Quiet and Loud Revolutions, Street Theater, and the Death of Sardar Gursharan Singh

Gursharan Singh at his home Guru Khalsa Niwas in Putli Ghar Amritsar. 1986 (photo by Amarjit Chandan)

During my last year of graduate school, we were reading “Lyrical Ballads,” for a seminar on British Poetry written by Wordsworth and Coleridge. This collection – published in 1798 – challenged the basic principles of English thought at the time. Instead of using obscure and complicated vocabulary in their poetry to show how clever and refined they were, these writers used simple, everyday language; instead of resisting the use of sentimental language to explore the feelings of the human heart, they fully embraced it during a time when it was immensely unpopular to do so. Wordsworth famously defined poetry as a “spontaneous flow of powerful feelings.”

When we think of revolutionaries, we think of people like Malcolm X, Bhagat Singh, and Che Guevara, who advocated the use of violence to achieve justice. We tend to forget that three hundred years before Wordsworth, Guru Nanak Dev Ji was embarking on a much more important mission using the idea of making his message accessible to all, but on a much more profound and deeper level. We forget that all of the Sikh Gurus were revolutionaries, working towards the same goal, but using very different methods. Some refused to use violence, even under dire circumstances, while others believed the use of violence as a last resort was necessary to obtain justice for the downtrodden. You would think that these would be competing philosophies, but they merged as one, and form the core of Sikh philosophy: Sant-Sipahi (Saint-Soldier).

Many believe that Quebec’s “Quiet Revolution” that involved many reforms wasn’t really a revolution because violence or protests weren’t heavily involved. Interestingly enough, Che Guevara started first with reforms before overthrowing the U.S. backed Batista regime. The Khalistan Movement had its roots in non-violence (contrary to what the media tells us), as did many great revolutions. The Southall and Brixton riots are popularized as “the” civil rights movement in England, but the name of Paul Stephenson, who initiated a 60 day boycott of a racist bus company in England that refused employment to Blacks and Asians, is rarely mentioned. And we’ve all heard about how Gandhi singlehandedly made the British “quit” India through his non-violent philosophy. No mention of the much needed violent struggle and sacrifices of the Ghadarites or people like Bhagat Singh.

One such “quiet” revolutionary – who made plenty of noise in his fifty years in theater – died last week, on September 27, 2011, at the age of 82. Sardar Gursharan Singh was affectionately called “Bhaaji,” “Baba Bohr,” and even “Bhai Manna Singh” after a character he created. Although classically trained in theater, he decided to dedicate his life to bringing street theater – “thada” in Punjabi, meaning “platform” – to the masses, specifically in Punjab, performing at villages where he thought the “real India” resided.

Critics called his performances “artless slogans,” a criticism he didn’t have a problem with. Like our Gurus, he didn’t believe his message should only be accessible to the elite. He wanted his message to be clear and, above all, accessible to the poor and illiterate.

He brought forth his message of social justice in his plays through his unshakable Sikh belief in the rationalist thinking of Guru Nanak Dev Ji , combined with the advocacy of rising up and taking action against injustice.  Every year he performed a play dedicated to Bhagat Singh, someone he admired. It was only fitting then that Sardar Gursharan Singh breathed his last on the day of Bhagat Singh’s martyrdom.

Gursharan Singh, playwright and revolutionary

Sardar Gursharan Singh tackled some incredibly sensitive issues, going far beyond corruption, the caste system, women’s rights, and agrarian issues. He wrote Koode Tuttey Pal to raise awareness over fake encounters during the Naxalite movement in the 1970s, that would destroy many families in Punjab a decade later under K.P.S. Gill. He was jailed and lost his comfortable government job when he performed Band Kamre in response to Indira Gandhi’s suspension of basic democratic rights during the Emergency.

When faced with more than just jail time and negative reviews, particularly during the 1980s and 1990s in Punjab, Sardar Gursharan Singh didn’t skip a beat.  The narrative in the media and in fiction/non-fiction of this time period of Punjab put the allegiance of the average person into one of only two slots. Option 1: Allegiance was with the State, which meant support for the notion that the State was in the moral right and were there to help the people. Option 2: Allegiance lay with so-called Khalistanis who were in the moral right. Basically, it was broken down into the same rhetoric George Bush used after 9/11: “you’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists.”  This was a time when people who were neither terrorists nor part of the Punjab Police were petrified to leave their houses for fear of being caught in the crossfire. And often they were targets of both groups.

Sardar Gursharan Singh chose the third option and instead of cowering in fear, he took his message to the streets and to the people. His play, Hit List (I told you he wasn’t subtle), which he performed right outside Harminder Sahib, took direct aim at common street thugs who had taken over the movement; terrorists who were silencing every voice of perceived dissent. While he didn’t support what the terrorists were doing, he also found the actions of the State abhorrent, and refused to take any government money to fund his theatre group.

While this “quiet” revolutionary has passed on, the revolution is far from over. His legacy lives on through other playwrights he helped shape, like Kewal Dhaliwal. Many of these playwrights have taken up this “quiet” revolution by keeping the tradition of street theater alive and remaining true to the vision of social theater for the masses.

There is a “quiet” revolution underway on Wallstreet as I write this post (check out post on TLH  “Wallstreet Sikhs, Corporate Tyrrany, and the 99%”), which is receiving almost no media coverage. Not even from the New York Times, despite many instances of police brutality: women being pepper-sprayed by police, a woman dragged on the streets, hundreds arrested simply for holding a peaceful protest.

As Sikhs, as human beings, and as citizens of (insert country name here), we are often faced with ethical questions in relation to issues that affect us directly, indirectly, or seemingly not at all. Ethical questions present themselves like: Should we be supporting the right for turbaned Sikhs to join the U.S. military to fight an unjust war? (click link) or, Does it go against fundamental Sikh tenets to work in fields or for companies that violate human rights and/or are prospering at the expense of the less fortunate (the latter is what the Wallstreet Occupation is all about)? (click link).

The questions posed in these posts on TLH (link 1 and link 2) don’t have a right or wrong answer; but the questions are posed to remind us to examine the choices we are making as Sikhs and as citizens of whatever country we live in through the rational thinking of Guru Nanak Dev Ji. These ethical dilemmas of livelihood and conscience, of equality, are not new issues and every generation has had to deal with them, and will continue to do so.

What is truly inspiring about Sardar Gursharan Singh is not that one man brought social street theater to Punjab, or that he never compromised his values. It’s the fact that his message of hope was a powerful one and that a revolution can take place in many ways. “It is a long battle, the battle of changing mindsets,” he once said when someone asked whether he thought he was making any difference.

Below is a video clip of a documentary on Sardar Gursharan Singh (in Punjabi):