Jus­tice Ajit Singh Bains, a for­mer judge of the Pun­jab and Haryana high court who be­came, in re­tire­ment, the most promi­nent face of the hu­man rights move­ment in Pun­jab, passed away on Feb­ru­ary 11 in Chandi­garh, two months short of 100 years of age. His last hu­man rights de­po­si­tion was a month be­fore his demise. Dr Pri­tam Singh Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus at Ox­ford Brookes Busi­ness School dwells on his past and chron­i­cles his ex­em­plary life.

JUS­TICE BAINS CAME FROM A FAM­ILY WHICH HAD A LONG TRA­DI­TION  of par­tic­i­pat­ing in anti-im­pe­ri­al­ist ac­tiv­i­ties. His fa­ther G.S. Bains was ac­tive in the Com­mu­nist Party of In­dia (Marx­ist) and was as­so­ci­ated with the edit­ing of the party pa­per.

Ra­jvin­der Singh Bains, son of Jus­tice Bains, has said that his grand­fa­ther’s last rites were car­ried out by the party and that he was wrapped in the party flag for his last jour­ney. This pro­gres­sive fam­ily back­ground must have con­tributed to the shap­ing of the ju­di­cial vi­sion of Jus­tice Bains. One of his younger broth­ers, Hardial Bains, went on to be­come the leader of the Com­mu­nist Party of Canada (Marx­ist-Lenin­ist).

Dur­ing Jus­tice Bains’ 10-year tenure on the bench from 1974 to 1984, he be­came known as a dif­fer­ent kind of high court judge.

Most judges are de­fend­ers of the es­tab­lish­ment, as ev­i­denced by their so­cial life and world­view. Jus­tice Bains was just the op­po­site. As a high court judge, he be­longed to Chandi­garh’s elite, but in his view, he sup­ported the down­trod­den in so­ci­ety. He de­liv­ered many judg­ments dur­ing his tenure de­fend­ing the in­ter­ests and rights of work­ing peo­ple, the dis­ad­van­taged, and women. He ruled against many em­ploy­ers and es­tab­lish­ment fig­ures.

He was par­tic­u­larly known for de­fend­ing the rights of em­ploy­ees against em­ploy­ers. Trade unions and em­ploy­ees’ or­gan­i­sa­tions used to hope that their case at the high court would come to his bench. Some em­ploy­ers sup­port­ive of fairer work prac­tices also sought his ad­vice. Yo­gin­der Alagh, a for­mer Union min­is­ter, in­forms me that when he was vice-chan­cel­lor of Jawa­har­lal Nehru Uni­ver­sity, Jus­tice Bains helped him in in­ves­ti­gat­ing some le­gal-ad­min­is­tra­tive is­sues.

His re­tire­ment in 1984 co­in­cided with the dark­est pe­riod in Pun­jab’s re­cent his­tory when a very large num­ber of in­di­vid­u­als and fam­i­lies faced ha­rass­ment, ar­rest, tor­ture and even ‘ac­ci­den­tal’ killings by se­cu­rity forces of all kinds. even for mi­nor dis­plays of dis­si­dence.

As a high court judge, he be­longed to Chandi­garh’s elite, but in his view, he sup­ported the down­trod­den in so­ci­ety. He de­liv­ered many judg­ments dur­ing his tenure de­fend­ing the in­ter­ests and rights of work­ing peo­ple, the dis­ad­van­taged, and women. He ruled against many em­ploy­ers and es­tab­lish­ment fig­ures.

Jus­tice Bains un­der­stood that given his pro­fes­sional and so­cial sta­tus, he was, more than any­one else, in a po­si­tion to con­front the state’s op­pres­sive power struc­tures. He founded the Pun­jab Hu­man Rights Or­gan­i­sa­tion in 1985 to con­duct in­ves­ti­ga­tions into gross hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions and col­lect ev­i­dence of those vi­o­la­tions. He took an ac­tive in­ter­est in sup­port­ing hu­man rights causes in other parts of In­dia too.

At the in­vi­ta­tion of some stu­dents of JNU, he was a key speaker at a meet­ing or­gan­ised by Tamil stu­dents to protest the geno­cide of Tamils in Sri Lanka. His re­tire­ment turned out to be even more de­mand­ing than his work­ing life.

In 1985, he was made head of an of­fi­cial com­mit­tee ap­pointed by chief min­is­ter Sur­jit Singh Bar­nala to look into the cases that had been filed by the po­lice against thou­sands of youths in Pun­jab. As Mallika Kaur has chron­i­cled,

The Jus­tice Bains Com­mit­tee re­port was never pub­lished but it en­abled the re­lease of thou­sands of wrongly and il­le­gally de­tained Sikh youth across po­lice sta­tions and tor­ture cen­tres, in­clud­ing those at the no­to­ri­ous po­lice head­quar­ters of Ladha Kothi in San­grur dis­trict.

‘The Bains Com­mit­tee con­vened in Oc­to­ber 1985. Jus­tice Bains told me, “There was no steno, no of­fice, no staff, no time­line. So, I did it all here (at home).” On per­sonal cost, the com­mit­tee trav­elled to jails across Pun­jab, meet­ing the im­pris­oned. In just two-and-a-half months, the com­mit­tee fi­nalised its re­port, rec­om­mend­ing the re­lease of 6,000 lan­guish­ing de­tainees against whom it found no cred­i­ble ev­i­dence, not even from po­lice of­fi­cials they in­ter­viewed.’

