition. And for Pakistan, the outstanding issue with India remains the status of Kashmir. Thus when the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, arms and zealous Muslim fighters, no longer needed for the war in Afghanistan, could be deployed in Kashmir.”
- 5.
Sangat Singh, The Sikhs in History, 516. President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq had died in a mysterious plane crash in 1988.
- 6.
On other mass resignations by panchayats in districts across Punjab, see Jaijee, Politics of Genocide, 230–31.
- 7.
Narratives from Baljit Kaur video archives.
- 8.
See, Jaijee, Politics of Genocide, 176.
- 9.
See, for example, “Sikh Separatists Kill 19 Students at India College,” The Los Angeles Times, November 11, 1989.
- 10.
“His only son, who was a student of DAV College, Jalandhar was killed and he himself was also killed in his office by bomb blast. It was the Governor Ray who was responsible for the murder of his only son and Gobind Ram. Had the Governor Ray taken action on our report and arrested Gobind Ram on a charge of murder, both he and his son could have been saved.” Ajit Singh Bains personal archives.
- 11.
Another Sikh candidate, Atinder Pal Singh, running as an Independent from Patiala constituency, also won while still lodged in Tihar Jail, New Delhi. His campaign was run by his wife Kamaljit Kaur, then a new mother to their older daughter. Singh would be escorted to Parliament from prison for just long enough to take his oath, and was released only the next year.
- 12.
See, for example, Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 86–92.
- 13.
Pavit Kaur, Stolen Years: A Memoir of Simranjit Singh Mann’s Imprisonment (Gurgaon: Random House, 2014), 169.
- 14.
Khushwant Singh, Captain Amarinder Singh: The People’s Maharaja (New Delhi: Hay House, 2017), 188.
- 15.
Kanwar Sandhu, “S.S. Ray: Acrimonious Departure,” India Today, December 31, 1989. “What legacy does Ray leave behind? Ray himself is immodest: ‘What I achieved in three years, people will find difficult to do in three times that time.’ Few would agree. His policies alienated vast sections of the Sikhs. His reign saw the eclipse of the civil authority with serious complaints about police excesses.”
- 16.
Barbara Crossette, “Amritsar Journal; Sikh Bears a Sword, Prison Scars and a Grudge,” The New York Times, May 31, 1990.
- 17.
Sangat Singh, The Sikhs in History, 486.
- 18.
See, Chap. 9.
- 19.
Kanwar Sandhu, “Jagdev Singh Khudian killed, proves probe,” India Today, May 15, 1990.
- 20.
See, for example, Jaijee, Politics of Genocide, 135, for a description of one of these underground police squads, complete with AK47 guns.
- 21.
See, for example, The Law Library of Congress, “State Anti-conversion Laws in India,” updated, October 18, 2018, https://www.loc.gov/law/help/anti-conversion-laws/india-anti-conversion-laws.pdf.
- 22.
Jaijee, Politics of Genocide, 154.
- 23.
See, for example, Virginia Van Dyke, “The Khalistan Movement in Punjab-India and the Post-Militancy Era: Structural Change and New Political Compulsions,” in Ethnic Subnationalist Insurgencies in South Asia, Jugdep Chima, ed. (Oxon and New York, Routledge, 2015), 73.
- 24.
Nirupama Dutt, Poet of the Revolution: The Memoirs and Poems of Lal Singh Dil (New Delhi: Penguin, 2012), 53. Lal Singh Dil is a nom de plume.
- 25.
Dutt, Poet of the Revolution, 108.
- 26.
Dutt, Poet of the Revolution, 105.
- 27.
See, for example, Tejwant Singh Gill, “Pash: Man and Poet,” Manushi, available at: http://www.manushi.in/docs/613-pash-man-and-poet.pdf.
- 28.
Vandana Shiva, Violence of the Green Revolution (London: Zed Books, 1991).
- 29.
See Pritam Singh, Federalism, Nationalism and Development (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2008), 193.
- 30.
Pritam Singh, Federalism, Nationalism and Development, 22.
- 31.
Pritam Singh, 180.
- 32.
Pritam Singh, 103.
- 33.
Indira Gandhi’s Congress was at the time working in consort with the Communist Party. See Sangat Singh, The Sikhs in History, 350.
- 34.
See, J.S. Grewal, “Sikh Identity, the Akalis and Khalistan,” in Punjab in Prosperity & Violence: Administration, Politics and Social Change 1947–1997, J. S. Grewal and Indu Banga, eds. (New Delhi: K.K. Publishers, 1998), 71.
- 35.
Sangat Singh, The Sikhs in History, 353. “Indira’s prestige reached new heights following India’s victory over Pakistan leading to the creation of sovereign, independent, Bangladesh, and with over 93,000 Pakistani Prisoners-of-War.”
- 36.
Sangat Singh, 354.
- 37.
See, Khushwant Singh, History of the Sikhs, Volume II; 1839–2004 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), 313–14.
- 38.
Gurharpal Singh, Ethnic Conflict in India: A Case-Study of Punjab (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 96. The importance of the ASR grew with growing Akali agitation.
- 39.
Stephen Cohen, “The Military and Indian Democracy,” in Atul Kohli, ed., India’s Democracy: An Analysis of Changing State-Society Relations (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1988), 133.
- 40.
Aneesha Sareen, “Court Acquits Moga SSP, 6 Other Cops,” The Tribune, May 11, 2012.
- 41.
Criminal writ petition No. 3342/89, Punjab and Haryana High Court.
- 42.
Amnesty International, International Secretariat, “India: Human Rights Violations in the Punjab: Use and Abuse of the Law,” May 9, 1991, 28.
- 43.
Statement of PW-5, Tarlochan Singh Sidhu, cited in Judgment, CBI v. S.S. Grewal & others, CBI Court, Chandigarh, May 10, 2012.
- 44.
See, Human Rights Watch and Ensaaf, “Protecting the Killers.”
- 45.
Amnesty International, 1991, 29.
- 46.
Human Rights Watch and Ensaaf, “Protecting the Killers.”
- 47.
See Judgment, CBI v. S.S. Grewal & others, CBI Court, Chandigarh, May 10, 2012, 3.
- 48.
FIR was registered in August 1996, per High Court judgment in CWP No. 3342 of 1989.
- 49.
Judgment, CBI Court, 2012, 74.
- 50.
Aneesha Sareen, The Tribune, 2012.
- 51.
Application for special leave to file appeal, Tarlochan Singh Sidhu v. Central Bureau of Investigation & others; Crm-A-649-MA of 2012, Punjab and Haryana High Court, July 30, 2013.
- 52.
Indeed, across the world, “wars have their endings inside families.” Cynthia Enloe, The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in a New Age of Empire (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004), 204.
- 53.
Annexure 2 to Application dated 22 November 2012, in Tarlochan Singh Sidhu v. Central Bureau of Investigation & others; Crm-A-649-MA of 2012, Punjab and Haryana High Court.
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Kaur, M. (2019). Two Urns. In: Faith, Gender, and Activism in the Punjab Conflict. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24674-7_7
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