- 1 John Berger, The Look of Things, New York: The Viking Press, 1974.
“In wars, there have always been massacres”1
- 2 See for example James T. Siegel, “Images and Odors in Javanese Practices Surrounding Death, (...)
1In Indic mourning practice, including Sikh rituals, corpses are highly visible at specific moments immediately after death. The muh dekhna or aakhri deedar (literally, “viewing the face”, or “the last sight”) of the dead person is a critical moment in mourning rituals. Before the corpse is seen by gathered mourners, ritual specialists and/or close family members bathe the body, dress the corpse in pristine clothes, cover the head with cloth – a dupatta, a long head scarf or sari pallu, one end of a sari covers the head of a woman, while a tulband or turban covers the head of a male corpse. The orifices are closed, limbs bound to prevent them splaying outward, and every effort made to present an ordered and “peaceful” corpse. This is the image and memory of the person that kin will carry in their minds after they see off their dead. The disappearance of the body after cremation or burial heightens the ritual of viewing the face of the corpse, simultaneously enabling the ritualised processes of forgetting, merging an individual into an ancestor-centric collective, annually evoked as the source of blessing for the living. Symbolic representations of the dead – orbs of rice in some Hindu rituals of remembrance, for example, or other representational forms across other religions – become the focus of annual observances. Photographs and portraits of living persons and their belongings are treated as personal mementoes and objects for everyday remembrance and/or individual ritual observance. Unlike other cultures,2 the corpse itself is not displayed for viewing beyond the ritual moment of “seeing off” the dead person.
- 3 Perhaps one of the best documented processes of tending a corpse to remain visually recogni (...)
2This does not mean that followers of Indic religions never paint or photograph corpses. The corpse of Mahatma Gandhi, a central figure and leader in India’s battle for independence, assassinated in 1947, and the corpse of Indira Gandhi, the third Prime Minister of India, assassinated in 1984, were photographed. Indira Gandhi’s corpse was televised by the national news channel, Door Darshan, creating a public of mourners who participated in the muh dekhna of the slain Prime Minister. The widely viewed photographed images of the corpses of the Mahatma and the Prime Minister presented the appearance of serenity, covered in white sheets, their features in calm repose. The photographs hid the wounds of assassination but in televised footage of the Prime Minister’s corpse, the violence of death regularly seeped out. Throughout the course of the public viewing of Indira Gandhi, her daughter-in-law sat at her head, carefully dabbing away and cleaning the blood oozing from the nose and sides of the mouth. There is no account, visual or written, of similar acts of cleaning performed on the Mahatma’s corpse; but there is no doubt that the long display of his corpse on the terrace of Birla House would have required a carefully choregraphed erasure of violent death.3
- 4 Maurice Bloch, From Blessing to Violence: History and Ideology in the Circumcision Ritual o (...)
- 5 William Blair, Cities of the Dead: Contesting the Memory of the Civil War in the South, (...)
- 6 Walima T. Kalusa, “The Politics of the Corpse: President Levy Mwanawasa’s Death, Funeral an (...)
3This paper pays particular attention to corpses of battles. The violent death, the feelings of trauma, are inherent to corpses of war. The corpse of war might need to be left behind in the battlefield, but memory of the fallen cannot be so easily forsaken. How are corpses of battles remembered and represented in different media and across different spaces of memory? Though the corpse has been an important area of analysis in anthropologies of death and bodies,4 more recently, it has emerged as intrinsic to memorialization and commemorations of war and conflict, as well as in shaping emotional landscapes and collective identity.5 The “spirit” of person is central to many of these studies. It’s important to recognize however, that the dead body is an affective object, imbued with a power of “making” people remember loss.6 Battlefields, saturated with the fallen, are spaces to remember the dead. Oddly, in studies of war, the corpse is rarely addressed and its visual representations remain inadequately analysed in the literature on war and conflict.
4A visual ethnography of corpses reveals that there is no single tenor in the representation of wounded corpses. Nor is there a single site or space where a muh dekhna of conflict riddled corpses might take place. Therefore the collective of viewers, the ritualized attitude, if any, and the mediums of representations, would alter the process of muh dekhna. The distinctive visualisations present the possibility of reconsidering where we might locate the ‘site’ of viewing and mourning conflict riddled corpses. Are battlefields, cemeteries, or cremation grounds the only possible sites to remember wounded corpses? Or might the processes of “visualization” itself allow us to open out other sites and spaces, outside or beyond the normal “geography” of deathscapes like cremation ghats [river banks] or cemeteries to fathom the continued materialization of corpses and the power to shape memory? This article will attempt to outline some of these questions in the visualization and viewing of corpses.
