Lawyer, ac­tivist and writer, lec­turer of Law at the UC Berke­ley School of Law, Mallika Kaur, has painstak­ingly gath­ered de­tails of three pi­o­neer­ing hu­man rights de­fend­ers and weaved the story of con­tem­po­rary Pun­jab around their work, es­pe­cially look­ing at the role of women in her new book “The Wheat Fields Still Whis­per” Faith, Gen­der, and Ac­tivism in the Pun­jab Con­flict. As she puts it, “The book seeks to make an ur­gent in­ter­ven­tion in the telling of the his­tory of the Pun­jab con­flict, which to date has been char­ac­terised by a fix­a­tion on sen­sa­tional vi­o­lence—or ig­nored al­to­gether.” It feels all the more timely now in 2022 to draw lessons from cit­i­zen ac­tivists who per­se­vered in Pun­jab dur­ing “those days.” Co-founder and pres­i­dent of the Khalis Foun­da­tion -Prebh Dev Singh, fa­mous for the Gur­bani search en­gine Sikhi­ToThe­Max re­views the book for The World Sikh News.

IWAS VIS­IT­ING PUN­JAB WHEN I HEARD THAT MALLIKA KAU­R’S MUCH-AWAITED BOOK “The Wheat Fields Still Whis­per” Faith, Gen­der, and Ac­tivism in the Pun­jab Con­flict, based on hu­man rights de­fend­ers’ sto­ries post-1984 has fi­nally been re­leased. A printed copy was not avail­able for pur­chase there at the time, so I bought the PDF right away and started read­ing it on my Kin­dle. It was a short trip home, and much of it was spent read­ing this book. I largely grew up in Pun­jab, and de­spite (or be­cause of) that, such sto­ries and de­tails had never been read­ily avail­able for me to read and di­gest. The book is now avail­able in the Pun­jab at the pres­ti­gious The Browser Li­brary and Book­store, Chandi­garh.

Mallika Kau­r’s work has be­come my ref­er­ence or go-to re­source to look up spe­cific in­ci­dents and events re­lated to re­cent Pun­jab his­tory. And now, im­por­tantly, the book is avail­able for read­ers in In­dia and world­wide.

The book re­volves around Pun­jab’s re­sis­tance to op­pres­sion.

This book is based on fac­tual and un­bi­ased ac­counts, some­thing that is hard to come across due to the State hav­ing passed its own nar­ra­tive through acad­e­mia, me­dia, and jour­nal­ism. Mallika Kaur has at­tempted to nar­rate Pun­jab’s his­tory from an in­ves­tiga­tive point of view, in­stead of a de­fen­sive po­si­tion. This is some­thing new and re­fresh­ing, es­pe­cially as this is likely the first time such a thor­ough record of the re­cent Sikh and Pun­jab his­tory has been nar­rated by a woman, one who is also a Pun­jabi Sikh.

“I read Mallika Kau­r’s beau­ti­fully writ­ten book at a gal­lop. Po­lice raids, vil­lagers’ re­sis­tance, wom­en’s de­fi­ance, tor­tur­ers, sur­vivors, elec­toral vi­o­lence, strate­gic si­lences. It’s all here. But what is re­mark­able is how Mallika Kaur al­lows us to lis­ten in on these lively, risky con­ver­sa­tions as Sikh women and men un­ravel the In­dian of­fi­cial story and to­gether weave a more re­li­able, com­plex po­lit­i­cal nar­ra­tive.”

Cyn­thia En­loe, Clark Uni­ver­sity, New York

The book re­volves around Pun­jab’s re­sis­tance to op­pres­sion. What I found most in­cred­i­ble is how the book is struc­tured. Start­ing with chap­ter 2, each sub­se­quent chap­ter elo­quently draws par­al­lels from the re­cent events (start­ing back­wards from 1995) and a pe­riod of mod­ern era Sikh his­tory (start­ing with the pe­riod of Ma­haraja Ran­jit Singh’s death in 1839). As the chap­ters progress, both time­lines con­vene in chap­ter 10 – “Ten Thou­sand Pairs of Shoes”– the fi­nal chap­ter that cov­ers 1984 and its af­ter­math in de­tail. It’s in­ter­est­ing to note that most ac­counts on the Pun­jab con­flict start with 1984, but Mallika Kaur very skill­fully brings her work to clo­sure by go­ing over the events of this pe­riod in the last chap­ter. The book ef­fec­tively helps the reader travel from the end of the Sikh Raj (through colo­nial times; Gad­har mutiny; “bat­wara”) to very re­cent events of the 2000s that are rel­e­vant in what con­tin­ues to un­fold in Pun­jab in 2022.

“Deftly braid­ing oral his­tory with recorded his­tory, Mallika Kaur brings to the reader mem­o­ries and tales of the long Pun­jab strug­gle with a painful, brac­ing im­me­di­acy. We lis­ten as three or­di­nary – and not so or­di­nary – peo­ple de­scribe how they chose en­gage­ment, not in­dif­fer­ence; dig­nity and hu­man­ity over col­lu­sion with state vi­o­lence and cor­rup­tion. A vivid re­minder that be­yond the sta­tis­tics in hu­man rights re­ports and the de­tails of un­end­ing le­gal cases, lie courage, hu­mour, car­ing, and sim­ple com­mit­ment to truth.”

