Chamkila, Canada & dangers ahead

In the middle of a raging general election, now in the electoral equivalent of its slog over, why should one be talking about a mere OTT movie? Even if it is Imtiaz Ali’s critically acclaimed Amar Singh Chamkila (Netflix).

It is set in Punjab in early 1988, when terrorists ruled, and ends on March 8 with the assassination of Amar Singh Chamkila, the phenomenally popular superstar of rural Punjab.

We do not write movie reviews here. This film, however, forces us to connect with a reality we prefer to forget. And those who prefer forgetting inconvenient realities are destined to live through them again. Three things as we go forward:

* The film is deeply and immorally flawed, as are almost all Indian films set in contemporary history, in being totally devoid of context. It has scattered mentions of ongoing terrorism in the Punjab of 1988, but mostly skirts it.

* While I will elaborate on the context in subsequent paragraphs, this assassination took place exactly two months before Operation Black Thunder in the Golden Temple complex. May 10 is the 36th anniversary of the operation, after which  terrorists/radicals haven’t been able to return to this most hallowed of Sikh shrines.

* Third, and most important. Canada has just arrested three “Indian citizens” (all Punjabis, likely Sikhs) for the alleged assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar. A concerted and somehow well-supported effort has been on, centred in Canada but also with links mostly to other countries in the Anglosphere, to reignite the same fires and burn Punjab again. This was given further legitimacy last week with both the Prime Minister of Canada and its leader of the Opposition attending a Sikh religious event where separatist and offensive slogans were shouted, and incendiary pictures and posters were displayed.

For clarity, between 1981 and 1993, during the phase of terror, a few of its leaders did escape to Canada and the UK but found zero political support and mostly gravitated to Pakistan. Today, the separatist leadership exists only — or mostly — in Canada, and it has the fullest political support.

The other difference is, unlike in the 1980s, there is no support for such a campaign in Punjab. This is a positive. The negative, however, is how strongly this purely offshore campaign has become enmeshed in the domestic vote bank politics of Canada. There is protection for the vilest subversive activity under the garb of free speech.

The Canadians believe that the three alleged assassins of Nijjar were working at the behest of Indian “agencies”. At the same time, what we know is that the three arrived in Canada on student visas and have apparently never attended a day of school or college. They are uncluttered hired mafia hitmen. They’ve also been named for three more murders where no “Indian agency connection” is alleged. 

Assassinations and counterstrikes are now commonplace in Canada. Some of the well-known armed mafias in India are also operating through these groups in Canada while their leaders are lodged in jail. For example, Lawrence Bishnoi in Gujarat’s Sabarmati jail. Punjab mafias, popular culture (mostly music), drug and gun-running, and illegal immigration are a deadly mix and most of their sustenance comes from the lax — I’d rather not say complicit — Canadian system.

It is for Canadians to ask how come they are importing from Indian Punjab the kind of jobless flotsam like these three, and  others running mafias in their country. We know that in our Punjab, there is an extensive illegal immigration racket — popularly called “kabootarbaazi’(literally pigeon-flying).

How are the visas arranged, though? Is the visa clearance system of a G7 and Five Eyes member state so porous that so many of these “students” keep getting in? Or is it the need for more voters for a particular party? Canada is importing India’s mafias. Mostly, they fight amongst themselves. Now, this is spilling over into India. The killing of singer Sidhu Moosewala, for example.

The Moosewala assassination caught India’s imagination because he had become a pan-national star. Amar Singh Chamkila in 1988 — a Dalit whose original name was Dhani Ram, and was just 28 when he was killed — was a very local star. He was working-class, his lyrics so rustic that many weren’t particularly aware of the phenomenon. The film suggests he was killed because “somebody” thought his lyrics were obscene, warned him to desist, and when he didn’t — because his audiences wanted the “real” stuff — he was killed. As simple as that. Or, for the filmmaker, as simplistic as that. That’s where the context is missed. And context missed so deliberately and conveniently in a film set in a critical juncture of our history, in my book, isn’t creative freedom. It borders on the criminal. The film doesn’t suggest he was killed by militants. It doesn’t even mention the “t” word. His lyrics, raw as they were with much double entendre, weren’t the worst you’d hear in all of rural Punjab then, or now. Chamkila’s fame had greatly disconcerted competitors, mostly upper caste. Did somebody put out a contract on him? We still do not know.

However, if he was killed for obscenity, why was the much-loved progressive poet Pash (original name Avtar Singh Sandhu) assassinated just two weeks after Chamkila. His poetry had words of equality, a little bit of egalitarian revolution. His most famous composition was Sabh ton khatarnak hunda hai saade supneyaan da mar jaana (the most dangerous thing for you is when you let your dreams die). Somebody would kill him for that?

He was a former Naxalite, had spent time in jail and had just travelled overseas to rouse the Punjabi diaspora’s conscience against violence in his state. Overseas, he also joined a group called Anti-47. That “47” came from the AK-47 rifle, then freely supplied by the Pakistanis, which killed at least 25,000 in Punjab in that decade-plus. Who killed him if not those who ruled with the “47”?

I can give you an entire list of mass killings in those weeks. There were almost 500 massacred in the two months leading up to Chamkila's assassination and after. Even in the weeks leading up to Chamkila’s assassination, there were massacres every other day. To airbrush all of this is sheer intellectual cowardice, if not a crime. And you know what, just as smug Bollywood filmmakers would like us to believe that what Punjab — and the Sikhs — endured in 1988 was just some bad crime, Trudeau’s Canadians now see the Sikh diaspora gangs in their countries, who’ve all slipped through their immigration filters, though the same lens. There lie multiple dangers in times to come.

By special arrangement with The Print