People
Daughter Follows In The Footsteps of Her Fiery, Revolutionary Father:
Baljit Kaur
NIRUPAMA DUTT
A veiled young Sikh-Punjabi woman belonging to the ‘Dalit’ community living in a Haryana village near the Punjab border grew perturbed when a liquor shop came up on the road to her village. It was just across a ground where the village children played.
“I was so disturbed when I saw the children exposed to drunkards. In their innocence they would pick up empty bottles and mimic the drunk. The appeals to shop owner and the sarpanch (village headman) failed to have any impact, so I picked up my scythe and crying out ‘I am Bant Singh’s daughter’, I tore apart the shop enclosed by iron sheet walls, breaking a large number of ‘desi daru’ (local liquor) bottles”.
This was the story that Baljit Kaur, daughter of singer-activist Bant Singh, wowed the listeners at the Tata Literature Live Festival in Mumbai last week. It was her first public dialogue after she was brutalised by two village boys in connivance with a woman who stood guard outside her own house.
The assault happened in 2002 and she and her family came out in the open and fought a case leading to conviction of all three. It also made history because it was the first time a jutt boy had been convicted on a complaint by a Dalit girl.
It earned more wrath for Bant, also a leader of landless agrarian labourers, who was beaten to pulp by seven to eight village youths. As a result he lost his limbs and when he was first told of his opertions at the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research in the city, he bravely said, “Let them cut off my arms but they have not cut my tongue, I will still sing.”
He continues to sing protest songs of the revolutionary poet Sant Ram Udasi.
His courage has made Bant Singh a Dalit icon of sorts. Baljit Kaur who is a mother of three and living the life of a veiled village woman doing the household chores is also in spirit her father’s daughter and could very well be described as our own rustic Fatmagul, a popular Turkish serial on the Zindagi channel which tells the story of struggle of a gangrape survivor.
Coming back to the liquor shop that Baljit Kaur tore apart shouting war cries, it was shifted a few kilometers from the village and this happened just a few months ago.
Another recent escapade was when she started getting crank calls.
“I found out who the man was, dragged him to the police station. The policemen gave him a light slap. At this I said that I will beat him up, arrest me if you want to. The policeman told me that I could slap him but not use a stick. Well, I slapped him tight several times. As a result my hands were badly swollen and I could not make rotis for two days and my mother-in-law did the task”.
Baljit Kaur was just 17 and a student of Class 9 when her world changed. Her engagement to a boy of her own age was called off and she was shifted to a relative’s home in another village. A daily-wager, widower with a child, was found and she was quietly married off without song or dance.
“He is a good man who does not drink or take other intoxicants. He gives me all he earns and I have no complaints”.
However, the dreams of this bright teenager who played kho-kho in school, sang at weddings and loved watching films, did die young. It was the little girl in her which led her to ask her father to let her accompany him to Mumbai. She also sang the songs of Udasi on the plight of girls which the audience found heart-rending.
And she returned home with little souvenirs for her school-going kids a day before their quarterly tests and an invitation to be the guest of honour at a forthcoming ‘Ladli Awards' event.
Bravo, Baljit Kaur!
[Courtesy: The Hindustan Times. Edited for sikhchic.com]
November 28, 2016
Conversation about this article
1: Jaswinder Singh (Brier, Washington State, USA), November 29, 2016, 1:43 AM.
Thousand likes for the story and for Baljit Kaur who stood up for herself and other marginalized people.
2: Haardev Singh (Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada), November 29, 2016, 10:02 PM.
A brave and courageous woman living up to Sikh values, and standing up against the prevailing class/sex tyranny. The appendage "Dalit" or any other to my mind was done away with for Sikhs.
3: Mehtab Kaur (Punjab), December 02, 2016, 12:19 AM.
The story of Bant Singh and his daughter is now a frequent feature in India's Dalit circles. The sad fact remains that all the agony, humiliation and violence Bant Singh and Baljit Kaur had to undergo were due to many fellow Sikhs who have quite lost sight of what Sikhi is all about. The powerful jutt comunity - farmers and landowners -- which now has a stranglehold on every aspect of Sikh social, political, religious and economic fields are the ones who are pushing Dalits out of the ambits of Sikhi and making them easy prey to deras. Almost everyone in Punjab was aware of Bant Singh's story, but no one came forward to help or defend him. The bitter truth for us is that the ones responsible for Bant Singh's plight were 'Sikh' landlords, 'Sikh' policemen and 'Sikh' politicians. Even the Sikh religious leaders did not condemn the un-Sikhly deeds of these powerful groups. So, when after 317 years of the birth of the Khalsa Panth, the so-called Sikh Dalits have to look up to fellow Dalits antagonized by the Hindutva society for support, we know we have got it all wrong and have utterly failed.