No One Heeded the Dead

A lament, for the counted and the uncounted

Plain-English renderings are mine.

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ਰਤਨ ਵਿਗਾੜਿ ਵਿਗੋਏ ਕੁਤੀਂ ਮੁਇਆ ਸਾਰ ਨ ਕਾਈ ॥

Ratan vigaar vigoe kuteen, muia saar na kai.

Plain-English sense: The jewels were ruined and laid waste by dogs, and no one heeded the dead.

Guru Nanak Sahib gave the Panth that line five hundred years ago. Around 1521, by the tradition the Panth keeps, the Guru was present when Babar’s army fell upon Saidpur, and what the Guru saw, the Guru recorded. The Babar Vani stands in Shabad Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Raag Asa, Ang 360, and it does not look away.

Of everything it records, this is the line that will not release me.

Not only were the jewels ruined.

No one heeded the dead.

Hold that line. This lament exists because it has kept its appointment with Panjab for five centuries, and this week it kept it again.

I. A film disappears

On 3 July 2026, a film appeared on a streaming platform in India. It had waited years for permission to exist. Its first name was Ghallughara, the word the Panth keeps for its great slaughters. During its struggle with the censors, it became Punjab ’95. It reached the screen at last under a third name, Satluj. Within two days it was gone from the platform’s Indian catalogue, marked unavailable until further notice.

It can be watched outside India.

It cannot be watched in Amritsar.

A film about a man who was killed for counting the dead has itself been made to disappear.

If you already know his story, that sentence needs no help. If you do not, then what follows is for you, because the story belongs to you. It belongs to every Sikh, and to every person who believes the dead are owed at least their names.

II. The man who counted

Bhai Jaswant Singh Ji Khalra was not a general or a minister. He was a human-rights defender, a husband, a father, a Sikh of the sangat.

In the early 1990s, when men he knew began to disappear, he went looking for one of them. What he found was a ledger.

At the cremation ground attached to Durgiana Mandir in Amritsar, and then at the municipal grounds of Patti and Tarn Taran, the registers recorded body after body brought in by the police and burned as laavaris, unclaimed. Alongside the registers sat the most ordinary paperwork in the world: receipts for firewood. Young men were vanishing from their homes, and the State’s own files were quietly recording their endings, one entry, one load of wood at a time.

In January 1995, he announced what he had found. In the three cremation grounds of one district, the count later stood at 2,097 illegal cremations. He believed the pattern ran across Panjab, and said so. He was warned, in the way such warnings are given, that the count could cost him his life.

In the spring of 1995, he spoke to sangat in Canada. He told them a story, which I give here in my own words, not his: that when darkness claimed it had covered everything, one small lamp stood up and answered that as long as it burned, darkness could not claim victory. He told the sangat plainly that he might be made to pay for what he had counted. Then he went home to Panjab, because the families were there, and the registers were there.

On the morning of 6 September 1995, he was taken from outside his home in Amritsar. No warrant. No record. No acknowledgement.

For weeks he was held where no list would ever show him. Then he was killed, and his body was given to a canal, so that the man who had counted the unclaimed dead was made one of them.

He was forty-two years old.

His wife, Bibi Paramjit Kaur Khalra Ji, refused the silence. She carried the case through the courts for years. In 2005, six Punjab Police officials were convicted. In 2007, the Punjab and Haryana High Court upheld five convictions, enhanced those sentences to life imprisonment, and acquitted the sixth official. In November 2011, the Supreme Court of India upheld the convictions and sentences.

The mass cremations he exposed became a national proceeding in their own right, sent by the Supreme Court to the National Human Rights Commission. Identification and compensation began, but for many families the wound was never fully answered.

That is the story the film tells.

That is the story that was withdrawn.

III. The Guru at the window

The Panth has stood at this window before, looking out at its own dead. And the Guru has shown us what standing there means.

Return to Ang 360.

In Raag Asa, Mahala 1, Guru Nanak Sahib says:

ਖੁਰਾਸਾਨ ਖਸਮਾਨਾ ਕੀਆ ਹਿੰਦੁਸਤਾਨੁ ਡਰਾਇਆ ॥

ਆਪੈ ਦੋਸੁ ਨ ਦੇਈ ਕਰਤਾ ਜਮੁ ਕਰਿ ਮੁਗਲੁ ਚੜਾਇਆ ॥

ਏਤੀ ਮਾਰ ਪਈ ਕਰਲਾਣੇ ਤੈਂ ਕੀ ਦਰਦੁ ਨ ਆਇਆ ॥੧॥

Khuraasaan khasmaanaa keeaa, Hindusataan daraaiaa.

Aapai dos na de-ee kartaa, jam kar mugal charaaiaa.

Etee maar paee karlaane, tain kee darad na aaiaa.

Plain-English sense: Having seized Khurasan, he terrified Hindustan. The Creator does not lay the blame on Himself; He made the Mughal a messenger of death and sent him charging in. Such slaughter fell, such crying out. Did it not bring You pain?

