Kirpal Singh Bir passes away: Last witness of Kishangarh violence is no more

Mansa, Punjab: “He carried history on his tongue,” said Sukhdarshan Natt, about Kirpal Singh Bir, an oral historian in Mansa district of Punjab. He died on 13 September this year, aged 94. “All his life he carried in his spine an unmistakable combination of fighting spirit and compassion for the people otherwise dispossessed in our country.”

“He was a historian equipped with an art of storytelling,” Natt told us. “An epitome of consistency in dedication, he struggled for minimising the agony of the people, for he was well versed with chapters of pain all his life. So was his ability to lead the struggles,” he added.

It was in the 1880s in his village Bir Khurd that the devious landlords had snatched acres of land from the villagers. In those days, Kirpal Singh learnt that his grandfather Attar Singh had battled against three land-grabbers named as Gurdit Singh, Harnam Singh and Agam Singh. Later on, the spirit of the resolute struggles was forwarded to Kirpal Singh Bir.

He was born in Burma on 11 November, 1928. A few years later, Burma, then an English colony, had to face Japan in the war. Also, both Hitler and Mussolini despised the English as “German-hating plutocrats”. Kirpal Singh Bir, still a thirteen-year-old boy along with his siblings thought of returning to his roots. With their house in Burma fearing the war reaching home and getting collapsed, the family thought of leaving the colony and reaching Punjab.

They escaped a war, but the journey they thought of taking was no less tedious and thorny than the war itself. Kirpal’s family of his nine siblings and mother Kartar Kaur kicked off. His father and elder brother remained in Burma as they were serving in the English army in the war. The mother was still feeding one of the babies. From Burma city, they moved to Monywa, then to Kalewa and via Tamu Road they entered Manipur. From there they took to Kohima and crossed Darjeeling. From Darjeeling they walked to Lucknow before reaching Bareta in Punjab.

They covered a distance of 3,349 kilometres, without any certainty of reaching their destination. With no roads and literally an uphill task, they were determined to reach here to Punjab. This was one of the toughest migration stories— still unrecorded, unrecognised in history. The many tragedies of the second world war found their mentions in the pages of history, as artefacts in museums and lyrics of songs. Kirpal Singh Bir was accompanying his nine siblings. One died on the way. Another passed away immediately after landing at Punjab.

When in Burma, he faced the coldness of the second world war, meanwhile in Punjab, he saw the heat in peoples’ resistance who demanded their rights. His spirit got heightened. Soon, he joined the Punjab Riyasti Praja Mandal Movement, a peoples’ struggle focussed on countering the autocratic and arbitrary reign of the rulers of the princely states. Praja Mandal would organise peasantry against the oppressive rulers and target to achieve freedom of speech and institutional bodies to keep them in check, basically, signalling for democracy.

In Bir Khurd, establishing new Gurdwaras, schools, health centres was a prohibition sanctioned by the local landlords. Yet, in 1949, because Kirpal ensured that a Gurdwara be built. He was doing what Rabindranath Tagore did in West Bengal. The poet wrote for the awakening of the country—

“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high

Where knowledge is free
Into that heaven of freedom…let my country awake.”

Kirpal Singh Bir was awakening the people and was helping people shun their fears. He was enlightened by a publication by The Kirti Kisan Party called Lal Jhanda or Red Flag. It would highlight the grass-root problems of peasantry and labour while suggesting an alternative line of action. This publication inspired Kirpal and also shaped his consciousness towards the cause of people. This small village, Kishangarh, is called Leningrad of Revolutionaries. It has its reasons.

On 18 March, 1949, Kirpal was present in the village when in early morning the army personnel of Patiala and East Punjab States Union (PEPSU), with their 11 tanks and five armoured vehicles and trucks and about 100 police personnel cordoned the village. The villagers stood on the top or in front of their houses and shouted slogans against them. The state had come to attack the village, one village.