- 7 Radhika Chopra, Amritsar, 1984: A City Remembers, London, New York, Lanham: Lexington Books (...)
- 8 Maurice Bloch, From Blessing to Violence: History and Ideology in the Circumcision (...)
5I primarily restrict my analysis to the representation of wounded corpses as they appear in the sacred precincts of the Darbar Sahib, a key shrine for Sikhs, and within the shrine to the Kendriya Sikh Ajaibghar, the museum within the sacred complex, as well as some texts in the library holdings of the shrine. I will briefly discuss the role of Jallianwala Bagh, a memorial garden, in the immediate vicinity of the Darbar Sahib, and equally briefly, some cover art displays in small shops encircling the shrine. I have discussed the politics of display in some detail elsewhere;7 here I take the earlier analysis a little further to understand the paintings and photographs of wounded corpses as ritual sites of muh dekhna creating a dialogic vis-à-vis more conventionally recognised sites like cremation grounds and battlefields. The painting or the photograph does more than hang on a wall – it is active in creating a space, an emotional geography, for corpses to be there as a presence. Studies of death and corpses have paid attention to the material corpse, its burial or reburial, its movements as ashes interred in one place and then moved to others in the process of reinscribing meanings to space and identity.8 The question I pose here is whether the visual representations of a collection of corpses in paintings and photographs are performative in creating collective, community identity and evoking emotions in viewers-as-mourners in a manner that might be similar to, if not identical with, material corpses, bones and ashes. Does the visual display convert a museum visitor to mourner? A person who, in the act of viewing, creates a new link with the dead? Does the familiar ritual of muh dekhan move beyond a culturally established moment in time to be actively created and recreated in gallery spaces? Stilling the corpse within a frame suggests casting the dead into a limbo, forever caught between corpse and peaceful incorporation with ancestors. It is my argument that each act of viewing imaginatively establishes a link with the corpse at the moment of death, and initiates a journey toward a culturally familiar culmination of incorporation of an individual with the collective of benevolent ancestors.
- 9 Radhika Chopra, “Commemorating Hurt: Memorialising Operation Bluestar," Sikh Formations: Re (...)
6As already stated, I confine my analysis to the paintings and photographs at a single site – the Kendriya Sikh Ajaibghar, the Central Sikh Museum. The Museum as a heterotopia of remembrance, “enable(s) the segregation and conversion of individuals from ordinary men to martyrs”9. Images of wounded corpses in the Museum galleries establish the visualisation of corpses of battles across different periods of history. Some corpse images are individual “portraits” with captions, that clearly denote each painted person as a defender of the faith, initiating the movement toward the collective body of martyrs. Other images of the wounded dead depict victimhood. Many of these latter images appear in the corners of paintings, or are envisioned as non-combatant innocents. While portrayals are distinct in the imagery between those who will journey toward a sangat [sacred collective] of shaheed [martyrs] and the faithful in need of defence, the array of wounded and killed across numerous paintings and photographs draw the viewer into an active relationship as interpreters of death and the re-inscription of the corpse from a passive body to one that reaches out, invites the viewer to think of history and event through landscapes of death.
7A momentous event in the life of the Darbar Sahib which houses the Ajaibghar museum is its destruction during a military operation known as Operation Bluestar in early June 1984, when the Indian army entered the sacred precincts, with troops and tanks, to displace militants who had taken shelter in the shrine and then ruled the affairs of the Darbar Sahib for a period of approximately two years, from 1982 to 1984. The Darbar Sahib had become the “garh” or fortress of the Sikh militants, from where they mounted a challenge to the Indian state, demanding a separate state of Khalistan, a “homeland” for Sikhs. The fortified shrine became a focal point of increasingly antagonistic, often violent, politics. In the period preceding and following Operation Bluestar, communal, insurgent and state-directed clashes cast a pall over the shrine and its surrounding areas. The military action of June 1984 resulted in the dramatic damage to parts of the Darbar Sahib, including partial destruction, by fire, of the Ajaibghar and its holdings. Paintings, manuscripts, objects of historical and religious value, embroidered canopies, among other artefacts, were destroyed; not everything could be salvaged after the military vacated the shrine complex.
8The holdings of the Ajaibghar as we see them today are a mix of paintings, photographs, objects and maps, some of heritage value, some restored, others newly made and some completely new additions. In the Ajaibghar, as with all Museums, displays shift and change with new acquisitions. Some shifts are underwritten by the politics of remembrance that seeks to resurrect the destruction and violence of Operation Bluestar and its aftermath. In the process, painted and photographed images of corpses, while not hung together, form a collective, shaping an unmistakable “present” of viewing. Let me therefore turn to a few images to understand their significance and to highlight my argument of the Museum as a site for muh dekhna.
