Whatever happens in India in the 2019 elections, an unlikely constituency – Khadoor Sahib – is slated to become the cynosure of Panjab. In Khadoor Sahib a democratic electoral process has pitted two radically different Sikh ideologies against each other.
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Tags: Bibi Paramjeet Kaur Khalra, extra-judicial killings Punjab, Jaswant Singh Khalra, Khadoor Sahib, Lok Sabha 2019
Book: Stillborn Season
Author: Radhika Oberoi
Publisher: Speaking Tiger
Most of what has been written about the anti-Sikh pogrom over the last 35 years is either broad-brushstroke rage and rhetoric, pedantic information, or literal reportage. Oberoi breaks this mould by making Amrit a journalist seeking human stories beyond the clichés. Through her search, Oberoi takes a fresh and intimate look at the violence. The novel proves that fiction can do what non-fiction cannot — tell a thousand untold stories in a way that makes the violence more real, and so indict it more sharply.
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Tags: 1984, Delhi, pogrom, Radhika Oberoi
Book: The Rainbow Acres
Author: Simrita Dhir
Publisher: Om Books
The well-structured, quick read novel The Rainbow Acres by Simrita Dhir sketches the era when gold was discovered in California and depicts the lives and journeys of a man and a woman from their faraway native lands on two ends of the world to the West Coast of the United States. Dhir alternates the chapters between Kishan Singh and Sophia Morales, from Noor Mahal in Panjab and Acapulco, later Guadalajara and then the village Bahia de Kino in Mexico, to parallel how people are marginalized – either through ravages of nature or political turmoil –and how they become migrants seeking refuge in alien lands.
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Tags: California, Mexico, Punjab, Simrita Dhir, The Rainbow Acres
The national discourse does not get a simple fact: when two Punjabis meet, they hug as a way of greeting each other. It does not get it that former cricket stalwarts Imran Khan and Navjot Sidhu seek to re-write history.
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Tags: Imran Khan, India, Kartarpur Sahib, Navjot Sidhu, Pakistan, Punjab
For 71 years now, in spite of how New Delhi and Islamabad define the relationship between India and Pakistan, the Sikhs have been making the prayer to unite with their Gurdwaras. The desire to go to Kartarpur Sahib has been a sigh of the people of the Indus Valley Civilization, a plea for peace in a sub-continent divided by the one of the most militarized borders, a soulful cry not only of the Sikhs but also of around 12 crore people of different sects, affiliations, who believe in the name of Nanak.
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Tags: Imran Khan, India, Kartarpur Sahib, Navjot Sidhu, Pakistan, Punjab