Sit with what that third line is. It is the Guru putting a question to the Creator’s face. Lament, in Sikhi, is not a lapse of faith, and protest at slaughter is not rebellion against Hukam. Both carry the Guru’s own signature.

When a mother in Tarn Taran asks how Waheguru could watch her son burn as a number in a register, she is not outside the Guru’s path. She is standing exactly where Guru Nanak Sahib stood.

The Rahao then gives the deeper centre of the Shabad:

ਕਰਤਾ ਤੂੰ ਸਭਨਾ ਕਾ ਸੋਈ ॥

ਜੇ ਸਕਤਾ ਸਕਤੇ ਕਉ ਮਾਰੇ ਤਾ ਮਨਿ ਰੋਸੁ ਨ ਹੋਈ ॥੧॥ ਰਹਾਉ ॥

Kartaa toon sabhnaa kaa so-ee.

Je saktaa sakte kau maare, taa man ros na ho-ee. Rahao.

Plain-English sense: O Creator, You are the One of all. If the powerful strike the powerful, the mind feels no grievance.

And the Shabad continues:

ਸਕਤਾ ਸੀਹੁ ਮਾਰੇ ਪੈ ਵਗੈ ਖਸਮੈ ਸਾ ਪੁਰਸਾਈ ॥

ਰਤਨ ਵਿਗਾੜਿ ਵਿਗੋਏ ਕੁਤੀਂ ਮੁਇਆ ਸਾਰ ਨ ਕਾਈ ॥

Saktaa seehu maare pai vagai, khasmai saa pursaaee.

Ratan vigaar vigoe kuteen, muia saar na kai.

Plain-English sense: But if a powerful lion falls upon the herd, the master must answer for it. The jewels were ruined and laid waste by dogs, and no one heeded the dead.

The Guru’s measure is not only who struck. It is who was struck, and who was bound to protect them. Where power falls upon the defenceless, answerability rises to the khasam, to whoever held the charge of protection.

This is not a modern doctrine imported into Gurbani. It is Gurbani, five hundred years before any commission of inquiry.

And then, in its own place in the Shabad, comes the line with which this lament began. Muia saar na kai. No one heeds the dead.

The Guru named the crime of Saidpur, and gave the Panth the language by which the cremation-ground registers can be read: not only the killing, but the unclaiming; not only that they died, but that they were entered in a book as no one’s.

IV. This time the hands were our own

At Saidpur, the lion came from Khurasan. He was an invader. Even then, the Guru held the light on those who had been charged with protection and had failed.

But here the lament must say the harder thing, and say it without hatred, because the Rahao will not permit hatred.

The Kartaa is sabhnaa kaa so-ee, the One of all, including those who killed.

Many of the young men cremated as unclaimed in Amritsar district were the Panth’s own sons. And too many of the hands that took them were also from within the Panth’s own social world.

It would be false to say every hand was a Sikh hand. It would also be false to pretend Sikh hands were absent. Policemen from the same districts as the boys they took. Informers from the same villages. Some men who had heard Japji Sahib in their childhood homes. Some did it for pay, for promotion, for fear, for obedience, or because the machinery of power had made cruelty ordinary. Around them stood a wider circle who understood enough to remain silent, because silence was safer.

This is not a heavier grief than 1984, or than the Ghallugharas that gave the film its first name, or than Mir Mannu’s prisons. Grief is not a ladder, and the Panth does not rank its dead.

But it is a different wound.

When the blow comes from outside, the Panth closes around the wound. When it comes from within, the wound is in the closing itself.

That is the measure of the distance we had travelled from our Satguru. Not that a state fell upon us; states have fallen upon the Panth from the beginning. But that when it fell, it could find enough of our own to hold the lathi, and enough more to hold their tongues.

Gurmat makes this wound harder, not easier. The killer was not outside the Creator’s order, and yet he extinguished another life for salary, promotion, fear, obedience, or favour. To do that is to have forgotten, almost entirely, what one is.

That forgetting has a name in Gurmat.

Its name is distance from the Guru.

Let one thing be said in the open, in PanthSeva’s standing words: this piece is not written against any person. It is written against a frame, the frame in which the Panth’s dead can go unheeded and the Panth’s remembering can be withdrawn from a screen.

The families of those who killed are also sangat. The door back to the Guru is not shut on them; the Rahao does not allow us to shut it.

But the door back passes through the truth, not around it.

V. The Sikh who walked back

And in that same darkness, one Sikh walked the whole distance back alone.

What did Bhai Jaswant Singh Ji Khalra actually do?

He did what the Babar Vani does.

He looked at slaughter and refused to look away. He counted. He named. He put the question to power’s face as the Guru put it to the Creator’s face. He heeded the dead when no one heeded the dead. And when he understood the price, he said so out loud, and went home anyway.

That is why the Panth calls his death shahadat without hesitation.

He did not carry a sword.

He carried a register.

He stood where the Guru’s Bani stands, in the place of the witness, and the witness’s place has always been the most dangerous ground in Panjab.

VI. What the lament asks

A lament is not a closing of accounts. It is the opening of them.

So let this one ask plainly.

