WSN-Rights-Bant Singh case calls out to the Sikh community

because the truth needs to be told

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Bant Singh case calls out to the Sikh community
WSN Bureau

Get acquainted with Burj Jhabber, Bant Singh's village. A picture of where Dalits figure in Indian system. In Sikhism, he was tagged Mazhabi Sikh. As in most Indian villages, not a single Dalit family owns land. Most public funds are gobbled up by upper-caste landlords while Dalits scrape through toiling as daily wage labourers. Many are caught in debt trap, spending entire life times to pay off small loans through years of hard labour. Their part of the village has often no water, no health centers, schools or toilets.

And boycott calls ring out if they protest too much. No wonder what happened to Bant Singh happened because he did not fit in. He turned out to be an aberration. He took on the landlord’s goons, who would loiter in the Dalit ghetto, eve-teasing young women. Such actions directly challenged the fundamentals of dogmatic, feudal history, and the landlords were fully intimidated.

Bant Singh was standing up for every single Sikh core value, sported a turban but as local communists helped and empathized, he saw himself more and more as a communist. He had initially worked with the largely Dalit-representative Bahujan Samaj Party but gradually veered away towards Leftists and finally joined the CPI(ML) Liberation group, a sort of aboveground Naxalite organisation which has influence in Punjab's cotton belt. (Ironically, India now terms Naxalites as the biggest internal security threat.)

The landlords' nasty counter-war was a natural corollary. His daughter was raped. He was reduced by three limbs but it is difficult to cut down a man whose courage of conviction is on the rise.

Bant Singh is also a call to the Sikh community to look within and engage with the problem of caste. The fight against rogue deras at Sirsa or any other place must also involve a war on the caste front within Sikhism. Only then will the Bant Singhs of Punjab feel proud to carry kesri flags. The WSN hails the spirit of Bant Singh, and claims him as a hero for all those who believe in human rights, dignity of labour and equality of all men.