- 10 The order of the Khalsa was instituted in 1699 by Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Sikh Guru. I (...)
9Some paintings with bloodied corpses, depict battles fought during the medieval period, when Sikhism emerged as a new religion, becoming increasingly militarised under the Khalsa.10 Battle scene paintings are part of a series of canvases hung fairly high on the gallery walls, requiring viewers to look upward at the battle scenes, in a stance that imitates looking up at divine beings, aligning viewing with veneration.
Figure 1 Chotta Ghallughara 1746 [Photograph of painting by author, taken with permission granted by the sevadars – custodians – and jathedars – the ritual and administrative functionaries – of the Darbar Sahib shrine and its Museum, 2007]
Figure 2 Shakha Shri Nankana Sahib, 1921 [Photograph of painting by author, taken with permission granted by the sevadars – custodians – and jathedars – the ritual and administrative functionaries – of the Darbar Sahib shrine and its Museum, 2007]
- 11 Darshan Tatla, “The Third Ghallughara: On the Sikh Dilemma Since 1984,” Sikh Formations: Re (...)
- 12 Vadda Ghallughara occurred in village Kup, near Malerkotia, on 5 February 1762.
- 13 Ghallughara Divas was first observed officially by the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Commit (...)
10Figure 1, part of a series of battle paintings hung at a height, depicts what is described in Punjabi as the Chotta Ghallughara of 1746. Translated in English as “minor massacre” the painting is of a battle between Yahyiya Khan, then governor of Lahore, and a small band of Sikh soldiers who fought against persecution of their nascent faith. Condemned as infidels, orders to pursue and execute Sikhs, treat their top knots with disrespect, and behead them, are part of the history depicted in Fig. 1. The battle is realist in style, paying attention to geographical landmarks, for example, the river Ravi, painted at the top left-hand segment of the painting and the forest of Khanuwan, in Gurdaspur, looming over the battle field. Painted patches of red literally convey the bloodiness of a fierce battle, in which many Sikhs, felled by Khan’s soldiers, are painted as yellow-turbaned corpses. The visual vocabulary articulates the well-recited legends of valour of followers of Sikhism, who despite being heavily outnumbered, died in defence of their faith. Importantly, the caption is in two scripts; in Gurmukhi the battle scene is referred to in familiar terminology Chotta Ghallughara; in Roman, the battle is translated as “Minor holocaust”. The term holocaust was first used in commemorative events of Operation Bluestar, organised by the Sikh diaspora.11 The travel of the term signifies the heighted emotions surrounding Bluestar, bracketing the Indian government’s act with the Holocaust. The caption synchronizes Operation Bluestar with the carnage of “innocent” women and children by the medieval Afghan invader Ahmed Shah Durrani in the Vadda Ghallughara12 of 1762. Naming (and captioning) the modern and the medieval events as Ghallughar Divas13 act as a powerful mnemonic, aligning the past and the present to evoke a history of persecution, mass death and destruction of Sikhs and their shrines.
- 14 Kashmir Singh, ‘Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee: An Overview,” in Pashaura Singh an (...)
11This connection between modern and medieval times appears again in figure 2 depicting an early twentieth century protest movement, the Gurudwara Reform Movement, that sought to establish distinct boundaries between Hindu and Sikh rituals. The reformers insisted on the expulsion of Hindu priests and Hindu ritual experts, the mahants, from Sikh shrines, demanding the removal of Hindu idols placed by the mahants within gurudwaras, and asserting that the presence of idols militated against the tenets of Sikhism.14 At the time, the Hindu priests were supported by the colonial administration.
12The protest against a powerful mahant of Nankana Sahib, a historically significant Sikh shrine, is the “story” of the painting. The shrine itself is prominent in the frame, establishing the veracity of the painting as a visual record of a documented event. The painting as chronicle shows the serried ranks of reformist Sikh protestors, dressed in yellow, seated within the Nankana Sahib gurudwara, in the top left hand of the canvas. To viewers familiar with Sikh history the orderly rows of seated figures would immediately signal the gathering of Sikhs reciting the Granth, the Sikh scripture within a sacred space. Throughout the period of the Gurudwara Reform Movement, the continuous recitation of the Scripture was a form of protest to reclaim and reinscribe shrines as solely belonging to the Sikh sangat, the sacred community which has a prominent place in the religious politics of Sikhism. The painting pinpoints a singular event to emphasise its significance for viewers. In the frame, the stillness of the seated protestors is painted in sharp contrast to the violence of the killings depicted in the forefront. That both the seated figures and the corpses are of Sikhs is visually conveyed by yellow robes in which the figures are depicted. The identity of yellow robed Sikh corpses of Nankana is heightened by the unravelled top knot of the uncut hair (kesh) of the corpses. Kesh is one of the five key symbols of adopted by devout Sikhs; the untidiness of the painted hair without the turban of the fore fronted corpses is in sharp contrast to the neatly tied turbans of the group seated within the gurudwara. The turbans and hair viscerally convey the adoption of a ritualised body, and the violent disrespect toward the believer’s body in the mistreatment of the ritual hair of the corpse.
