California (Fresno) Park To Be Named in Honor of Shaheed Jaswant Singh Khalra

File Photo: Navkiran Kaur Khalra

FRESNO, California, USA—When Navkiran Kaur Khalra started her semester in the Fall of 2009, she was eager to begin her Masters degree at Fresno State.  While students fumbled to find their new classes, few of her classmates knew about the journey of Navkiran, her family, and her father that led her to the Central Valley.  Navkiran is the daughter of Shaheed Jaswant Singh Khalra.  When she returns to Fresno on Thursday, August 31, 2017 at Fresno City Hall at 4:30pm, her father’s history will become known to a new generation as the efforts of the Jakara Movement, a Sikh youth organization, have led to a city park being named in honor of her father – Jaswant Singh Khalra.

File Photo: Shaheed S. Jaswant Singh Khalra

Born in 1952 and the grandson of Harnam Singh, a well-known freedom fighter against British colonialism and Canadian white supremacists, Jaswant Singh was always wedded to social justice causes.  He was a student activist during his collegiate years and his spirit for standing up for the oppressed never left him.  By his late 30s, Jaswant Singh was working as a Bank Director in Punjab, married to Paramjit Kaur, and had two children – a son, Janmeet, and a daughter, Navkiran.  Life had been good personally, but he was not immune to the injustice around him.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, a “dirty war” was conducted in Punjab.  The Indian Government launched its full state armed forced – the Indian Army, Border Security Forces (BSF), Central Police Reserve Force (CRPF), and Punjab Police (PP) against Sikh nationalists.  During this war, tens of thousands of Sikhs ‘disappeared’, which was a euphemism for extra-judicial killings.  Young Sikh men were picked up from their homes by police forces, and with their families forced to either pay extortionate ransoms or see their sons killed.  Many of the thousands of Sikhs residing in US, UK, Europe, Australia and Canada today arrived here to escape this violence.

Jaswant Singh witnessed his colleagues and their family member’s “disappearing” before his eyes.  He could not stay silent and thus began a process for which he would give his life.  Slowly and meticulously he began visiting the families of those “disappeared” and searching for material evidence of their extrajudicial killing by the Indian Government.  This he found in municipal cremation grounds where thousands of bodies had been delivered by the security forces as “unidentified.”  Jaswant Singh was able to match the names of 2,097 individuals that had been killed by the Punjab Police in just 3 crematoriums.  He then began publicizing his findings.

He traveled throughout the world to anyone that would listen to share what was occurring in Punjab.  He provided his evidence in front of the Indian Human Rights Commission, United Nations, Amnesty International, and the Canadian Government.  He claimed his inspiration was the humanistic values of the Sikh Gurus and his desire to lift a candle-light of protest against the darkness of injustice.  Upon his return to Punjab in 1995, the police issued him a direct threat – “If 25,000 could be made to ‘disappear,’ why could they not make one more?”

While most would have quit this work after the threat of physical violence, Jaswant Singh Khalra could not.  He often remarked how could he quit when he saw the longing and hurt of those mother’s still waiting to know what happened to their children.  This same spirit of human rights animates others that have given their lives in the spirit of justice and human rights, including the Kashmiri Jalil Andrabi in India, the Armenian Hrant Dink in Turkey, and Steven Biko in apartheid South Africa.  On September 6, 1995 Jaswant Singh Khalra was picked up while washing his car outside of his house by the Punjab Police, under the direct orders of the Director General of Police – KPS Gill.  Days later he was tortured and killed; his body never being returned to his family.

What Navkiran’s classmates at Fresno State never knew was that she along with her mother and brother continue the struggle her father had initiated through the Khalra Mission Organization.  Weekends and time between classes were spent making sure the stories of the ‘disappeared’ stay alive and known.  Even recently following the death of KPS Gill, when journalists in Punjab like his nephew, Hartosh Bal, try to white-wash his uncle (mama’s)’s atrocities and refuse to mention the name of the Jaswant Singh Khalra, organizations like the Khalra Mission Organization, Ensaaf, and the Jakara Movement will not allow the Indian State to forget.

