The Valiant Jaswant Singh Khalra

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Shaheed Bhai Jaswant Singh Khalra does not need any introduction. This fearless person had gathered information of the innocent Sikh youth who were killed unlawfully by the Indian government and highlighted the injustice of India, internationally. The Indian government was shook by this man and had threatened Bhai Jaswant Singh Khalra to stop the great sewa he was doing or else he would also join the very long list of the singhs that were declared disappeared by the police, but Bhai Sahib remained fearless and continued to expose the Indian government. 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:

It is respectfully submitted that a large number of writ petitions are being filed on bogus charges. Human rights activists are coaxing people and even threatening them to file writ petitions by incorporating concocted facts. Thus the police is unable to rivet its attention against the terrorists in full measure. 44

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Meanwhile, the director general of police, KPS Gill, stormed into Amritsar to hold an urgent press conference. 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.

Ensaaf, “Sardar Jaswant Singh Khalra,” video report, 2006, http://www.ensaaf.org/docs/khalravideo.php (accessed April 13, 2007). This video is an edited recording, with subtitles, of a speech Khalra gave in April 1995 in Toronto, Canada, regarding his human rights investigations. Answer: My wait ended a year and half after his disappearance, when Kuldip Singh a special police officer gave his witness account in the newspapers. Before this Kuldip Singh had met me himself and told me that he wanted to talk about Khalra Sahib, but I didn't believe him as the police d also been sending men to give me false information on him. Then when the article of Kuldip Singh was printed in the newspapers, I read that article in a library. After the printing of this article we had started holding shaheedi barsi in memory of him. In early 1995, human rights activists Jaswant Singh Khalra and Jaspal Singh Dhillon, of the Akali Dal political party, used government crematoria records to expose over 6,000 secret cremations by the police in just one of then 13 districts in Punjab. They focused their investigations on illegal cremations, putting aside other possible ends of the victims’ bodies, such as dismemberment or dumping in canals. Jaswant Singh Khalra described how the hesitation of family members to report “disappearances” led him and Dhillon to the cremation grounds: “[C]ountless mothers, countless sisters weren’t ready to say that [their loved one was “disappeared”]. They said, “[I]f you take this issue further, and our son is still alive, they [the police] will kill him.” 29 Thus, Khalra and Dhillon went to the cremation grounds: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 following are excerpts from the English version of the last international speech given by Jaswant Singh Khalra:

Now I believe that today when darkness, with all its strength thrusts itself over the truth, if not anything else I will say 'Ankhila Punjab' is the light that will challenge it and I pray to the Guru who identifies with Truth to keep this light lit." - Shaheed (Martyr) Jaswant Singh KhalraAnd 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. 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”. BBC News, “Leaders ‘incited’ anti-Sikh riots,” August 8, 2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4130962.stm (accessed August 13, 2007). US State Department, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices—2006: India,” March 6, 2006, http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2006/78871.htm (accessed April 13, 2007). Office of the Registrar General, India, “The First Report on Religion: Census of India,” 2001, http://www.censusindia.net/religiondata/Summary%20Sikhs.pdf (accessed April 13, 2007).

Global protests were prompted by Khalra’s study on 25,000 illegal cremations that took place in Punjab during the mid-1980s and mid-1990s during the height of the insurgency. This led the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to the conclusion that 2097 persons had been illegally cremated by the Punjab police in Tarn Taran district. Jaswant Singh had thrown down a challenge.” Paramjit’s eyes flash. “KPS came to Amritsar to try to rubbish the claims, saying, ‘These supposedly dead boys are in foreign countries, smuggled out to earn dollars, while the poor police get charged with supposed disappearances.’” Question: Couple of days before the kidnapping of Bhai Khalra by the police, Bhai Khalra released a press note stating that, "I know the police will soon kill me, but by killing me they will not stop the mission to search for the disappeared Sikhs." How did Bhai Khalra find out that the police wanted him dead?The excitement and buzz about the film raises questions about what Sikhs long for, desire, and expect from a film on Shaheed Bhai Jaswant Singh’s life. Unfortunately, due to the state of our existence as domesticated citizens, no mainstream film can truly encapsulate and fulfil our desire to see the intimate, world shaping moments that came to shape Shaheed Jaswant Singh’s life and struggle. California city names park after Sikh human rights advocate". NBC News. 6 September 2017 . Retrieved 13 November 2019. The call of Sant Jarnail Singh Ji Bhindranwale for Khalistan was cultivated within them through their pursuit of learning Gurbani. For this reason their activities for Khalistan had the seal of Gurbani, they would ask every Sikh to attach themselves to Gurbani to become a Khalistani.”