Friends, if you heard about the Sarbat Khalsa near Amritsar November 10 you may want to read my report on the proeedings and critical remarks. If you have not heard of it because regular media managed to blank it out, you must now get acquainted with how Punjab is inching towards risky times. It needs your attention. Also read for the resolutions passed at the plenary meet. In spite of one and a half days now, I have not found them anywhere on the web in English.

‘I do not know what to derive from the resolutions as they put me squarely back into the dilemma: am I first a Sikh, and then an Indian, or vice versa, or only one of the two?’

Please read …

Tags: Gurmata, Hawara, Khalistan, Parliament, Punjab, Sarbat Khalsa, Sikh

Here is Daljit Ami’s recent column on the Sikh protest in Punjab and how it is shaped, where it is headed. Translated by me.

We need more and more voices to articulate the two independent protests in Punjab: farmer-worker Unions and the intra-community Sikh struggle against the hegemony of the SGPC.  Both are against the same Akali government.

Please read …

Tags: Badal, Punjab, sacrilege, SGPC, Sikh protest

It means a lot in this country that the non-violent character of a protest stays intact as the Punjab farmer-worker ‘rail roko’ enters Day 7 when talks with the government failed last evening. Overall the protest is more than a month long. This is a ground up movement and all political parties stand discredited. How far will the government push the protestors?

My ground report from Day 4 detailing the issues.

Please read …

Tags: Badal, Cotton, Malwa, Punjab, Rail-roko

Friends, here is my translation of Daljit Ami’s column on how the politics of Punjab is now informed and even controlled by voices outside Punjab. How these moves reduce the issue to sloganeering and not much else.

Please read …

Tags: 1984, Khalistan, Punjab, Punjabi diaspora

Friends, my comment piece on the ban on the film ‘Nanak Shah Fakir’ in today’s Hindustan Times.

The issue with the movie is that: ‘In Sikhism, we do not give a physical representation to the Gurus.’ Yet, for more than a hundred years Sikhs have been turning towards image and idol worship – ‘but prasti’. I do not understand these calls for bans every few months. The bans are becoming a joke while the need is for reconciliation over the events and ideologies of the past decades and reform in the religion.

‘If the Sikh clergy now resists ‘Nanak Shah Fakir’, because it depicts the Guru in a human form, it would do well to consider how blasphemous the Sikh community has been with the images and icons of the Gurus.’

Please read …

Tags: ban, movie, Nanak Shah Fakir, Punjab, Sobha Singh

We are now entering an era where the fourth generation is dealing with the memory of Partition. My piece in The Hindu a compilation of how the advancement of digital technology is helping ordinary people archive their memories of Partition and create a larger South Asian identity. The new technologies in film-making have aided the work and a list of documentaries is appended to the story.

Thank you Daljit Ami, Kalathmika Natarajan, Anusha Yadav, Chintan Girish Modi, Ajay Bhardwaj, Shiraz Hassan, Sachi G. Dastidar, Muhammad Owais Rana, Guneeta Singh Bhalla, Jaya Bhattacharji Rose, The 1947 Partition Archive, Indian Memory Project, Friendships Across Borders: Aao Dosti Karein, The Citizens Archive of Pakistan, Punjab Digital Library.

See here …

Tags: Bengal, Digital, Partition, Punjab

On June 6, 2014, as the world watched the Sikh community mark the 30th anniversary of the Army attack on Golden Temple, Operation Blue Star, factions pulled out swords and there was a free for all  in the holy premises for one and a half hour. My piece in Tehelka on one of the deeper reasons behind this event.

‘Though Punjab has largely been peaceful after the violent 1980s, it remains a land with deep fissures. One of the reasons is that the Sikh community’s management body, the cash-rich SGPC, has over the past two decades been converted into an extension of the SAD (Badal). Instead of practising inclusive Sikhism, solving the community’s problems, furthering education and healthcare, and raising and solving the identity issues that had led to the separatist movement, the SGPC has become rife with nepotism and dynasty politics. It manipulates Sikh sentiments for political and commercial gains.’

Read more here …

Tags: 1984, Akal Takht, Army, Bluestar, Khalistan, Punjab, SGPC, Simranjit Singh Mann

Thanks to Margerie from Ireland for chasing me to to this interview. It has come out well.

‘I battled my own self for the longest period, even went through clinical depression for a few months. There are issues like masculinity, sodomy, gay sex, my own views on the events of 1984, the code of honour among schoolmates, communal violence and so on. All of them troubled me when I wanted to write about them. I felt I will earn enemies. It is best to stay silent rather than invite criticism. But I could not sleep. I felt I was cheating by not writing. This is my truth of communal violence and of public schooling in our country. I needed to write it, put it out, to gain some semblance of equanimity in my life. I am very thankful the people have accepted my truths. The book has been lauded, nominated for awards; I have earned a good scholarship from it. The acceptance is a validation of my effort.  I feel, in our world, we have space for truth. Let us work to bringing out those truths.’

Read more here …

Tags: 1984, Bluestar, Khalistan, military school, Mrs. Gandhi, Punjab, Roll of Honour, schizophrenia, Sepia Leaves

So, the book is getting around. Around the 30th anniversary of the attack on Golden Temple, Operation Blue Star, I received this review of my novel Roll of Honour from a US based Sikh website.

‘Sandhu’s story is full of shocking brutality, and definitely not for younger audiences. Unfortunately, so are many of the stories of 1984. For those who are willing to give this book a chance, however, Roll of Honour offers a lesson that readers are not likely to forget.’

Read more here …

Tags: 1984, Bluestar, Khalistan, military school, Mrs. Gandhi, Punjab, Roll of Honour, schizophrenia