Bibi Sandeep Kaur Khalsa: The Sikh Militant, The Widow and Protector of the Orphans of Militancy

Bibi Sandeep Kaur was born in 1971 in the village of Sarchur within the state of Panjab, India. Entering her life is a complicated and fascinating task, as it allows us to make visible, on the one hand, the participation of women in insurgent groups, their importance, and their experience. We can analyse the structures of male domination, but at the same time the agency and strategies of women within these structures. Bibi Sandeep Kaur became involved in Sikh militancy at the age of 18 through her marriage to one of the leaders, Dharam Singh, who is killed in a confrontation with the police. She was arrested and spent several years in jail accused of being an accomplice to her husband's terrorist activities. Now a widow, she set up an orphanage to protect the children of the "shaheeds" (martyrs) of the movement.  It is important to see the orphanage as a space of memory of her resistance, where she preserves the Sikh khalsa (pure) identity that the leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale built between 1970 and 1984

The paper I am presenting seeks to contribute to a different history of the conflict between Indira Gandhi and the Sikhs, since women resistance and agency have been invisible. The research is part of my ethnographic work in which many methods were involved: life history, biography in dialogue and participant observation, and the analysis of audiovisual materials (interviews, documentaries), journalistic notes about her, academic works linking her story, and her autobiography in panjabi.