Customer Reviews

The Sikhs of the Punjab: Unheard Voices of State and Guerrilla Violence (Politics in Contemporary Asia)

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Violence is a matter of human nature. In Sikhs of the Punjab: Unheard Voices of the State and Guerrilla Violence, by Joyce Pettigrew, there is an interesting take on a much talked about world affair, national self determination. For the Punjab and its Sikhs, it is solely due to lack of respect on human rights issues. In this book, the message is clearly manifested through its gut wrenching details and any reader must prepare to wrap their minds around unbelievable concepts of war and violence. On occasion the terminology is hard to understand but it does not stand in the way of a magnificent hold on a revolutionary idea.

Joyce Pettigrew has done a terrific job. In an unbiased and a lucid manner she presents the affairs that rocked the state. I am a Sikh and lived in Punjab through the days of violence up until 2002. This topic has been written about by others who have either held a biased "state view" or biased "militant view". Sadly, none serves the purpose of truth.
I read the review of this gentleman Truth Seeker who sounds very hurt by what Dr. Pettigrew has written. His hurt results from his non-agreement with Dr. Pettigrew's view. He says "she never lived in Punjab as a commoner and never lost a friend or relative in vigilante violence", right he is and I hope that he understands, that this is what gives her an ability to have an unbiased view.
So hurt is the gentleman that he goes to the extreme of using strong words like "dishonest", "crude", for the writer and "dastardly" for the people that she writes about etc. etc. He goes on to question the moral reasons behind the stance of the writer and sees the funding from the "terror lobbies" as a reason for that stance. His annoyance has taken away reasonable intellectual argument and has replaced it with an emotional character assassination. The gentleman digresses from the task at hand; he writes his views about the struggle rather than write a book review, probably not the place to do so. This gentleman, who happens to stand on the "other side" of the line, is not qualitatively different from the people who stand on the other side. Such emotional thinkers, will serve the purpose of perpetuation of the differences at best.

A well written account of the events that occured in Sikh Punjab over the last 15 years. Well documented cases of the mass killing of Sikhs by India, backed up by firm evidence.

A must for all those who have an interest in the Sikhs

Author have done really a great job portraying the unbiased situation in punjab during gurilla war days. i myself have witnessed that era. Truthseeker is holding a biased view agiasnt the sikh youth gurillas, they took the arms because state was oprreesive agianst them. author have done really a great job fearlessely as it is hard to do because u still can come under fire from indian government for writting agianst the government. I wanaa cooment to truth seeeker that westren scholars go to punjab to study the great injustice done by government of india to its oepole(500,000 killed or disappeared), not just go there to get scholarships from sikh organizations. moreover no westerner would accept monet from an organization , which as been declared terrorist organization by the great united states government.

Dr. Joyce has done a remarkable job of documenting BOTH sides on a "as is" basis. Having migrated to East Punjaab in Nov 1984 as a refugee myself, I can relate to some of the passages in the book as if I was there when it all happened. I agree with Pettigrew when she summarises that the Sikh Natioanlist Movement was over in late 80's when the Indian State has infiltered all oragisations and the senseles killings that ensued in early 90's were a result of the policies framed in the South Block.

Kudos to a Western writer!!

As a Sikh born in the UK and not really involved in the politics of india, this book was an eye opener and brought home the feeling of relatives and family who went through a hellish existance back in Punjab. We were only feed the India regimes views and the British presse's (Mark Tully views) which now come out to be baised aganist the Sikhs and the freedom fighters. It just shows how dirty policitcs is and how people abuse power. I will be more interested in the views of my relatives and friends then the press. I feel I have let down my Sikh brothers and Sisters in the hour of need, but I pray to God that their dream of Freedom will come true one day.

God Bless you all Bal

I am a Punjabi with a Sikh background and lived through the years of troubled times in Punjab in 1980s. Joyce Pettigrew's work is patently dishonest and can be taken seriously only by people who have never lived in Punjab, or by those who jump into the world of academics with a loaded political agenda.

Calling TERRORISTS, who were segregating the people out of buses and shooting them down in cold blood just on the basis of their religion, as "guerillas" is a crude attempt by the author to rationalize the cult of violence. Probably, she never lived in Punjab as a commoner and never lost a friend or relative in vigilante violence. This could be the only reason for the superficial discourse that is offered to us as serious scholarship.

It is true that the government of India mismanaged the crisis but this still does not justify the cult of hate and violence unleashed by fanatical "Sikh" preachers in name of fighting for Sikhism, which teaches compassion and forgiveness as its foremost values.

Most scandalous is Joyce's failure to call Bhinderanwale a terrorist and differentiate him from the likes of Osama Bin Laden. On the contrary, she has words of sympathy for this megalomaniac whose name had become synonym for terror for mintority Hindus and liberal Sikhs in the state of Punjab.

Pettigrew is exceedingly popular with violent groups operating from West some of which have been officially designated as terrorist organizations by American and British governments after 9-11 (examples: Babbar Khalsa, ISYF). It is little surprise why this is so. One of the reason could be that most of the academic positions in Western univerisites dealing with Sikh studies depend on these terror lobbies for their funding and thus go out of the way to write apologies for their clients. Cynthia Mahmood is another example of a non-Indian author who never set foot on Punjab and claims to be some sort of authority on its problems. This kind careerist scholarship can only invite scoff from the people who lived through those troubled and painful time in Punjab.

People wanting to know more about the issue should read the British author Mark Tully or Khuswant Singh both of whom give a very neutral and informed perspectives from all sides. [...]