Winds of Resistance - 2024 Lehar Conference
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.