That the dead be heeded at last: the records opened, the investigation’s full findings published, the identifications completed, the families answered, name by name, until muia saar na kai is no longer true of Panjab.

That the film be seen, because a Panth that cannot watch its own story told is being taught to unclaim its own dead a second time.

And that the Panth measure the distance and walk it back, the way Bhai Jaswant Singh Ji Khalra walked it: towards the registers, towards the families, towards the truth, under the Guru alone.

For Bhai Jaswant Singh Ji Khalra, and for the counted and the uncounted dead.

Verification note

Checked 6 July 2026.

The Shabad Guru Granth Sahib Ji lines quoted in this piece are all from one Shabad:

Raag Asa, Mahala 1, Guru Nanak Sahib, Babar Vani, Ang 360.

1. ਖੁਰਾਸਾਨ ਖਸਮਾਨਾ ਕੀਆ ਹਿੰਦੁਸਤਾਨੁ ਡਰਾਇਆ ॥

2. ਆਪੈ ਦੋਸੁ ਨ ਦੇਈ ਕਰਤਾ ਜਮੁ ਕਰਿ ਮੁਗਲੁ ਚੜਾਇਆ ॥

3. ਏਤੀ ਮਾਰ ਪਈ ਕਰਲਾਣੇ ਤੈਂ ਕੀ ਦਰਦੁ ਨ ਆਇਆ ॥੧॥

4. ਕਰਤਾ ਤੂੰ ਸਭਨਾ ਕਾ ਸੋਈ ॥

5. ਜੇ ਸਕਤਾ ਸਕਤੇ ਕਉ ਮਾਰੇ ਤਾ ਮਨਿ ਰੋਸੁ ਨ ਹੋਈ ॥੧॥ ਰਹਾਉ ॥

6. ਸਕਤਾ ਸੀਹੁ ਮਾਰੇ ਪੈ ਵਗੈ ਖਸਮੈ ਸਾ ਪੁਰਸਾਈ ॥

7. ਰਤਨ ਵਿਗਾੜਿ ਵਿਗੋਏ ਕੁਤੀਂ ਮੁਇਆ ਸਾਰ ਨ ਕਾਈ ॥

Note on orthography: digital tools display the final word in the last line differently. Some show a plain form equivalent to ਕੁਤੀ; Guru Granth Darpan shows an old-font nasal marker, ਕੁਤੀ, which corresponds to the nasalised sense rendered here as ਕੁਤੀਂ. The sense is “by dogs” or “dogs have,” as reflected in the traditional interpretation. Gurmukhi remains primary.

Cross-check

Readers are encouraged to cross-check every Gurbani line directly against Shabad Guru Granth Sahib Ji.

Open Ang 360 and confirm the Gurmukhi line, Ang number, Raag heading, Mahala attribution, surrounding passage, and Rahao designation.

SearchGurbani, SriGranth, Guru Granth Darpan, Punjabi Wikisource, and SikhiToTheMax may be used as cross-check tools. Guru Granth Darpan may be consulted as teeka and interpretive aid, not as authority above Shabad.

Correction note

This piece is offered as vichaar, not as a ruling.

If any reader finds a mismatch in Gurmukhi text, Ang reference, attribution, transliteration, historical detail, or plain-English sense, PanthSeva will correct it publicly, calmly, and with a dated note.

A piece that asks for the dead to be properly registered must keep its own register clean.

Historical and source note

The doctrinal judgment in this piece is grounded in Shabad Guru Granth Sahib Ji alone. Historical detail has been kept deliberately restrained; the purpose of the piece is lament and return, not a full account of the era.

The account of Guru Nanak Sahib’s presence at Saidpur is held by Sikh tradition and is used here for its Sikh moral meaning. The Babar Vani itself stands in Shabad Guru Granth Sahib Ji regardless of any historical reconstruction.

The film facts were checked against current reporting: Satluj, previously known as Punjab ’95 and earlier associated with the title Ghallughara, released on ZEE5 on 3 July 2026 after a long certification struggle, and was then made unavailable in India while continuing outside India on ZEE5 Global. (The Indian Express)

The Khalra facts were checked against Ensaaf, Human Rights Watch, and the Supreme Court record. Ensaaf records the 2005 convictions, the 2007 High Court decision upholding five convictions and enhancing those sentences to life, the acquittal of the sixth official, and the 2011 Supreme Court outcome. Human Rights Watch records the Supreme Court/NHRC mass-cremations process and the 2,097 illegal-cremations figure. The Supreme Court record in Prithipal Singh v State of Punjab records the finding that Khalra was secretly murdered and his body thrown into the canal near Harike. (Ensaaf)

The Babar Vani lines on Ang 360 were checked against SearchGurbani and Guru Granth Darpan. Guru Granth Darpan shows the full stanza including the restored middle tuk, the Rahao, the “ਸਕਤਾ ਸੀਹੁ” line, and the “ਰਤਨ ਵਿਗਾੜਿ” line in sequence. (SearchGurbani.com)

This piece is not written against any person. It is written against a frame.

Strong disagreement is welcome. Contempt is not.

Bhul chuk maaf.

Gurjit Singh Sandhu
PanthSeva