Human rights activist, human rights activist, human rights activist. Amid the removal of Satluj from ZEE5, pick almost any media outlet and you’ll encounter the same description of Jaswant Singh Khalra: a human rights activist. Yet, by his own words, he was more than an activist: a committed Khalistani separatist.
Khalra’s politics cannot be understood without the Punjab in which they were forged. Between 1981 and 1993, Punjab endured one of the bloodiest periods in independent India’s history. According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, 21,443 people were killed: 11,694 civilians, 1,746 security personnel and 8,003 terrorists. There were allegations of enforced disappearances by the Punjab police, too, particularly between 1985 and 1994. It was in this context that Khalra came to prominence.
His most famous claim concerned unidentified cremations by the police. The official figure stood at 2,059 unidentified cremations across three crematoria in the Amritsar, Majitha and Tarn Taran police districts—the areas worst affected by Khalistani terrorism. Khalra investigated these districts and extrapolated the figure to 25,000 disappearances across Punjab. That estimate has since acquired an almost sacred status in public discourse. Yet it was precisely that: an extrapolation from the districts worst affected by terrorism to the entire state. Whether such a methodology justifies the conclusion is a question that is too rarely asked.
But the bigger omission concerns not Khalra’s figures, but his politics.
Read his own words.
As editor of Liberation Khalistan in the early 1990s, Khalra wrote in an article titled The Game of Elections – Should It Be Played Or Not? :
“More than 50,000 freedom fighters have made the ultimate sacrifice for Khalistan. About 50,000 Khalistani heeray (diamonds) have been languishing in jails for years. Many are waiting to kiss the rope at the gallows. Bhai Satwant Singh and Bhai Kehar Singh have surpassed even Sarabha and Bhagat Singh…”
None of the numerical claims cited by Khalra are substantiated by available evidence. More revealing, however, is his language. Satwant Singh and Kehar Singh—the assassins of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi—are not merely mentioned. They are glorified. They are elevated alongside some of the most revered figures of India’s freedom movement. This was not the language of political neutrality. It was the language of ideological commitment.
Khalra was even more explicit elsewhere in the same article:
“The unique situation we are facing is that the Sikh qaum has been waging a relentless struggle for independence. In response, India’s Hindu state is waging war against Sikhs in the name of the ‘unity and integrity’ of India.”
His views on democracy point in the same direction.
In the very same article, Khalra argued:
“Being able to decide whether to live with, or sever ties with any political structure is a key democratic right. The ability of every citizen to be able to choose whether or not to accept the constitution of a country is a key democratic right…”
These are not the words of someone merely documenting abuses by the state. They are the words of someone arguing for the legitimacy of secession. Khalra’s activism cannot be divorced from the political project it sought to advance.
Throughout the article, Khalra debated only the tactics of the Khalistan movement—whether elections would advance the struggle—not the legitimacy of the movement itself.
Nor was this an isolated instance. Khalra dismissed diplomacy as the “Brahminical politics” of Chanakya and referred to Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale as a “Sant”, despite Bhindranwale’s central place in the insurgency that claimed thousands of civilian and security force lives. These were not accidental choices of language. They reflected an ideological worldview—one committed to the Khalistan project rather than merely documenting human rights abuses.
This is precisely what disappears in contemporary portrayals. Khalra is stripped of his politics and presented as little more than a liberal human rights campaigner who fell victim to state excesses. The “separatist” becomes an “activist.” The ideologue becomes a humanitarian. Complexity gives way to hagiography.
But honesty demands consistency. If we are to remember Khalra, we should remember him in full.
Human rights activist? Certainly that is part of the story. But it is only part of the story. The rest has been quietly excised.