- 15 A separate Museum at the Jallianwala Bagh memorial has a large canvas often shown online (...)
13The brutality of the Nankana massacre is spoken of as second only to the brutality of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre by General Dyer, in 1919, with a key difference – the Jallianwala Bagh killings15 were unleashed by the colonial state, while the Nankana events are underwritten by communal divides between Hindus and Sikhs which shaped and continue to shape, the politics of contemporary Punjab. The name of the Hindu priest in the caption of Fig 2, explicitly and overtly indexes the communal divide.
14Canvases liberally filled with corpses substantiate historical events; they are also emotional landscapes at many different levels. Both Figs 1 and 2 reference incidents where the dead are converted from the domain of the ordinary, elevated to exceptional persons in death. In commemorative narratives, the protestors at Nankana of Fig 2, setting forth to reclaim Nankana Sahib as an exclusive shrine of Sikhism, are referred as a Shaheedi Jatha, band of martyrs. It is the jatha, the band that is exceptional, merging individual identities into a collective martyrdom. Together, the painting and its caption ensure an understanding of the Nankana shaheeds as a sangat, a collective body of believers whose identity as a fused band is paramount.
15Let me turn to another set of corpses displayed in the Museum. These images allude to a specific period of post-1947 Indian politics: the linguistic reorganisation of states within the Indian Union that led to the Punjabi Suba agitations to claim “Punjabi speaking” areas of the state for Sikhs. The movement created a particular context for martyrdom, of men who died in defence of punjabiyat, a term denoting language as the audible heart of culture. Linguistic identity expanded and became synonymous with religion; Sikhs were “naturalised” as Punjabi speakers and inhabitants of the territory of Punjab.
16Displayed at eye level, the images of the Punjabi Suba agitators are reproduced from newspapers with small captions that resemble news items (Fig 3). The sepia of faded newsprint steeps the image as belonging to contemporary reports of political activism from a newspaper archive. Though hung together in a row, each photograph is separately framed as a portrait. The key to these martyrs is the fact of their individual deaths, and each appears to the viewer as a corpse, as a last viewing of person in mourning rituals. At the time of the Punjabi Suba agitation, photographing corpses was not customary. The newsprint photographs depicted in Fig 3 and Fig 4, were possibly the only images available to create a context for muh dekhna. Each photographed corpse is formally dressed with a turban, tied beard, kirpan, the small dagger, one of the five key symbols of Sikhism, clearly evident in the belt across the chest. The correctly attired corpse, with garland, kirpan and turban, suggest that the corpse was in the charge of those who mourned the death, before cremation. Captions detail the date and place of birth, and the day of death. The visible wounds of the corpse evident in Fig 4, act in concert with the caption to present the violent death as the key to remembering the faces of these dead.
- 16 Marilyn Strathern, “One Legged Gender,” Journal of the Society for Visual Anthropology, Jan (...)
17There is an additional layer to the image. Inserted within each frame is a small, passport size photograph directly facing the viewer (Fig. 4). Why would a ritually garlanded, formally dressed corpse need such a mundane form of identification for muh dikhayi /muh dekhna (dikhayi: showing; dekhna:seeing)? The little inset within the frame of a museum exhibit bears reflection. The passport photograph, familiar as a method of identification, is an entirely modern form. Amplified by the accessibility suggested by the eye-level height at which the Punjabi Suba portraits are hung, the passport photograph staring straight out at the viewer creates a reciprocity of seeing and being seen between the image and the viewer.16 The outward reach of the image activates the interpretive capacity of a viewer to go beyond the everydayness of a newspaper and an identity photograph to raise the person in the portrait to another realm, of those defined by exceptional death. In continuity with the display of painted battles that precede the Punjabi Suba portraits, the row of images creates an equation between different representations of the corpses of defenders of the faith, simultaneously transforming dead protestors of a political movement to the exalted status of modern shaheed (martyrs).
