The Valiant Jaswant Singh Khalra

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Khalra's grandfather, Harnam Singh, was an activist in the Ghadar movement for the independence of India. Harnam Singh was also one of 376 passengers of the ship, Komagata Maru which famously sailed from British-Hong Kong, via Shanghai, China, and Yokohama, Japan, to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, in 1914, carrying 376 passengers from Punjab, British India. Of them, 24 were admitted to Canada, but the other 352 passengers were not allowed to disembark in Canada, and the ship was forced to return to India. Harnam Singh, among others, was arrested upon their arrival and was tried in the Lahore conspiracy case against the British empire and was later imprisoned in Lahore jail. 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] The National Human Rights Commission released a list of some of the identified bodies that were cremated by the police in the Police Districts of Amritsar, Majitha, and Tarn Taran between June 1984 and December 1994. The Supreme Court of India and the National Human Rights Commission of India have certified the validity of this data.

The Valiant – Jaswant Singh Khalra: New Book Launched". Sikh Siyasat News. 26 October 2020 . Retrieved 6 September 2022. California city names park after Sikh human rights advocate". NBC News. 6 September 2017 . Retrieved 13 November 2019. We remember S. Jaswant Singh Khalra on the anniversary of his disapperance. We reflect here on his work, his death his legacy and how the uproar over his abduction caused ripples in Canada. 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. 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.

The Story

Punjab Cops Convicted of 1995 Murder of Activist Khalra". Ensaaf. Archived from the original on 23 November 2006 . Retrieved 25 January 2007. Following Operation Blue Star after which Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards, the Punjab Police was empowered to detain anyone whom they suspected as a militant, which led to the 1984 Sikh Massacre. Although the extremism of the riots distressed Khalra from the beginning, it was the abduction and killing of his close friend Piara Singh, the director of the cooperative bank where Khalra worked, which led Khalra to initiate a detailed investigation of the killings. Khalra went to the Durgiana Mandir cremation ground in Amritsar to gather the remains of his friend who had been illegally cremated. There, he discovered that his friend was not the only one who was cremated illegally. He discovered a major error while examining the register of the cremation ground, which featured names of victims of extrajudicial executions along with their father’s names and villages whose bodies were labelled as “unidentified.” With an accusatory finger pointed at the police, Khalra made it his life’s work to compile a list of all the unlawful deaths and disappearances that took place after Bluestar. According to his research, Punjab Police killed over 2,000 police personnel who disobeyed their techniques in addition to participating in 25,000 illegal killings and cremations. 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. 36 An upcoming Punjabi movie is about to be made on the life of Jaswant Singh Khalra named Punjab 95 featuring Diljit Dosanjh. [ citation needed] See also [ edit ]

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. Answer: Yes, Ajit Singh Sandhu sent a message stating, "If I can make 25,000 Sikhs vanish then making one more Sikh vanish will not be difficult at all." But he didn't care about the threats and carried on with his mission day and night. 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 himself “disappeared” from his home – they came in broad daylight, abducting him from the front of his house[.] Paramjit focuses on his life’s work and hers. But she allows herself one personal reflection: “I remember the days I knew poetry by heart...then, life took over.”Question: After the witness account of Kuldip Singh was used to file a case against the police, did the police harass you? Film as the dominant medium for cultural production upholds nationalist narratives and imaginations. In this regard, Indian cinema upholds the ideological moorings of Hindutva with coherence and complexity, and these logics are also present in Punjabi cinema. Ram Narayan Kumar, Amrik Singh, Ashok Aggrwal, and Jaskaran Kaur, Reduced to Ashes: The Insurgency and Human Rights in Punjab (Kathmandu: South Asia Forum for Human Rights, 2003), p. 35. 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.