When Beant Singh of the Con­gress was made the Chief Min­is­ter of Pun­jab af­ter a dis­cred­ited Pun­jab as­sem­bly elec­tion in 1992 with less than 20% of vot­ers par­tic­i­pat­ing, the con­trol of the Pun­jab po­lice was given to the ar­ro­gant K. P. S. Gill, the most dif­fi­cult pe­riod of Jus­tice Bain­s’s life started. Gill had the au­dac­ity to have Jus­tice Bains ar­rested once in 1992, even hav­ing him hand­cuffed and taken to a po­lice sta­tion.

K.P.S. Gill and Jus­tice Ajit Singh Bains rep­re­sented two con­trast­ing facets of Pun­jabi and Sikh so­ci­ety – Gill the op­pres­sor and Bains the de­fi­ant hu­man rights de­fender. Gill’s ac­tions were aimed at hu­mil­i­at­ing Bains and ter­ror­is­ing par­tic­i­pants in the hu­man rights move­ment, but Bain­s’s re­sponse was to dis­play the power of dig­nity and truth.

Gill did not know that Bains was made of dif­fer­ent stuff. Hand­cuff­ing Bains at­tracted world­wide con­dem­na­tion by the ju­di­cial and hu­man rights com­mu­nity. Bain­s’s stature grew to new heights. He be­came even more de­voted to his mis­sion, re­al­is­ing that if a re­tired high court judge could be treated so roughly, an or­di­nary farmer or worker would face far worse in Gill’s po­lice raj.

So­ci­ety’s re­sponse to the deaths of these two men in­di­cated a con­dem­na­tion of Gill and a cel­e­bra­tion of Bain­s’s de­vo­tion to hu­man rights.

When the news of the death of Bains be­came known, it led to a spon­ta­neous out­pour­ing of grief and trib­utes all over the world from Pun­jabis and hu­man rights cham­pi­ons.

I met Jus­tice Bains only once. He was very pleased when I told him how great his work had in­flu­enced my re­search on the In­dian con­sti­tu­tion. His in­sight in his pa­per ‘Pun­jab Sit­u­a­tion’, namely that the Sikh rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the Con­stituent As­sem­bly – Sar­dar Hukam Singh and Bhupin­der Singh Mann – had not ap­proved and signed the con­sti­tu­tion be­cause the draft agreed by the ma­jor­ity pro­vided no au­ton­omy for the states, helped me to un­der­stand the bias to­wards cen­tral­i­sa­tion in­her­ent in the con­sti­tu­tion.

Later, dur­ing every visit to Chandi­garh, I al­ways thought I should seek an op­por­tu­nity to spend time with him. I re­gret now that I did not man­age to do this.

His 1988 book Siege of the Sikhs, which be­came a best­seller, and the pam­phlet State Ter­ror­ism and Hu­man Rights, pub­lished in 1992 (and writ­ten dur­ing his im­pris­on­ment in the Bu­rail Jail in Chandi­garh), are im­por­tant sources re­flect­ing that pro­gres­sive vi­sion.

Jus­tice Bains per­son­i­fied the cul­tur­ally and po­lit­i­cally rich tra­di­tion as­so­ci­ated with Ghadari Babas of seek­ing in­spi­ra­tion from the Sikh gu­ru’s egal­i­tar­ian teach­ings and com­bined that in­spi­ra­tion with a mod­ern so­cial­ist vi­sion that poses an al­ter­na­tive to cap­i­tal­ism. A full ap­pre­ci­a­tion of Jus­tice Bain­s’s con­tri­bu­tion lies in un­der­stand­ing that the fu­ture of shap­ing a new pro­gres­sive Pun­jab is de­pen­dent upon em­pow­er­ing that tra­di­tion.

His 1988 book Siege of the Sikhs, which be­came a best­seller, and the pam­phlet State Ter­ror­ism and Hu­man Rights, pub­lished in 1992 (and writ­ten dur­ing his im­pris­on­ment in the Bu­rail Jail in Chandi­garh), are im­por­tant sources re­flect­ing that pro­gres­sive vi­sion.

Men as pure as Jus­tice Bains are born once in many decades.

Due to his im­pec­ca­ble in­tegrity and com­pe­tence, his voice was heard at the high­est level in the UN and other world fo­rums with great re­spect and at­ten­tion. His spirit will re­main alive through his mag­nif­i­cent work for jus­tice and hu­man rights.

Dr Pri­tam Singh has a DPhil from the Uni­ver­sity of Ox­ford and is Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus at Ox­ford Brookes Busi­ness School. He is the au­thor of ‘Fed­er­al­ism, Na­tion­al­ism and De­vel­op­ment: In­dia and the Pun­jab Econ­omy.’  In June 2015, he was awarded the Dis­tin­guished Achieve­ment Award in Po­lit­i­cal Econ­omy For The Twenty-First Cen­tury by the World As­so­ci­a­tion of Po­lit­i­cal Econ­omy at its Tenth Fo­rum held at Jo­han­nes­burg, South Africa, and in May 2021, the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia (River­side) ho­n­oured him with a ‘Life­time Achieve­ment Award for his dis­tin­guished con­tri­bu­tion to the Pun­jab Re­search Group in the UK to pro­mote Sikh and Pun­jab Stud­ies.’