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Lehar International’s 2024 conference, Winds of Resistance: Reflecting on 40 Years Since the 1984 Ghallughara, is a groundbreaking initiative created to foster thought-provoking dialogue to better understand the Sikh past, present, and future in new ways. Our three-day conference aims to inform, inspire, and mobilize an emerging generation of Sikh leadership in the diaspora, from students to professionals, toward achieving Panthic progress. In October 2024, Lehar International will be hosting Sikh thought leaders from around the globe for a soulful weekend of intellectual, political, and religious exploration. 

This year, we have curated programming to reflect the key moment of the 40th anniversary of the Ghallughara (genocidal campaign against Sikhs) that began in 1984. The Ghallughara commenced with the battle and massacre in the Sikh theo-political capital of Amritsar in June 1984, continued with premeditated anti-Sikh pogroms across India in November 1984, and transpired into a brutal decade of disappearances across Punjab thereafter. Reflecting on this important vantage point of our contemporary times, we are pleased to have organized speakers with expertise in media, advocacy, and community-building to impart their insights on the various forms of resistance the Sikh nation had shown throughout the most recent genocidal campaign of their history. 

Contextualizing the present, this year’s conference will also include critical lessons from the political assassination of Sikh activist, Bhai Hardeep Singh Nijjar, to the sudden rise of grassroots Panthic politics in Punjab. This new space aims to provide students and professionals across North America with a comprehensive understanding of key issues impacting the Sikh world today, including transnational repression on Sikh activism and the clampdown of civil liberties in Punjab following Bhai Amritpal Singh's mobilization. We will attempt to deconstruct what meaning these current events hold in light of four long decades of denied justice since the Ghallughara's embarking.

The conference will begin on the evening of Friday, October 4th at El Sobrante Gurdwara Sahib in the San Francisco Bay Area. It will continue at the University of California - Berkeley campus on the morning of Saturday, October 5th and conclude on the morning of Sunday, October 6th.

The link to register is attached above.

We have aimed to bring together a diverse array of speakers who can speak from expertise and reflect from experience on the varied legacies of the campaign of state violence that was launched against the Sikh people by the Indian state in June 1984. Though the violent campaign ended in 1995, anti-Sikh repression has taken on more subtle forms today, continuing in ways of transnational repression and censorship of dissent that impacts Sikhs globally. We are honored to have confirmed the presence of personalities who were directly engaged in the human rights documentation work as the conflict was unfolding and individuals who have worked on raising international awareness through political activism thereafter. Attached below is a brief list of the invited speakers, the full list can be accessed from our social media here:

Paramjit Kaur Khalra

Bibi Khalra is an human rights advocate who has remained at the forefront of highlighting the genocidal violence faced by Sikhs in Punjab. Bibi Ji’s husband, Bhai Jaswant Singh Khalra, was a notable human rights activist who was murdered by Indian security forces for having internationally exposed the truth of thousands of extrajudicial killings of Sikhs. Carrying forward Bhai Khalra’s legacy, Bibi Ji founded the Khalra Mission Organization and remains committed to a legal struggle to get justice for the decade of disappearances.

Amrik Singh Muktsar 

Muktsar is a writer and human rights activist who spent many years of his life working alongside Shaheed Bhai Jaswant Singh Khalra as an aide, providing critical assistance in victim interviews and data collection throughout Punjab. As state violence by Indian security forces intensified after 1984, Muktsar joined hands with Bhai Khalra in documentation efforts. Muktsar’s crucial documentation was later published in his co-authored book with Ram Narayan Kumar, ‘Reduced to Ashes: The Insurgency and Human Rights in Punjab.’

Jaskaran Singh Sandhu 

Sandhu is a lawyer, political strategist, commentator, and the co-founder of Baaz News Organization. Previously, Jaskaran also served as Executive Director for the World Sikh Organization of Canada and now serves as WSO’s National Director of Government Affairs. Sandhu has been a bold voice underlining India’s persistent transnational repression and interference and in diasporic Sikh affairs, as seen in his recent testimony before Canada’s Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference and interviews with international media like CNN.

Prof. Rajbir Singh Judge 

Judge is a scholar of South Asia, postcolonial theory, Sikh tradition, and modern world history. After years of meticulous research, in September 2024, Judge will be publishing his first book, Prophetic Maharaja: Loss, Sovereignty, and the Sikh Tradition in Colonial South Asia. Among other themes, the book pertinently explores the postcolonial quest for a lost Sikh sovereignty, a theme that has central importance in reflections of the 1984 Ghallughara and its violent aftermath.