Figure 3 Sangat of Punjabi Suba Shaheed [Photograph of Museum display by author, taken with permission granted by the sevadars – custodians – and jathedars – the ritual and administrative functionaries – of the Darbar Sahib shrine and its Museum, 2007]
Figure 4 Shaheed Hari Singh Ji Amritsar, [Photograph of Museum display by author, taken with permission granted by the sevadars – custodians – and jathedars – the ritual and administrative functionaries – of the Darbar Sahib shrine and its Museum, 2007]
18The careful presentation of corpses in battle paintings and the framed photographs illuminate key religious ideas of faith and martyrdom. However, the sangat of corpses remains incomplete, for a key battle and its corpses are missing in the displays of the Ajabghar. The absence of images of corpses of the bitter and violent battle, “Operation Bluestar”, fought within the Darbar Sahib, is as marked as the displays of corpses of battles fought elsewhere, in spaces well beyond the sacred precincts of the shrine. How then can this absence tell a story?
- 17 In this paper, I will not be able to address the corpses of slain military or polic (...)
19As if to take a cue from the inserted passport photographs of Punjabi Suba corpses, another display of martyrs draws the viewers’ attention. These painted portraits, of individuals who played key roles during the Khalistan movement, imitate the style of a passport-photo, each figure formally posed, looking directly at the camera/viewer. Some were killed in the battle of Bluestar; others put to death as traitors by the Indian state.17 Briefly, the two assassins of the Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, are displayed as painted passport portraits. Beant Singh was shot at the site of the assassination. Satwant Singh was hanged at a later stage. The portraits of Jinda and Sukha, the two men accused and hung for the assassination of General A.S. Vaidya, chief of Army Staff at the time of Operation Bluestar, painted in 1997, are formally addressed by the honorific “Bhai” and the plural “Aap Ji” in the captions. As a form of muh dekhna, the passport photo style suggests a relationship of reciprocity and resemblance between contemporary martyrs with their modern viewers, while the respectful style of address in the captions creates a distance. Clearly, the corpses of Satwant Singh, Beant Singh, Jinda and Sukha were in the custody of the Indian state and could never be part of any familiar muh dekhna ritual. Painted portraits of persons associated with the 1984 events hung in museum were the only images of the politically significant dead. The portraits “worked” to replace the customary ritual with a new form of grieving through remembrance, suggesting viewing as a ritual in itself. Museum displays reinscribed the intention of identification that would normally underwrite passport photographs, presenting instead a visually enacted muh dekhna in which the Museum visitor was positioned as a critical actor, reading and understanding the wall of painted canvases as representations of valued persons. Viewing then is perceived as a staging of muh dekhna, recognising and seeing off the dead in their journey toward a sangat of shaheed.
- 18 For example, the corpse of the Khalistan leader, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale was formally id (...)
20Despite the work of recovery, identity and re-inscription, passport-style portraits cannot elide the actual absence of paintings of Bluestar corpses. The question of missing corpses and their images hovers over Museum displays. Given that corpses were regularly “produced” in violent conflict between militants and state forces, and many would have been in the custody of the state for whom the photographed corpse was necessary “proof” of action, corpses and their images were clearly vital throughout the period of militancy. Quite unlike the openly viewed painted corpses of medieval battles, or of communal or colonial conflicts, discussed above, deploying artistic imagination and license of display, the corpse images of 1984 and thereafter were physically seen by a limited set of people (members of state forces or those called upon as witnesses to verify death18). But these images were sequestered. Another set of viewers were consumers of news reports, and sometimes kin. For the first set of viewers, the corpses were evidence of the success of anti-insurgency operations. For the latter, a re-inscription and reinstatement of personhood, similar in spirit to the images of Punjabi Suba corpses, was important. In a photograph reproduced on the cover of the news magazine Outlook, a number of corpses of farmers are laid out on charpais, string beds, their heads and bodies covered with turbans and sheets, while all around villagers and kin of Nathu ka Burj, the site of an army ambush, are gathered as if in a ritual moment of muh dekhna. In fact these corpses were “evidence” brought as proof to establish the excessive use of state violence; the gathered witnesses stood together to collectively reclaim the corpses as belonging to their social world and their right to collectively mourn the passing of socially valuable persons. Such photographs were gathered and strategically displayed. In fact, the cover art of Outlook was not unique. The cover of the monthly magazine Sikh Shahadat published in Gurmukhi, reproduced images of corpses, killed by state forces as suspected militants (Fig 5). The images are unattributed; but the likelihood that they were photographs taken by state agencies to establish the fact of death is evident in the way the corpses are photographed in all the indignities of a disorderly death with unruly hair, splayed limbs and half open mouths and eyes. The contrast with the corpses on charpais reproduced on the cover of Outlook, highlights the location of the photograph as taken at the site of death. The “relocation” as cover art on Sikh Shahadat moves the image – and the viewing of the dead – from an evidentiary circumstance to a counter reading of the image, simultaneously making clear the antagonistic readings of the dead, their reinstatement, through incorporation, into stories of modern martyrdom.
