Union Minister of State for Railways Ravneet Singh Bittu has taken on the makers of “Satluj” movie for constructing a narrative that 25,000 unclaimed bodies were cremated in various crematoria across Punjab. He has asked them to provide the details.
Bittu is not the only one to contest these figures. Jaswant Singh Khalra had clearly based the figure by extrapolating the numbers from three police districts to all districts across Punjab. This was a complete assumption. An estimated 2,000 unclaimed bodies were cremated during this period in Punjab. These were the ones killed in police encounters.
The widely believed figure about the total number of deaths across Punjab, including terrorists, civilians and police is about 35,000 only. If Khalra’s figures were accurate, the total would be over 60,000.
Bittu has rightly tried to counter the narrative. In a brilliant counter to Khalra’s methodology of calculating the cremations of unclaimed bodies by extrapolating the figures from three districts, to all districts across Punjab, Bittu quoted four terrorist incidents in which 226 people were killed, saying an average 56 people were killed in each terrorist incident. He multiplied the average killing per terror incident with the total number of 34,881 terror incidents which took place in 1980s and 1990s. This brings the total number of people killed to 19,53,336. This obviously is a grossly exaggerated figure, which Bittu also knows. His point is obviously to prove that one incident cannot be extrapolated to reach a manipulated figure for creating sensation and extra impact.
Senior BJP leader and former chairman of the National Minorities Commission, Iqbal Singh Lalpura virtually snubbed Bittu asking him to “stay within his limits” while commenting on such sensitive matters. Lalpura, in a way, endorsed the 25,000 figure of disappearances projected in the movie, claiming that Khalra had collected all the details and information about all these disappearances.
Lalpura’s defence of Khalra’s figures, which have been contested by neutral observers also, has further strengthened the widespread belief that the timing of the release and ban and then public screening of the movie was a well thought and intentional move, as Punjab elections are just six months away. The timing of the screening of the movie seems to have a subtle but deliberate design.
Also read: ‘Satluj’ reinforces a persecution complex that refuses to go
Not only Lalpura, several other BJP leaders have also tried to be “politically correct”, by trying to play down the killings of the civilians, particularly the Hindus at the hands of the terrorists. It is surprising that a party like the BJP would do that. By snubbing and trying to silence Bittu, when he has been speaking the truth, the BJP appears to be sending a message to a section of the people in Punjab it wants to appease.
Jaswant Singh Khalra undoubtedly was not a human rights activist. He was not a combatant, but he was partisan. Had he really been a human rights activist, he would not raise the selective cases only. He was lending support to militants and justifying their cause. He would glorify the two assassins of Indira Gandhi, Beant Singh and Kehar Singh, saying they had surpassed the martyrdom of Shaheed Bhagat Singh and Shaheed Kartar Singh Sarabha. Had he really been a human rights activist he wouldn’t have glorified violence and killing of the Prime Minister by people who were supposed to protect her.
What the police did with him was a diabolical act and a heinous crime for which the culprits have been duly held guilty and punished according to the law.
Just because he was killed extra-judicially should not be a reason to accept everything he claimed to be true. People like Bittu are not opposing the movie for depicting the life of Khalra and his brutal killing, they are only objecting to the false and fake narrative that is being created using his killing as a medium. They are right in doing so.
The movie “Satluj” has not only ignored the overall context, but also put its stamp on the contested figure of 25,000 disappearances and unidentified cremations. There is a large section of people in Punjab which agrees with Bittu and has been raising the same questions.
It is actually a double whammy for the victims of terrorism. Their killings are straightway denied and disputed and even attributed to “agencies”, which means Central security and intelligence agencies, thus giving clean chit to their killers, while the figures claimed by people like Khalra are accepted as gospel truth.
One eminent Sikh lawyer once quoted an incident where a father did not give evidence against the murderer of his son. When the father was asked in the court whether he could identify his son’s killer, he said no. When the lawyer asked him later why he refused to identify his son’s killer, the helpless father said he had another son also, meaning if he had given evidence against the terrorist, his second son could also be killed. The murderer was acquitted and walked out free.
The BJP is losing the high moral ground by succumbing to political expediency. It is surprising that a party like the BJP, that has always asserted “zero tolerance to terror” and claimed to be defender and protector of terror victims, is going soft on and endorsing a false narrative with obvious purpose—that of 2027 Punjab assembly elections.
While the movie “Satluj” has built up a narrative of 25,000 extra judicial killings, it has also led to the extensive and an equally aggressive counter fact check. For the first time, the victims of terrorism are also being talked about. The brutal acts of terror and people behind those acts are also being exposed. Unlike the BJP, which is desperately trying to be politically correct, people have come out with facts and figures to counter the fake claims. Otherwise, “human rights” activists would only talk about the “excesses and atrocities” by the police, but would never say anything about people dragged out of buses and trains, lined up and eventually showered with bullets over their religion.
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