34 years ago, a young Sikh, in his teens, for the love of his re­li­gion stood his ground and lost his life. Three of his dear friends, who were part of the Sikh Stu­dents Fed­er­a­tion move­ment died with him. 34 years to that day, Ravin­der Singh Lit­tran’s brother -Harinder Singh Lit­tran, for the first time in three decades, re­calls his child­hood, his hopes and as­pi­ra­tions on his 54th birth­day in the pub­lic do­main. He shares his ma­ter­nal an­tecedents -the roots for his love of Sikhi and nar­rates how the fam­ily is cop­ing with the mem­ory of the loved one, whose killers are still be­yond the do­main of jus­tice.

BARELY 19 YEARS OF AGE, 34 YEARS AGO, ON 4 FEB­RU­ARY 1986, my el­der brother Ravin­der Singh with his col­leagues Bald­hir Singh Ram­garh, Jhilman Singh Gor­sian and Har­min­der Singh Chalu­per, set out from their homes to protest the des­e­cra­tion of Guru Granth Sahib in the sleepy town of Nako­dar on the out­skirts of Ja­land­har. Lit­tle did they know that they would not come back home.

While this is a per­sonal rem­i­nis­cence of my el­der brother, in a larger sense, it is a re­call of all the four young men who were killed in cold blood in a mer­ci­less man­ner by blood-thirsty po­lice per­son­nel, whose deeds has been cov­ered by Pun­jab po­lice higher-ups and a con­niv­ing po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship over the decades.

Ravin­der Singh was born to Baldeep Kaur at his grand­fa­ther Gur­nam Singh Sand­hu’s house in Muhema. His grand­mother Cha­ran Kaur was the twin-sis­ter of widely-re­spected Jathedar Har­cha­ran Singh Mahlon -for­mer Jathedar of Takht Kesh­garh Sahib.

Ravin­der was a com­pas­sion­ate, al­tru­is­tic, hu­man­i­tar­ian, glo­ri­ous, pi­ous soul soaked in the love of Guru and al­ways in high spir­its. His rel­a­tives, class­mates and friends loved and ad­mired him.

Seeped in the love of Sikhism, like all Sikh kids, he started to wear the tur­ban at an early age; saf­fron and dark blue were his favourite colours.

Once our Brah­man neigh­bour asked him, “ ‘Binde’ wear a tur­ban of an­other colour, as the vil­lagers would as­sume that you have brought these tur­bans from Anand­pur Sahib from your grand­fa­ther.” A keen lis­tener to sto­ries from grand­par­ents, Ravin­der re­sponded, “Pan­dit Ji you may not know but Gi­ani Har­cha­ran Singh serves as Jathedar of Takht Sri Kesh­garh Sahib with­out any salary. My grand­fa­ther -Nanaji, even takes ra­tions from his Mo­halon home.”

My brother was a do-gooder. Once he took a vil­lage lady to a lo­cal hos­pi­tal as she was ex­pect­ing and her hus­band, who was in the Rail­ways, was not at home. He stayed there the whole night un­til the child’s birth. I felt proud of my brother when the lady told me this story.

A vil­lage girl was once trav­el­ling from Nako­dar to Lit­tran in a tempo with her hus­band who was drunk and was abu­sively ar­gu­ing with her with all co-pas­sen­gers lis­ten­ing in. Ravin­der was also in the tempo, maybe he was go­ing to col­lege. He ad­vised her hus­band not to quar­rel but sud­denly he slapped his wife, in­stead.  Ravin­der Singh, un­able to bear abuse, stopped the tempo, taught the man a ‘lesson’ and since that day, he never raised a hand on her. She was sob­bing in­con­solably when she learnt about the killing of Ravin­der and told me, ‘He was my Veer -brother.’

The ‘model stu­dent’ Ravin­der as­pired to be an elec­tri­cal en­gi­neer, played hockey for his school and vil­lage team and loved weight lift­ing.

My brother re­ceived Khande-ki-Pahul -the Khalsa ini­ti­a­tion, on the Vaisakhi of 1984 at Takht Sri Kesh­garh Sahib. A reg­u­lar at Gur­mat Train­ing Camps of the All In­dia Sikh Stu­dent Fed­er­a­tion and the Youth Akali Dal, he be­came a de­vout Sikh and was of­ten seen serv­ing at the Vil­lage Gur­d­wara Sahib in the evening con­gre­ga­tion.

1984 shook the Sikh world. 1984 saw the resur­gence of the Sikh Stu­dents Fed­er­a­tion de­spite the ha­rass­ment and atroc­i­ties of the mil­i­tary and para­mil­i­tary forces across Pun­jab, es­pe­cially the coun­try­side, as part of Op­er­a­tion Woodrose. Ravin­der Singh, with his friends, went to Am­rit­sar post-June 1984 and wit­nessed the de­struc­tion caused dur­ing the storm­ing of the Dar­bar Sahib. He was shaken. Be­ing an Am­rit­d­hari -bap­tized Sikh, he suf­fered ig­nominy at the hands of the se­cu­rity forces, who had been of­fi­cially told that, “every Am­rit­d­hari Sikh is a dan­ger­ous per­son.” He par­tic­i­pated in the his­toric Sar­bat Khalsa held at Sri Akal Takht Am­rit­sar on Jan­u­ary 26, 1986.

When­ever he was idle he used to write Sat Naam Wa­he­guru Ji’s Jaap in his note­book. His love for things Sikhi re­ver­ber­ated around the vil­lage. His sci­ence teacher Mas­ter Bal­want Singh’s younger son once told his fa­ther, “Papa ‘Binde’ must have taken more Am­rit” Mas­terji said, “Why do you say that?” The young Guri replied, “No one else in the vil­lage wears such a big kir­pan.”

Be­ing the older amongst the sib­lings, he was the right-hand of his fa­ther Bapu Baldev Singh. To this day, my fa­ther, my mother and I spend hours on end, even nights, liv­ing in the chain of mem­o­ries of Ravin­der Singh.

Re­flect­ing back, it ap­pears as if Guru was groom­ing him for mar­tyr­dom. My fa­ther’s aunt told us that once when she asked Ravin­der what he would want to be­come when he grows up, he said, Main sha­heed honna hai -I want to be­come a mar­tyr. Per­haps he did not un­der­stand the im­port of what he said. Per­haps, as a man of God, he did. She chided him and said, ‘You are just a kid.” He re­torted Guru Gob­ind Singh Ji’s sons were also mar­tyred at a very young age. He earned his word! I am proud of the great hero who by at­tain­ing mar­tyr­dom achieved Dashmesh Pita’s -Guru Gob­ind Singh’s abode!

We as a fam­ily will con­tinue our ef­forts to bring the cul­prits of your killing to jus­tice. The par­ents of your as­so­ci­ates did not live up to the day to see jus­tice done but I am de­ter­mined to leave no stone un­turned to get jus­tice for our par­ents Baldev Singh and Baldeep Kaur.

I cry for my el­der brother, yet I cel­e­brate his mar­tyr­dom.  Our fam­ily, our vil­lage re­mem­bers him and so does the proud Sikh na­tion as he adorns the walls of the Sikh Na­tional Mu­seum at Dar­bar Sahib in the holy city of Am­rit­sar! Chardi Kala!

Dr Harinder Singh, younger brother of Ravin­der Singh is a post­grad­u­ate from Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, San Fran­cisco and is prac­tis­ing pe­di­atric med­i­cine at Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity, re­spon­si­ble for med­ica­tion ther­apy man­age­ment. He tweets @sakanako­dar to fo­cus on jus­tice for his brother and his col­leagues killed ex­tra­ju­di­cially.