In a few hours from now, three Gur­d­waras in Cal­i­for­nia and three in Birm­ing­ham will host the Saka Nako­dar paint­ing on the walls of their Gur­d­wara Mu­se­ums. A glance at the paint­ing and you would be prompted to ask, “What a tragedy? Who painted it? The World Sikh News re­quested dig­i­tal artist Chaman­deep Singh to paint the events re­lat­ing to the 4 Feb­ru­ary 1986 tragedy wherein four young Sikhs were mar­tyred for protest­ing the sac­ri­lege of Guru Granth Sahib in Nako­dar, a few kilo­me­tres from Ja­land­har. Al­war-based Chaman­deep Singh Ba­tra put his heart and soul into the pant­ing and brought out a vivid ac­count of how the four youth were an­ni­hi­lated in ex­tra­ju­di­cial killings with a vengeance. 3D artistry and an­i­ma­tion are his forte and he is on the path to be­com­ing an artist of in­ter­na­tional class. WSN ed­i­tor Jag­mo­han Singh in­ter­viewed him on­line.

CHAMAN­DEEP SINGH hails from the his­toric Al­war city from Ra­jasthan. An ex­pert in an­i­ma­tion, land­scape paint­ing, 3D sculpt­ing he has worked in multi­na­tional com­pa­nies. He can draw on draw­ing pa­per, can­vas and dig­i­tal with equal acu­men. He is grate­ful to his school Arts teacher who took him around a gar­den and made the class do live draw­ing of flow­ers and leaves. He re­mem­bers hav­ing cho­sen a white flower and ap­pre­ci­a­tion from his teacher made him love his draw­ing and the draw­ing class in school. As he went along, he ex­per­i­mented and is now a young artist in his own right.

What in­spired your in­ter­est in dig­i­tal art?

Back in 2014, I was re­search­ing some west­ern paint­ings on the in­ter­net and there I saw some con­cept art­work, in­clud­ing war paint­ings and sci-fi land­scapes. The web­site had amaz­ing dig­i­tal art­work us­ing Pho­to­shop and other soft­ware and dig­i­tal brush tech­nol­ogy. From that hour on­wards, there was no look­ing back. I started ex­per­i­ment­ing with new tools. Af­ter fail­ing many times, I made a con­cept peanut shell char­ac­ter. This was my route to Dig­i­tal art.

What were your sen­ti­ments and feel­ings when you painted the killings of the mar­tyrs of Saka Nako­dar?

When you called me to do the paint­ing of the ghastly crime, I was awestruck as I had not painted any­thing like this be­fore. You said, there is al­ways a first time and pushed me to do it and I more than read­ily agreed. I am glad that Guru Sahib gave me this Sewa to de­pict the man­ner in which the four young Sikhs were killed by the po­lice.

Be­fore do­ing the paint­ing, I read a lot about the events of Feb­ru­ary 1986. What hap­pened? Who were there? How did it hap­pen? Why did it hap­pen? Be­fore us­ing the brush, I closed my eyes and imag­ined the whole in­ci­dent many times. I shud­dered when I “saw” in imag­i­na­tion that Har­min­der Singh was shot in the mouth at close range. I was scared. Tears rolled down my cheeks on ‘see­ing’ mounted po­lice chas­ing two young Singhs -Bald­hir Singh and Jhilman Singh and shoot­ing them af­ter mak­ing them come out of hid­ing. It was not re­ally easy for me to paint the Saka Nako­dar killings. In the midst of the paint­ing, tears would au­to­mat­i­cally swell into my eyes. I can­not com­pre­hend how Ravin­der Singh who was lead­ing the pro­ces­sion of protest was shot with a ma­chine gun right on the streets.

I un­der­stand that you plan to do some­thing more for the Saka Nako­dar in­ci­dent. Can you share?

The in­hu­man man­ner in which the four Sikh youth were set on fire on a sin­gle pyre and that too with­out prayers and the pres­ence of the fam­ily mem­bers has re­ally left an in­deli­ble mark on me. Paint­ing that sec­tion of the dig­i­tal can­vass, with only the po­lice cre­mat­ing them as ‘uniden­ti­fied’ was deeply emo­tional.

The in­hu­man man­ner in which the four Sikh youth were set on fire on a sin­gle pyre and that too with­out prayers and the pres­ence of the fam­ily mem­bers has re­ally left an in­deli­ble mark on me. Paint­ing that sec­tion of the dig­i­tal can­vass, with only the po­lice cre­mat­ing them as ‘uniden­ti­fied’ was deeply emo­tional.

Guru will­ing, I pro­pose to do a life-size paint­ing of the Saka Nako­dar 4 Feb­ru­ary 1986 tragedy and work on it for a year to make it a mas­ter­piece of Sikh con­tem­po­rary art.

Do you have a favourite paint­ing?

I like two of my paint­ings a lot. In 2017, I did a his­tor­i­cal paint­ing of Bhai Sati Das. In 2020, I did a fig­u­ra­tive paint­ing “The Lone Philoso­pher’ in which I painted my­self when I would be older.

What is your aim in life?

I de­sire to be a painter and a mu­sic com­poser. Like I told you I was do­ing art­work from child­hood and I was also play­ing the key­board since then. In 2012 I started do­ing mu­sic com­po­si­tion. I com­posed many sound­tracks. Since Jan­u­ary 2015, I de­voted more to art but one day soon, I will once again fo­cus on mu­sic too.

Where do you see your­self in ten years from now?

I see my­self as an in­de­pen­dent artist in ten years from now. I also wish to add that may God and Guru pro­vide me with the tal­ent, courage and op­por­tu­nity to serve the com­mu­nity in what­ever way I can.