THE BALLAD OF BANT SINGH: A QISSA OF COURAGE
Nirupama Dutt
Speaking Tiger
213 pages; Rs 250
After a recent trip I took to Punjab, a friend told me how she admired the region and Sikhism for their egalitarian character. To those who do not know about Mazhabi Sikhs - Dalits who converted to Sikhism - Punjab is that safe haven where the farm labourer happily tills the soil with the landowner, sings soulful songs and dances around the Lohri fire. This is the tableau of Punjab we see in the Republic Day parade, often replicated in Bollywood films and popular music. Dig just a little deeper and Punjab's rural economy and feudalism is as dark as the rest of the country. This aspect of Indian society is perhaps even more insidious in Punjab where it is hidden from the mainstream narrative of a flourishing state.
In The Ballad of Bant Singh: A Qissa of Courage, author Nirupama Dutt grabs the reader by the hand and takes her into the world of Bant Singh, a Mazhabi Sikh, a member of the Mazdoor Mukti Morcha, and a father who spoke up and fought his daughter's rapists. Mr Singh's daughter was gang-raped in 2002 by two Jat men in the village of Burj Jhabbar. The fact that Baljit Kaur, Mr Singh's daughter, was a Dalit became a "justification" for the heinous act. The "casual" abuse of women's bodies is an aspect that Ms Dutt dwells on through the course of the book, including personal anecdotes and inappropriate jokes from educated friends to accentuate the impact.
Mr Singh's story is simple. He chose the legal route to justice after the Jat-dominated village panchayat asked him to bury the fact of his daughter's rape. As Ms Dutt explains, Mr Singh has been an activist of an ultra-Left party without ever reading Mao or Marx. "The radicals of Punjabi soil were his ideals," she writes. Mr Singh then borrowed much of his ideology from Sant Ram Udasi, a revolutionary Punjabi poet. Udasi's songs about the injustice done to farm labourers and women in a deeply patriarchal society guided the efforts of Mr Singh in fighting for justice - for his community and his daughter.
But Mr Singh had to pay a price for this. Boys from the Jat community accosted him one night and beat him to a pulp. Mr Singh, after a frustrating struggle to get medical attention, lost three of his limbs, with the fourth one losing almost all of its function. This was a time before a photograph on the social media could, to some extent, start a revolution. Mr Singh's case was buried without a trace in the local media, before NGOs in Delhi took notice of the injustice being meted out to him.
Ms Dutt remarkably carves out each detail of Mr Singh's life through the memories of people with whom he has been associated. Each minute detail is neatly stitched together in a simple, flowing narrative. The story of Mr Singh's life is also then an entry point into understanding the ignored troubles of a farm labourer in an agrarian economy already in crisis. While farmer suicides are now gaining more attention, the landless Dalit labourer's struggles only keep mounting.
The book will be an enriching, enlightening experience for those looking to understand the complex caste structure within Punjab. To those who believe in the accepting nature of Sikhism, the book presents a hard-hitting facet. The dominant Jat community felt that Mr Singh challenged their authority by dressing well. Unlike others in his community, he is also not someone who can be easily threatened into silence. So much so that members of his own Mazhabi Sikh community would rather remain in the margins than speak up for their rights and face "consequences". The Brahmanisation of Sikhism, which began in the realm of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, is now complete, with a caste divide so deeply rooted that even the teachings of Guru Nanak cannot erase them.
The Ballad of Bant Singh is one of those rare pieces of literature in which the cause of both marginalised groups - Dalits and women - find equal space. Even though it presents a grim and unsettling narrative, the presence of Punjabi folk tales and poetry and Mr Singh's own ability to see humour in the hardest situations make the prose sparkle. The bright yellow mustard fields at the start of the book are, in the end, tainted with the feudalism and oppression that Ms Dutt unravels. But the scene of a simple dinner of aloo matar and kheer at Mr Singh's home, which I felt I was partaking in, offers a warm sense of upliftment. A deeply personalised narrative makes the larger social narrative that much more readable.
Reading Ms Dutt's prose took me back to the time when I would prop my elbows on my knees and listen to my grandmother narrate tales of Partition. Those stories and their oddly tactile nature have stayed with me, and I am certain so will Ms Dutt's rendition of Bant Singh's ballads.
