The victims erased from Punjab’s popular memory: How selective narratives forgot the dead
· OpIndia
PHG Gurcharan Singh survives in the public record through a photograph and a short entry on the Barnala Police website. His mother was Punjab Kaur and his father Sahu Singh. Born on 20th July 1964, he enlisted on 20th July 1986 and was killed while fighting terrorists in Barnala on 23rd October 1991. The entry ends with the FIR registered after his death.
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The page preserves the fact that he lived, served and died, but little between those dates. It says nothing about who waited for him at home or what his death did to his family.
Three other lives survive in uneven fragments. Savitri Devi is remembered for shielding her husband and infant daughter inside a bus near Lalru. Harchand Singh Longowal remains visible through the Punjab Accord. ML Manchanda survives in press-freedom records as the All India Radio official beheaded after Babbar Khalsa tried to dictate broadcasting language.
They represent four groups flattened into casualty figures: Hindu civilians, Sikh opponents of Khalistan, journalists and lower-ranking police personnel.
When the period is remembered but the victims are not
The Punjab insurgency has not disappeared from public discussion. Operation Blue Star, the anti-Sikh violence of 1984, Khalistani terrorist organisations, counterterrorism and police excesses remain central to political and cultural narratives. The people killed between these landmarks are frequently remembered only as parts of a toll.
Selective memory does not require inventing an event. It can be created by deciding where the chronology begins, whose motives receive explanation and whose deaths remain in the background. Beginning the story only with Operation Blue Star removes earlier assassinations and communal attacks. Beginning only with terrorism removes illegal detention, fake encounters, disappearances and unidentified cremations from the history of the state’s response.
The passengers who became numbers
On 6th July 1987, terrorists diverted a Haryana Roadways bus near Lalru and opened fire on its passengers, killing 38 people. Another bus massacre followed in Haryana the next evening. Media coverage preserved the route, the death toll and the political consequences, but most passengers did not acquire enduring public identities.
Among those killed near Lalru was 28-year-old Savitri Devi. When the shooting began, she covered her husband and their five-month-old daughter with her body. Both survived. Savitri did not.
Media records do not tell us her husband’s or daughter’s names, why they were travelling or how they lived afterwards. The massacre retains a date and a toll. Savitri retains her age and final act.
That pattern recurs across accounts of passengers, labourers and shopkeepers. Reports preserve locations and totals; names, occupations, destinations and dependants are harder to recover.
Abohar shows how local remembrance can resist that disappearance. On 7th March 1990, Khalistan Commando Force (KCF) terrorists attacked people in and around Sadar Bazar. 22 died immediately and ten later succumbed to their injuries. Residents still gather at the Shaheed Smarak outside the market, where candles and garlands restore the victims to public view.
The deliberate targeting of Hindus must be stated plainly. Yet the history cannot be reduced to Hindu versus Sikh, because Khalistani organisations also murdered Sikhs who opposed separatism, rejected civilian killings or pursued peace.
The Sikhs whom separatist memory cannot accommodate
Harchand Singh Longowal represented Sikh and Punjab-related political demands but pursued their resolution through negotiation. On 24th July 1985, he signed the Punjab Accord with Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Less than a month later, he was assassinated in Sherpur. His murder struck at a political route out of the conflict.
Longowal’s life disproves the claim that rejecting Khalistan required rejecting Sikh interests. A Sikh leader could demand concessions while opposing armed separatism.
Longowal remains more visible than most victims. Governments and parties commemorate him, and the Union government issued a postage stamp in his memory. Yet rival factions also use his anniversaries to claim political legitimacy, pushing his choice of negotiation over coercion into the background.
Other Sikh opponents received less durable attention. Sumit Singh, the young editor of Preet Lari, was shot dead in February 1984 after taking an outspoken position against religious extremism. Baldev Singh Mann, a communist activist and editor who opposed Khalistani terrorism, was murdered in September 1986. Their deaths exposed the violence directed at dissent within the Sikh community itself.
The journalists whose publications outlived them
ML Manchanda’s murder showed that terrorists sought to control not only facts, but also language. Manchanda, director of All India Radio’s Patiala station, was abducted by Babbar Khalsa. The organisation demanded that electronic media follow its code, including broadcasting in Punjabi rather than Hindi. After negotiations failed, Manchanda was beheaded on 27th May 1992.