On August 31, 2017 Navkiran Kaur Khalra returns to the Fresno on a very special occasion.  Now the city of Fresno will make sure that the name of Shaheed Jaswant Singh Khalra is remembered.  The Sikh Community of Fresno, led by the youth activists of the Jakara Movement, have worked with Fresno City Council officials, especially Oliver Baines, to have Victoria Park (located on Clinton and Brawley streets) renamed and dedicated in Shaheed Jaswant Singh’s honor.  While parks have been labeled “Singh Park” in cities such as Livingston and Elk Grove, this will be the first time a park is named in honor of a community leader that addresses this recent chapter of Sikh history. 

We ask the community to join Navkiran Kaur Khalra, the Jakara Movement, and the entire Sikh Community of Fresno for this historic naming of a city park in honor of Shaheed Jaswant Singh Khalra.  Please come to Fresno City Hall on August 31, 2017 at 4:30pm.  For more information call Simranjit Singh at 559-779-4916.

11 COMMENTS

  1. Indians are the best and greatest people known to mankind.
    If any guy is going to create chaos and violence in a peaceful Society
    Then he will be dealt as per the LAW of land.
    You are responsible for your actions in life.
    You cannot use Religious Texts to justify your violent actions.
    Since when have Sikhs started being critical of other Religions.

  2. Hey hindu retatd above was a typo lol i blame my auto spell check for the error like hindus blame sikhs for being tough on india lol

  3. That Harinder hindu diaper who washs his dirty hands in his shithole toliet without toliet paper, than using his sinky hands to eat his rice and curry is a hindu retard , jealous of sikhs cause his hindus cant even built a bathrooms and are born cowards from the womb to the tomb, damn he wishs he was a sikh lol
    A hindu diaper u seeing sikhs in your dreams, seeing sikhs 24/7 next thing he will see is a good khalsitian psychiatric with a hockey stick made in india to show him the light lol.
    Hey hindu retatd do you even know what india stands for:
    Idiot nation democracy in asia.
    Here is some homework try making Khalsitian stand for some thing creative , i bet shit head hindu cant do it, type a sentence hindu retard with your sinky shithole hands , plus take a face wash with some cow dung which i belive hindus use it for cooking food on cow dung unbelivable lol ha ha

  4. Thay Harinder hindu diaper who washs his dirty hands in his shithole toliet without toliet paper, than using his sinky hands to eat his rice and curry is a hindu retard , jealous of sikhs cause his hindus cant even built a bathrooms and are born cowards from the womb to the tomb, damn he wishs he was a sikh lol
    A hindu diaper u seeing sikhs in your dreams, seeing sikhs 24/7 next thing he will see is a good khalsitian psychiatric with a hockey stick made in india to show him the light lol.
    Hey hindu retatd do you even know what india stands for:
    Idiot nation democracy in asia.
    Here is some homework try making Khalsitian stand for some thing creative , i bet shit head hindu cant do it, type a sentence hindu retard with your sinky shithole hands , plus take a face wash with some cow dung which i belive hindus use it for cooking food on cow dung unbelivable lol ha ha

  5. Operation Blue Star was pre- planned. Sticking up for simple human rights should not lead to genocide in a democratic country! India is by far this. You represent India- a dictatorship built on lies, bribery, corruption and pretence of pretending to be something it is not- evil!!!!!

  6. Again- Harinder you are not a Sikh at all. Your views show lacking of knowledge in the history of the Sikhs and you don’t feel an ounce of pain for what Sikhs have been put through. Had it have been ur wife raped, or child burnt alive or family chopped into pieces- you would have differing views. Stop building bad karma for yourself- You are NOT a Sikh.

  7. Its not sorrow as you call it we are celebrating his life and the world recognise the same – shame that the kuti Indian Government and its chamche are too thick skinned to realise the humanity work this man did.

  8. World over Rebellion are dealt in an similar manner..
    Had Me Jarnail Singh not gone around with his boys doing an insurgency .
    We would have not faced the problem of

    1) Blue Star
    2) Genocide
    3) Extra Judicial killings
    4) Arson and Rapes.

    There is an WORLD ORDER maintained by EMPIRE.

    All REBELS will bring sorrow and grief to the communities which produces such REBELS..

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