The Valiant Jaswant Singh Khalra

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The following are excerpts from the English version of the last international speech given by Jaswant Singh Khalra:

During the counterinsurgency in Punjab, the Indian government also rejected reports by international human rights organizations on widespread abuses. In a letter issued to Amnesty International that denied the group permission to visit Punjab, the Indian Embassy stated: “The only turmoil in Punjab are the acts of violence by terrorists who have been indiscriminate in their butchery of innocents of all communities.” The letter further stressed India’s sovereignty and its antipathy to foreign interference in its domestic affairs. 38 In response to the 1991 Asia Watch report Punjab in Crisis, the Indian government denied the abuses, stating that it did not tolerate any violations of the law. 39 State Department, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices—1993: India,” January 31, 1994, http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/ERC/democracy/1993_hrp_report/93hrp_report_sasia/India.html (accessed April 13, 2007). 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 . The Government denied the allegations that there may be several thousand cases of disappearances in Punjab…. Scrupulous care had been taken to protect the rights of the individual under due process of law. Habeas corpus was available to all under the Indian judicial system in all circumstances. Wherever there was any suspicion of police excesses, action was taken. In Punjab, action had been taken against 210 police personnel…. All cases of alleged disappearance which were brought to the attention of police authorities were investigated. 36The conditions of the Indian state are such that no film on Shaheed Bhai Jaswant Singh could ever capture the politics and struggle of such a Shaheed. Other films that attempted to speak about Punjab and Sikh liberation, either vaguely based on the movement or on key figures from the movement, erased central aspects of the struggle, particularly by invisibilizing Khalistan. According to the U.S. Census’ 2015 American Community Survey, approximately 10,000 people of Asian Indian descent live in Fresno. This 2016 image, taken from Google Street View, shows the newly renamed Shaheed Jaswant Singh Khalra Park in Fresno, California. There were many reasons for them to come for him,” explains [Inderjit Singh] Jaijee. [Including,] the two thousand policemen killed by the police themselves, for not cooperating in terror.”

Due to the nature of Shaheed Bhai Jaswant Singh’s life and death, and the reality of India, the Indian film industry is only capable of recreating, mutilating, and co-opting a story about Khalistan and the Sikh struggle against India, in an attempt to infiltrate and divert ongoing discourse and rising Sikh consciousness. Armed Forces (Punjab and Chandigarh) Special Powers Act (1983), section 7. Section 7 states: “No prosecution, suit or other legal proceeding shall be instituted, except with the previous sanction of the Central Government, against any person in respect of anything done or purported to be done in exercise of the powers conferred by this Act.”It must be noted that PTC has previously claimed world wide “intellectual property rights” over the daily broadcast of Hukamnama from Sri Darbar Sahib. These dynamics of erasing and claiming ownership over Sikh subjectivity is endemic to the dynamics of Sikh existence and “representation” within the confines of the Indian state. While he was in Canada, his fellow Canadian Sikhs suggested that he should apply for refugee status in Canada as returning to India could be fatal for him. However, Khalra said that he knows he might be killed, but he had a task to undertake and he didn’t think he could do it sitting outside of Punjab.

To honour Bhai Jaswant Singh’s legacy is to honour their Shaheedi, which means that the structures that kidnapped, tortured and murdered him must be named. All aspects of Shaheed Bhai Jaswant Singh’s life and praxis must be honoured, including his open demand and mobilisation for Khalistan. On 6 September 1995, while washing his car in front of his house, Khalra was abducted by personnel of Punjab Police and taken to Jhabal Police Station. [13] Although witnesses gave statements implicating the police, [13] and named Director General of the Punjab Police, Kanwar Pal Singh Gill as a conspirator, [14] police have denied ever arresting or detaining Khalra. Further, the police have claimed to have had no knowledge of his whereabouts. 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.Naming of the park represents the best values that we can strive toward: A person that’s willing to give their life in the pursuit of truth, justice, and human rights,” he said. Punjab government institutions have equated human rights activists with terrorists and consistently used the insurgency to justify their actions. In the Punjab mass cremations case discussed below, the response of the Punjab police and government of Punjab has been to portray demands for a full accounting of abuses as negating the contributions of police in fighting insurgency. 40 Submissions by the state of Punjab have stressed the number of police killed in the insurgency. 41 In a 2002 application before the National Human Rights Commission, the state of Punjab denied the abuses but also wrote: 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.

Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi, (New Delhi: Picador), 2006, pp. 557-562. See also, Human Rights Watch, India —Punjab in Crisis: Human Rights in India (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1991), pp. 170-204. It must be understood that there can be no creative or intellectual freedom, which is essential to public discourse and our liberation, within the confines of the Indian state. India routinely engages in censorship , has imprisoned artists , journalists , climate rights activists , human rights defenders, and sought to viscously annihilate all militant resistance to its power. Even Indian liberals consistently demonise Khalistan and uphold its erasure. In 2007, the High Court in Chandigarh upheld the sentences of five of the six accused in the Khalra case, increasing all punishments to life terms. The Supreme Court upheld the sentences in 2011. Kumar, Ram; Singh,Amrik; Agrwaal, Ashok & Kaur, Jaskaran (2003). Reduced To Ashes: The Insurgency and Human Rights in Punjab. Kathamandu (Nepal): South Asia Forum for Human Rights. ISBN 99933-53-57-4 "Biography of Khalra, Chapter 1, Reduced to Ashes (pdf, 5 MB)" p.54.Answer: At that time I rang his colleagues. Then we met IG Bhatti and told him that this is the work of Ajit Singh Sandhu as he had been threatening us. IG Bhatti said, "What right do they have to kidnap a man from our area, by the evening I will find him." But IG Bhatti did not do anything. He is now referred to as Shaheed Jaswant Singh Khalra having become a Martyr for the Sikh religion. His widow Bibi Paramjit Kaur Khalra is currently carrying on her husband's fighting for justice and now her name has been added to the thousands of Sikhs who do not have any word of what happened to their loved ones. Darshan Singh Mann, SP(D), Additional Affidavit on behalf of respondents No. 4 to 6 (SSPs of Amritsar, Tarn Taran, and Majitha), National Human Rights Commission, Reference Case No. 1/97/NHRC, received August 14, 1998, para. 2: “[P]etitioners are trying to portray the Punjab Police as ‘trigger-happy,’‘blood thirsty’ with an extra legal style of functioning, who were out to eliminate innocents. This amounts to negating the contribution of hundreds of valiant police officers who laid down their lives while fighting terrorism.” Copy on file with Ensaaf. US State Department, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices—1989: India,” p.1389. 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”.