The Valiant Jaswant Singh Khalra

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The Indian government were so scared by this humble man they directly threatened Bhai Jaswant Singh Khalra to either stop the great sewa he was doing or else he would also join the long list of the Singhs that had been made to disappear (by the police). Bhai Sahib remained fearless and continued to expose the Indian government. On Sept. 6, 1995, Khalra was abducted from outside his home, according to the Supreme Court of India. He was killed by Punjab police officers the following month and his body was dumped in a canal, never to be retrieved, court papers said. As Jaswant’s name grew in human rights circles, and concern for his life also grew, he was invited abroad to provide evidence of the killings in Punjab and to seek refuge. His documentation exposed the ecosystem of impunity and contextualised the many individual asylum claims that had accelerated the Sikh diaspora population to the West since 1984.

Ensaaf, “Sardar Jaswant Singh Khalra,” video report, 2006, http://www.ensaaf.org/docs/khalravideo.php (accessed April 13, 2007). As he fondly remembers the days he met Khalra organising with other young leftists, I cannot help ask him of the now embittered relationship between Punjab’s “leftists” and “Sikhs.”Jaswant Singh Khalra was the director of a bank in the city of Amritsar in Punjab during the militancy period in Punjab. Following Operation Blue Star, the assassination of Indira Gandhi, and the 1984 Anti-Sikh Riots, the police were empowered to detain suspects for any reason, ostensibly as suspected terrorists. The police were accused of killing unarmed suspects in staged shootouts and burning thousands of dead bodies to cover up the murders. [4] [5]

This list contains the information of Sikhs cremated in just two tehsils (An Administrative Division) of Punjab. The Supreme Court of India and the National Human Rights Commission of India has certified the validity of this Data. On 11 April 2011, the Supreme Court of India dismissed the appeal filed against the sentence to life imprisonment for the four accused, scathingly criticizing the atrocities committed by Punjab Police during the disturbance period. [19] [1] Legacy [ edit ] Memorial [ edit ] Taking strong note of the "heinous crime" committed by four police officers in "eliminating" human rights activist Jaswant Singh Khalra, active in bringing to light extrajudicial killings in the districts of Tarn Taran and Amritsar, the Punjab and Haryana Court, on October 16, 2007, changed the sentences of the four accused, former head constable Prithipal Singh and former sub-inspectors Satnam Singh, Surinder Pal Singh and Jasbir Singh from seven years to life imprisonment.We met the wife of Bhai Jaswant Singh Khalra, Bibi Paramjit Kaur and asked her many questions, Bibi Paramjit Kaur answered every question and thanks to her we can now share the information about Bhai Sahib, a fearless Sikh human activist, with the Sikh nation. To refer to Shaheed Bhai Jaswant Singh as an “Indian”, to speak about his death without explicit reference to the violence of the Indian state, and to erase the Panth’s bestowed title of Shaheed is an injustice to his life and legacy. These dynamics will undoubtedly be recreated in any mainstream film about Shaheed Bhai Jaswant Singh, the story will become one of loyalty to human rights, reforming the state, and any violence will be about individual ‘corrupt’ officers, the role of the state erased. Till this day KPS Gill, the most senior police officer in Punjab who demanded Shaheed Bhai Jaswant Singh’s killing is celebrated as a “super cop”. Our shaheeds left us with so much, not only in their embodiment but materially with speeches, words, and direct action and fight for Khalistan . In many ways, we will never know some details about Shaheed Bhai Jaswant Singh’s life, including those private, intimate moments when he sat at his desk and translated dreams for the Panth from his consciousness onto paper with a pen or what he endured in the last moments of his life.

So we produced a rough estimate for the public that in Amritsar district alone, 2,000 children are missing and the government must tell us where they are. The government was quiet. Then, we filed a petition before the High Court on behalf of some families, asking the Court to tell us where those children are. The government then gave an affidavit denying any knowledge about these children. And that special gift, which the Guru possesses, is the gift of martyrdom. Those who receive this gift, they don't get to be Guru but after the Guru, they are the most respected people of our (Sikh) nation. The resolution to rename the park in Fresno was introduced by City Councilmember Oliver Baines. Last year, Baines also helped pass a resolution recognizing the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in India, which killed nearly 3,000 according to Reuters, as a genocide. September 1995 witnessed the enforced disappearance and murder of Jaswant Singh Khalra, the champion of Punjab’s “disappeared.” His wife and human rights defender, Paramjit Kaur Khalra, pursued his legal case and the Punjab mass cremations case, which exposed officially sanctioned impunity. The following is an excerpt from the book Faith, Gender, and Activism in the Punjab Conflict: The Wheat Fields Still Whisper, by Mallika Kaur. To honour Shaheed Bhai Jaswant Singh, the conditions that produced his shaheedi must be central. These conditions are nowhere more visible than in the histories surrounding the police abduction, torture, rape and murder of Shaheed Bibi Amandeep Kaur Ji . Bibi Ji was not a prominent movement figure or an activist, but her story is no less significant. From her story we learn what Shaheed Bhai Jaswant Singh saw, felt, and wanted us to see and feel .

Khalra was last seen in September 1995, washing his car in front of his house in Amritsar. Six Punjab police officials were later convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for Khalra's abduction and murder. Indian leaders, Sikhs blamed in Punjab strife,” Associated Press, Toronto Star, Aug 25, 1991, p.H8.

Are we this desperate to be seen on a television screen when we have our own ways of collectively honouring and mobilising around Bhai Jaswant Singh’s words and actions? Is our generational struggle for Sikh liberation and Khalistan a mere spectacle and source of gross entertainment for mass Indian audiences to indulge in on a Saturday evening at the movies, only to forget about the movie or suddenly become experts on Bhai Jaswant Singh’s life and politics after watching one obscure film created by the Indian industry and fronted by a Sikh face? In February 2005, Kuldip Singh’s statement was recorded before the CBI Court, Patiala. In March, the Court dismissed Paramjit’s appeal, first filed in January 2000, to summon KPS Gill, implicated directly by Kuldip Singh. In November 2005, a decade after Jaswant’s disappearance, the Court convicted six of the seven junior officers accused, two with life sentences, four with seven-year sentences. The film was originally titled “Ghallughara,” a historic term used to refer to the massacre of Sikhs in 1746, 1762 and 1984. When RSVP applied for certification from India’s Central Board of Film Certification in late 2022, the process took six months. The film was cleared with 21 cuts and a change of title to “Punjab ’95.” RSVP appealed the decision in the Bombay High Court. The decision is pending. I have come to Canada to talk about a report. That report describes the story of oppression of the past ten years. When we started that report, we had before us hundreds of reports, but there was one question to which none of those reports provided the answer. That question was: Thousands of mothers await their sons even though some may know that the oppressor has not spared their son’s lives on this earth. But a mother’s heart is such that even if she sees her son’s dead body, she does not accept that her son has left her. And those mothers who have not even seen their children’s dead bodies, they were asking us: at least find out, is my son alive or not?

The Story

Some will no doubt argue that such a “prominent” telling of Shaheed Bhai Jaswant Singh’s story, despite any “limitations”, will create some level of “awareness” that may spark people to look further into his history. What is this awareness actually of, and what is the history of Shaheed Bhai Jaswant Singh that will be seen?