Figure 5 Cover Art Sikh Shahadat [Photograph by author, taken with permission granted by the sevadars – custodians – and jathedars – the ritual and administrative functionaries – of the Darbar Sahib shrine and its Museum, 2007]
- 19 Inderjit Singh Jaijee and Dona Suri, The Legacy of Militancy in Punjab: Long Road t (...)
- 20 From accounts of riots and communal violence that followed the displays of assassinated, wo (...)
21Throughout the period of militancy, however, many remained missing19 as did their corpses, so that their death could not be indisputably confirmed. There were other deaths however that were well known, claimed and reported in newspapers, police records or other public accounts, though neither corpse nor image was immediately retrieved. Even in the absence of a corpse or its image, death was acknowledged and mourned. The corpses of the well-known idealogues of Khalistan were quite swiftly cremated by the state. They were photographed before cremation and even when the material corpse was eliminated, the photograph remained, hidden in an official record. It was these photographs that retained the possibilities of an afterlife, slowly moving into circuits beyond the state’s control, when for example, archives were opened, or shrines handed back to ecclesiastical authority. The reasons for rendering such corpses invisible but death as a “known” fact is not far to seek – they were of people who were well-recognised leaders of the Khalistan movement or were otherwise acknowledged as kharkus (a Punjabi term for freedom fighter, countering the state terminology of terrorist-uggarwadi), projected as militant warriors and defenders of the faith. The state assessed that the corpses of these leaders, as well as the images of the wounded corpses, were objects too emotive and troublesome to be generally viewed. They could not in any way be on display like the corpses of the assassinated Mahatma or the Prime Minister.20
22Where, then, are the images of the missing corpses available for viewing and at least a truncated form of muh dekhna? My research of the militancy period and its aftermath led me to two distinct sources. The cover art of magazines that circulated during the period, though not systematically preserved, was one important, slightly scattered resource. I have briefly described examples of these above. The second was the internet. Both shared the attribute of prohibition. Images were not freely circulated nor widely seen. The internet clearly had more complex circuits of circulation. I first saw Bhindranwale’s corpse on an internet site which contested the Indian state’s narrative of the events leading to, and the aftermath of, 1984. How the internet images were viewed and circulated remains for me an open question vis-à-vis the performative ritual of muh dekhna. To my mind, internet images were distinct from the way images of the dead were displayed in the Kendriya Sikh Ajaibghar of the Darbar Sahib. The Museum displays orchestrate a distinct narrative of martyrdom, establishing a continuity of defending faith through battle scenes and photographs particularly in the period following Operation Bluestar. It is the formal presentation of the corpse in Museum displays – a curated muh dekhna – that makes possible a newly minted performance of viewing the face of the corpse, positioning viewers as interpreters of a version of Sikh history and politics laid out on Museum walls.
- 21 Inderjit Singh Jaijee and Dona Suri, The Legacy of Militancy in Punjab: Long Road t (...)
23The images of corpses judged by the state to be too emotive for display and thus carefully managed, have not completely disappeared. In this sense alone they are unlike the “missing persons” detailed in human rights reports or accounts examining excessive violence.21 These corpses are not displayed within the Museum like Punjabi Suba martyrs. Nor are they painted like those of the Chotta Ghallughara or of Nankana Sahib. They occupy their own space, no less managed or sequestered than a state’s archives or police files. It is this insulation that needs to be addressed.
24Let me turn to one such corpse – that of General Subeg Singh, an important figure in the Indian army, awarded some of the highest military honours, the Param Vishist Seva Medal and the Ati Vishist Seva Medal, recognising distinguished service of the highest order. He trained the Mukti Bahini, the East Pakistan volunteers who fought to achieve independence from West Pakistan, during the Bangladesh Liberation War. Subeg Singh joined the Dharm Yudh Morcha launched by the Akali Dal to implement the 1972 Anandpur Sahib Resolution, that sought control over key resources of Punjab, the implementation of a more federalist distribution of power, in addition to demands for a constitutionally guaranteed identity for Sikhs. He joined Bhindranwale’s movement, and trained and organised militants. Subeg Singh was responsible for fortifying the Darbar Sahib Complex after Bhindranwale had occupied the sacred precincts, and his militia fought against the Indian army troops during the battle of Bluestar.
