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Gehal Singh, circa
1940. Pic courtesy Iqbal Kaur daughter of Gehal Singh
On the face of it this photograph of a withdrawn gentleman does not tell
much except that it’d be from an old family album.
Rolland Barthes said that we give captions ‘to sublimate, pa theticise
or rationalise the image’. This photograph does demand a long caption – a
little story. The man in the picture is a Sikh communist leader, Gehal
Singh, of village Chhajjalvaddi in Amritsar district in the Punjab. The
year: 1947.
A colonial operator Sir Cyril Radcliffe had drawn a dividing line to
dismember the body Punjab. A new country called Pakistan – the land of the
pure – purportedly on the basis of religion of Islam came into being.
Migration of population on the largest scale in known human history was
taking place and the Muslims and Sikhs were slaughtering each other. A
full-fledged civil war was on. In the total madness, there were some sane
voices around. The Punjabi communists of Sikh, Hindu and Muslim
backgrounds were actively involved in peace committees trying to save the
lives of innocent people. Comrade Gehal Singh was one of them.
Instigated by some Sikh leaders of Akăl Sena* who were behind the
butchering of Muslims in the district of Amritsar, Gehal Singh was
abducted in a jeep one evening while he was cycling back home. He was
tortured in Burj Phoola Singh, His hair was cut and body was hacked into
pieces and later it was said to have been thrown in the burning furnace in
the langar community kitchen of the Golden Temple. That was the end of a
great humanitarian – a gurmukh – a true Sikh. The known culprits were
never brought to justice.
– Amarjit Chandan
*Akăl Sena was led by Sohan Singh Jalălusma, Darshan Singh Pheruman, Udham
Singh Nagoke, Ishar Singh Majhail and Sardul Singh ‘Advocate’. (Interview
with the family of Gehal Singh; Surakh Rekha, October 1983)
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