THE CASTE CAULDRON

PUNJAB/ DALIT OPPRESSION

- Anilesh S. Mahajan

On October 15, a horri­fic scene played out on national television, of a bleeding Lakhbir Singh, a 35­year­old Dalit Sikh farm labourer from Punjab’s Tarn Taran district, who had been tortured and killed at the Singhu border, the epicen­tre of the ongoing protests against the new farm laws brought by the Centre. The farmer unions quickly distanced themselves from the incident, and the next day the Haryana police arrested four Nihangs, members of a militant Sikh order known for their blue robes, swords and violent antecedents. The Nihangs—Sarabjit, Narain Singh, Bhagwant Singh and Govind Preet— claimed they had “punished” Lakhbir for “desecrating a Sikh holy book”.

As disturbing as the incident was, even more so was the deafening silence of the political establishment in Punjab. The silence was made even more stark by the fact that the new chief minister is a Dalit Sikh. Charanjit Singh Channi, Punjab’s first Dalit Sikh chief minister, maintained a studied silence on the issue. Sukhbir Badal, chief of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), who the mainly rural Dalit Mazhabi Sikhs con­ sider their benefactor, also kept mum. Tied as the incident was to the sacrilege issue, no politician in Punjab wanted to face the wrath of the Sikh clergy and upper caste Sikhs.

The violent oppression of Dalits in Punjab is not a new story. Nor are reli­gious pretexts uncommon to justify the oppression, but the dynamic plays out mostly away from the media glare. The last time such a story hit the national headlines was in October 2019, when a Jagmale Singh from Sangrur district was tied to a tree and tortured to death. Jagmale had committed the mortal sin of picking up a fight with a Jat Sikh.