25In the gallery of the Museum, juxtaposed with the portraits of Beant Singh, Satwant Singh, Jinda, Sukha and others associated with Khalistani militancy and 1984, is a portrait of Subeg Singh [Fig 6] painted in 1996, in the passport photograph style discussed above. Like the other Bluestar martyrs, Subeg Singh, is presented formally dressed in his full army uniform, with all his medals on display. In the caption, the term Shaheed is highlighted and appears to have been inserted at a later stage. Viewers look up at the painted canvas, hung at a height, replicating bodily attitudes of respect, their heads covered and feet bare. Respect is reinforced by the honorific plural reference term Aap Ji of the caption of the portrait. The caption draws our attention to the day and date of Subeg Singh’s death, 6 June, 1984. This is significant to all viewers as the date of Operation Bluestar and the modern ghallughara to which all remembrance rallies of the event are oriented.
Figure 6 Portrait, General Subeg Singh, top left hand corner, with other martyrs of Bluestar [Photograph of exhibits by author, taken with permission granted by the sevadars – custodians – and jathedars – the ritual and administrative functionaries – of the Darbar Sahib shrine and its Museum, 2007]
26The image of Subeg Singh in uniform hung in the Museum gallery is the way his image is most frequently viewed. It is not however, the only image of the General in the Darbar Sahib. A photograph of Subeg Singh as a corpse is housed in an album which forms part of the holdings of the Library of the sacred complex. As described above, the images in the Museum are “open” to view hung on the walls encircled by a series of objects – weapons, spent tank shells and manuscripts – that excite the viewer to imagine the valour of men on the wall in the face of fire. The library continues the ideas of commemoration, but its rooms are set apart, quiet and almost colourless by contrast. Moving from the Museum to the library creates a break in the process of viewing and remembrance.
27Why would an image of a corpse exalted in the Museum as a martyr be preserved in a library of a shrine? What is it doing there? As I have argued here, and elsewhere, the wounded corpse is a visual sign of collective injury and must be collectively seen, mourned and remembered. The corpses of Punjabi Suba protestors, or corpses of battle paintings accomplish muh dekhna as political bodies collectively viewed and mourned. The photographed corpse of Subeg Singh also displays wounds akin to the Punjabi Suba martyrs. In fact, the stark similarities between the corpses on the cover of Sikh Shahadat and the General’s corpse are even more unequivocal of the nature of death; their kesh is uncovered and unkempt, mouths open or slack, bodies in the open, photographed at the site of death. The images of these corpses have not remained sequestered and have been in circulation for view for a fairly long period of time. Viewing is a restoration, a re-inscription, of the meaning of their lives – they are unambiguously viewed as martyrs who died in defence of the faith.
28By contrast, the photograph of Subeg Singhs corpse is infrequently seen. What is generally known is that Subeg Singh was killed during the firing between the Akal Takht and the Darshani Deori, and his body was “found” in the forecourt of the Akal Takht, at a time when the army was in occupation of the Darbar Sahib complex and its surroundings, and the city of Amritsar was under curfew. Subeg Singh’s corpse was therefore a sign of success, a trophy of war, at the moment it was photographed.
- 22 John Berger, The Look of Things, New York: The Viking Press, 1974, 42.
- 23 Ibid. 43.
29Writing of Che Guevara’s death, John Berger begins his essay with a description of Che’s death. “On 10th October, 1967, a photograph was transmitted to the world to prove that Guevara had been killed….”22 Berger goes on to say “We do not know the circumstances of his death [but] one can gain some idea of the mentality of those into whose hands he fell by the treatment of his body after his death.”23 Berger interprets the treatment of Che’s corpse as an example of how corpses of captured rebels would be treated. In the photograph described by Berger, Che’s corpse is shambolic, its eyes open, mouth slack, his blood sodden trousers unbuttoned, signalling the untidiness of violent death.
30Like Che’s photograph, Subeg Singh’s corpse bears the marks of his treatment before he died. Soldiers of the Indian army dressed in their battle fatigues encircle the corpse of the General. The corpse is laid out on the ground in the forecourt of the Akal Takht [which also suffered an architectural “wound” during the battle of Bluestar, its dome destroyed by battle tank shells]. Without a turban, hair unbound, arms raised above the head as if in surrender, feet tied with rope, the image of the lifeless body is surrounded not by mourners but by those he fought against. Like the photograph of Che’s corpse, the General’s lifeless body is meant as a warning. But unlike Che’s corpse, this was not a widely circulated photograph at all. Quite the opposite. Its sequestering by the army suggests the state’s understanding of the corpse and its image as “active”, continuing to possess the ability to arouse rebellious sentiment. Photographed at a time when the sacred complex was under the control of the army, it’s clear that access to the corpse must have been regulated. At the same time, the photograph was essential evidence, to establish proof of death beyond doubt. The image is not attributed, and was probably taken by an army photographer.