It is correct to say that, here in Kishangarh, the feudal landlords and the princely states, took to most violent tactics to repress the movement against them. The states sent its men with guns to shoot the protestors. As many as four agitators were killed and hundreds of them arrested. The village, however, defeated the state. The latter had to recede. Kirpal Singh Bir was the last witness alive to this agitation.

Kirpal’s family also got a string of land, afterwards. The region was under double ghulami — one from the king and another from the British. After the British left, the historian wanted the feudal system to go. He, along with a few other like-minded people in 1952 saw that in a huge gathering, many feudal landlords from 24 villages came to the stage and willingly gave a portion of their land to the tilling farmers. Who owned no acre of land but tilled on the land-owning farmers’.

About the 1962 war with China, he went with the opinion that India too was responsible for it, not alone China, Natt told us, who would meet Kirpal quite a lot. “He believed that India had been involved in this battle as a proxy of the United States, and that India did not deserve a war at that time, when it was specially struggling to eat twice a day” he added.

The war with Pakistan affected people of both sides of the border, both the East and West Punjab, he believed. People did not want to engage and indulge in any war. The governments wanted them to. This, he would call a war-crime. “Wars bring death and destitution to people, he believed,” Nutt told us.

He was an avid reader. The elderly historian from Burma was a book-seller as well. He would do it differently though. “He would go to the local courts and ask his friends — ‘have you read so and so book?’ The friends would shake their heads, horizontally, meaning a ‘no’. He would then tell them, ‘Here’s the book, give me the money, take and read it’,”

Nutt shared about Kirpal’s unique habit of pushing people to read more. One of the lawyers present in Kirpal’s funeral remembered his approach and asked — “who will give us books to read now?”

The departed soul started a library too, and named it Mitrumal Memorial Library. Library apart, he ensured that students went to the schools and they also had one in the village. His village, Bir Khurd, now has a huge school. He, along with his friends, contributed to the formation of National College, Bhikhi in Punjab.

The avid reader was a rationalist too. He would ask people to shun superstitions and ill-beliefs. His diverse personality also thought of people getting clean drinking water, so he ensured that the village got a good water-tank. He, along with the government officials, made some water works in the village, helping the hamlet-dwellers.

He was as social as political. Once in his adjoining village, two Jatt men (dominant caste in Punjab) raped a Dalit woman. Kirpal ensured that those men were arrested. Later, the sister of one of the men requested Kirpal that the FIR against her brother be withdrawn. She told him that he had apparently developed a brain tumour. Kirpal, denied, and said that he would be locked either in jail or be treated in the hospital. The discussion turned into an argument and the woman asked Kirpal ‘why did he want a man of his own caste locked behind bars?’

“He said he was a communist,” Nutt told us and that “he would never support any wrongdoing.” The communist Kirpal would now support the Naxalite movement. Though he never really shot with a gun, as commonly believed about the Naxalites, he would distribute letters, books and pamphlets regarding the emancipation of the dispossessed masses, much like what Lal Jhanda would do.

He was connected with the question of land so much so that he became master in measuring land in smallest units. He would never allow anyone in the village to indulge in a quarrel over the question of land. If the villagers  quarrelled, he would settle the matter by measuring the land. The historian was a scientist as well. He was well versed with climate and its changing patterns. People in his hamlet called him the ‘Village Scientist’.

It was impossible for him not to travel all the way to the borders of Delhi when the historic farmers’ movement was happening. He came to the Tikri border and participated in it. The Sanyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), a body of different farmers’ unions leading the movement, felicitated Kirpal for his contribution to the cause of people.

The rural historian is no more. The scientist is no more. The climate expert is no more. The communist is no more. The land-measuring expert is no more. The rationalist is no  more. The book-seller is gone. The agitator is gone. He took away with him a portion of history. All he left is his stories. Some friends planted saplings on his cremation-place. The legends say that the roots of the plant converse with Kirpal Singh’s ashes. The last witness to the storyteller, the plant grows.

Amir Malik is an independent journalist, and a 2022 PARI Fellow and Davi Davinder Kaur has been the Chief Sub-editor at Punjabi Tribune. She is now a freelance journalist, a poet and a film-writer.

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