An­gela P. Har­ris, UC Davis School of Law, Cal­i­for­nia

In ad­di­tion, every chap­ter in­cludes life sto­ries of the pro­tag­o­nists: the three hu­man rights de­fend­ers on the cover of the book, as well as count­less oth­ers. The con­ver­sa­tions grow, the sto­ries have mul­ti­ple voices, the reader is at once an ob­server and a par­tic­i­pant in mak­ing sense of every­thing. With­out the work of the three cen­tral pro­tag­o­nists–the famed Jus­tice Ajit Singh Bains, Baljit Kaur, In­der­jit Singh Jai­jee–– per­haps to­day the en­tire nar­ra­tive around the events of the 1980s and 1990s would have been even more bi­ased and in­com­plete. We learn about the tremen­dous con­tri­bu­tions of many of our bazurgs -el­ders. 

Nar­ra­tives set prior to this book have sel­dom ex­plored the roles played by women in the re­cent Sikh strug­gles. Mallika Kaur has chal­lenged the usual nar­ra­tive that the armed con­flict of Pun­jab was led by ir­ra­tional men who took up arms and had mon­strous ten­den­cies and that the women played no role be­sides be­ing vul­ner­a­ble and vic­tim­ized. What you will read in this book are first-hand ac­counts by women who de­fied so­ci­etal ex­pec­ta­tions and played a very im­por­tant role dur­ing this pe­riod.

One such ex­am­ple is Baljit Kaur who tire­lessly col­lected doc­u­men­ta­tion and ev­i­dence of hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions and State coverups dur­ing the 1980s and 1990s. 

This book has not shied away from some of the most com­pli­cated events of re­cent Sikh his­tory. At the same time, it does not pro­pose to have “the” an­swer: it pre­sents the var­i­ous com­pli­ca­tions and in do­ing so high­lights ear­lier lesser-known nu­ances. An ex­am­ple of this is the elec­tion boy­cott de­ci­sion not only by armed Sikh sep­a­ratist groups in 1992 but also what Jai­jee calls the “Cen­tral gov­ern­men­t’s elec­tion boy­cott” in 1991.

“There are many peo­ple who talk, but not many who lis­ten. And fewer still who lis­ten with pa­tience, re­spect, and faith that each per­son is the best au­thor­ity on their own ex­pe­ri­ences. So it’s no won­der that many peo­ple who never told their sto­ries or shared their records, opened their hearts and souls to Mallika.”

Paramjit Kaur Khalra, hu­man rights ad­vo­cate, Am­rit­sar, Pun­jab

While many events will bring sor­row, grief, and feel­ings of dis­gust, there are real-life ac­counts that will leave the read­ers in Chardikala. Chap­ter 10, the fi­nal sec­tion of this book, has many such ac­counts. Read­ers will value de­tails of how the events of 1984 un­folded, which are of­ten not men­tioned in other works, in­clud­ing smash­ing of the Dar­bar Sahib model and re­moval of Guru Ram Das’ por­trait from the Am­rit­sar rail­way sta­tion, the role of the Akali lead­ers, and how a ma­jor­ity of civil­ians were killed in­side the rest houses lo­cated in the vicin­ity of Dar­bar Sahib.

The same chap­ter also re­veals how even af­ter 1984, the Sikh spirit and psy­che was not dam­aged. De­spite a strong army con­trol of the area, vil­lagers con­tin­ued to amass in­side Dar­bar Sahib. These peo­ple, re­gard­less of their ide­ol­ogy, ran their fin­gers across the bul­let marks on the walls and doors of Dar­bar Sahib and wept, as this was not just a mere build­ing, but an in­car­na­tion of their Gu­rus.

Any­one want­ing to get a glimpse of Sikh his­tory and the events that led to 1984 and its af­ter­math will ap­pre­ci­ate the work by Mallika Kaur. 

Any­one want­ing to get a glimpse of Sikh his­tory and the events that led to 1984 and its af­ter­math will ap­pre­ci­ate the work by Mallika Kaur. The book is a trea­sure in many ways and ad­dresses many im­por­tant top­ics that did not find a proper space in other re­cent pub­li­ca­tions. I was in­spired in many ways by the chill­ing de­tails and in­ci­dents that have been pre­sented in this book, and I am sure other read­ers will too.

Prebh Dev Singh works as a se­nior prod­uct man­ager in a Cal­i­for­nia based cy­ber­se­cu­rity com­pany and holds a de­gree in In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy and Cor­po­rate Man­age­ment. He is the co-founder and pres­i­dent of the Khalis Foun­da­tion, a non-profit or­ga­ni­za­tion that spreads the wis­dom of Sikh Gu­rus through tech­nol­ogy. Some of the apps by the Khalis Foun­da­tion in­clude the Sun­dar Gutka app and Sikhi­ToThe­Max.

“The Wheat Fields Still Whis­per” Faith, Gen­der, and Ac­tivism in the Pun­jab Con­flict is avail­able at The Browser Li­brary and Book Store, Chandi­garh.