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Khushdeep Kaur Malhotra, Review of Mallika Kaur’s Faith, Gender, and Activism in the Punjab Conflict: The Wheat Fields Still Whisper, Journal of Human Rights Practice, Volume 13, Issue 2, July 2021, Pages 480–483, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhuman/huab046
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Summary
This manuscript reviews Dr Mallika Kaur’s powerful book which brings to light the stories of people who despite grave personal harms, continued to resist the Indian state’s violent response to Punjab’s armed insurgency in the 80s and 90s. Their meticulous documentation of the state’s many excesses, preservation of ‘forgotten’ histories and determination to take on a powerful state even as it hunted them down, has made it possible to not only counter India’s narrative of ‘terror’ in Punjab, but bring the state to justice. In recovering the stories of Punjab’s human rights defenders, and ordinary citizens who did extraordinary things, Kaur has not only enabled them to be preserved for posterity but also contributed perhaps one of the most important and overlooked chapters to Punjab’s history. But for her work, our understanding would remain bound by convenient narratives of Punjab and its conflict as a battle confined between the state and armed ‘rebels’; when in fact it spilled into the everyday lives of ordinary citizens who became the state’s unsuspecting targets and paid the price for its misadventures. The writing is brave not only for the stories it narrates, but because Kaur’s refreshingly honest and direct voice makes it clear why the personal is political, and why silence is not an option in an increasingly unjust world.