31The photograph reproduced in the library album has to do more than present it as evidence of death beyond doubt. It needs to be imaginatively extracted from the state record and replaced within a celebratory narrative of valour and martyrdom. One way in which the caption shifts the narrative is by making evident the treatment of the corpse by the army. The caption reads:
Body of Maj. General Shahbeg [sic] Singh, who was, at one time, the hero of Bangladesh War [sic]. The ropes around his feet and the marks on his arms indicate that he was dragged and tortured to death. His family was not allowed to attend his cremation. When his son Prabhpal Singh asked for his father’s ashes, he was told that government would [sic] immerse them in one of India’s sacred rivers.
32The refusal referenced in the caption points to one of the crucial demands of the Anandpur Sahib Resolution of 1972, that underwrote the movement for an autonomous state of Khalistan. The Resolution demanded the constitutional separation of Sikhs from Hindus, through an amendment to Article 25(2) (b) of the Constitution of India, which includes Sikhs as Hindus for a variety of legal recognitions. The caption references the Resolution and the fear of the government’s proposed act of dealing with the ashes. Post-cremation, Hindus immerse the ashes of the dead in rivers and water bodies, though the River Ganga is preeminent. Sikhs immerse the ashes of their kin at Kiratpur. The refusal to hand over Subeg Singh’s corpse to the son (indicated in the caption) and allow the family to incorporate the corpse into familiar mortuary rituals suggests a military/state knowledge of the importance of retaining the corpse to prevent the conversion of a traitor to a martyr through the honorific treatment of the corpse.
33Against the background of political demands, the place for the immersion of Subeg Singh’s ashes would have been a bone contention. Complete control over the corpse at every stage would enable a mastery over meaning. The caption suggests suspicion of the government’s intention and the fear that in the act of immersing Subeg Singh’s ashes in an unspecified though “sacred” river or water body, the General would be incorporated back into a generalised Indic fold, repudiating the militant demand to delete the provision of the Indian Constitution (Article 25 (2) (b), in which Sikhs are included in the category Hindu). The corpse of the General was a surface on which antagonistic interpretations of ritual acts came face-to-face. The identity of the corpse of the General – as not Hindu, but reclaimed as Sikh – was paramount, but perhaps problematic to establish beyond doubt, precisely because the corpse was not in the hands of the Sikh sangat.
34It seems to me that the real muh dekhna ritual, the sending of the hero toward the collective body, or the sangat of Shaheed, is unequivocally accomplished by the portrait painting hung in the Museum. The celebration of his life, and honouring his status as Shaheed in the Museum portrait caption, was entirely in the hands of the Sikh sangat that restored the Darbar Sahib and its Museum holdings. The ambiguity lay in the photograph of his captured corpse, and what that capture entailed. The image is a troubling reminder of a desecration of faith, of the sacred complex, and of person. The disquiet about the immersion of the General’s ashes could not be voiced without acknowledging the possibility of “conversion” into an Hinduized ritual fold. Forgetting the corpse was vital. In the quiet confines of a library shelf, within a stiffly bound album the General’s corpse could be laid to rest. The focus of viewing and rituals of remembrance shifted toward the portrait of his valued identity in the Museum. The truth of the treatment of the corpse remained as record, rarely seen.
35The ritual of muh dekhna, the last view of the face of a corpse, is an intensely emotional parting. At that ritual moment the corpse is viewed as beginning a journey toward the collective body of venerated ancestors. Viewing is a leave-taking of a loved person; but the ritual moment of viewing is also transformative of the relationship between the dead and the living. The ritual is critical to mourning and to the attitude toward the corpse. The question explored in this article is whether this critical ritual viewing is erased in the absence of a corpse. Or is there a process by and through which muh dekhna is done differently, semantically, as it were expanding the sphere of where and how a corpse is seen, and who the viewers are. This question is germane to an exploration of corpses of war, which are irretrievable for myriad reasons. In the absence of the wounded corpse the need for muh dekhna, its transformative potential and logic, is accentuated. However, muh dekhna would need to be altered in terms of representations, locations, performances and viewers. Within the set apart spaces of a shrine-museum, the Central Sikh Museum located within the Darbar Sahib, the altered muh dekhna of the slain is performed by viewers of battle paintings and photographs. Viewing is charged with the interpretive responsibility of ritually converting the face in portrait painting from that of a defamed identity of insurrectionary to an acclaimed identity of martyr. It is the viewers’ capacity of understanding the corpse that transforms and transports the slain toward the collective body of imagined martyrs.