Rajinder Kumar Talib, station director of All India Radio in Chandigarh, was shot dead in December 1990. A media report recorded that his killers objected to the word “terrorist” being used for their armed campaign. The struggle was therefore over terminology, framing and the right to define violence.
The campaign extended beyond editors to newsagents and hawkers. They did not write editorials, but they enabled newspapers to reach readers. Targeting them attacked the whole information network.
The publications survived. Many of the people who wrote, printed, transported, guarded or sold them did not acquire comparable biographies. A terrorist may retain a photograph, alias, organisation and political explanation. A murdered hawker is more likely to remain one unnamed person within a collective toll.
The policemen remembered through FIRs
Punjab Police later began preparing citations for 1,784 personnel killed during the terrorism period. Teachers from Police DAV schools were given FIRs to convert into short accounts because, as a senior officer acknowledged, no adequate written record told their stories.
Gurcharan Singh is one of the lower-ranking men within that figure. His district webpage records his parents, date of birth and enlistment, death and FIR. The same page repeats the format for sepoys, havildars, Punjab Home Guards and Special Police Officers killed across the district.
Senior officers became historical figures because their assassinations represented major institutional crises. Constables, guards and drivers were more likely to remain inside departmental memorials. The institution retained the total; families retained the person.
Outside police rolls were civilians killed for sharing information, refusing shelter, resisting extortion or being suspected of helping the authorities. Terrorist organisations used the killing of informers and threats against relatives to discourage cooperation. Many such victims fit neither massacre lists nor police memorials.
Why some victims are easier to remember
Public memory follows organised repetition. Parties hold anniversaries, police preserve service records, and press organisations maintain lists. Films, songs and processions create recognisable protagonists. Families without institutions are left with photographs and clippings.
This does not make every Punjabi cultural representation pro-Khalistan. It means armed actors more often receive motives and dramatic journeys, while civilians appear as consequences of somebody else’s story.
Diaspora activism can reinforce the imbalance. In 2023, a parade by pro-Khalistani elements in Brampton included a float depicting the assassination of Indira Gandhi, drawing condemnation for glorifying violence. The spectacle gave an assassination and its perpetrators a vivid public form. The “celebration” of then-PM’s assassination continued the following years. The passengers, journalists, Sikh dissenters and police personnel killed during the same era remained outside the frame.
The Sikh diaspora is not politically uniform, just as Sikhs in Punjab were never politically uniform. Separatist groups, processions and online campaigns cannot be treated as representatives of an entire community. The distinction between Sikh identity and Khalistani politics is essential to any honest remembrance.
One victim cannot cancel another
Documenting fake encounters, illegal detention, torture, disappearances, unidentified cremations and the murder of Jaswant Singh Khalra is legitimate and necessary. The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) dealt with 2,097 bodies in the Punjab mass-cremation case and recommended monetary relief for relatives of 1,513 identified people, including 195 cases of deemed police custody.
The anti-Sikh violence of 1984 also belongs fully within this history. The Nanavati Commission recorded mass killing, arson, displacement and the severe emotional and financial losses suffered by Sikh families. Remembering Khalistani terrorism cannot be used to minimise those crimes.
Accountability and remembrance are not competing demands. A complete history must distinguish communal selection, political assassinations, police deaths, genuine encounters and unlawful state action. One combined number can conceal more than it reveals.
The archives are ageing with the survivors
Punjab’s record is scattered across police webpages, newspaper morgues, court papers, memorials and family albums. Abohar preserves victims through local ritual, Barnala Police through digital entries and press-freedom organisations through professional records.
Proper remembrance would require digitised casualty records, verified lists, oral histories, fuller district biographies, preserved regional newspapers and easier access to court and government documents. It would also require categories precise enough to explain who was killed, by whom and why.
The work is urgent. Survivors, relatives, reporters and retired officers hold details that never entered official files. When they die, photographs lose names and clippings lose context.
Conclusion
The Punjab insurgency cannot be honestly remembered through detailed biographies of terrorists and statistics for their victims. Passengers had destinations. Journalists had unfinished stories. Policemen had families waiting at home. Sikh opponents of Khalistan made political and moral choices of their own.
They were people before they became numbers, and a complete history must restore their names. Not later, but sooner.