1The concept of community was closely tied in the classical sociological literature, to the idea of a spatial, bound, face to face sphere of human relationships based upon an innate moral order. In response to the crisis of modernity represented as the death of God, there was a nostalgic movement in both, classical reflections on loss of community and contemporary commentaries on loss of virtue. For instance, the contrast made by Tönnies (1955) between Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft posited community as arising out of a response to the needs of real, organic life whereas society was characterized as a form of social relationship based upon artificial and mechanical relationships of reflective will. Hence his formulation that one goes into Gessellschaft (society) as one goes into a strange country. In more recent studies, community has been treated as a resource for remoralizing areas of life denuded of moral meaning by the growth of a bureaucratic, impersonal rationality (see especially Habermas 1986; Unger 1975). We see two major problems in this nostalgic rendering of community. The first is that by ignoring the extent to which violence plays a role in defining community, the nostalgic view gives a rather sanitized view of community. Secondly it overlooks the fact that community in the contemporary context is defined as much by structures of modernity, including bureaucratic law as by a customary, face to face order of social relations.

2In the present paper we offer two institutionalized models of violence in contemporary Punjab.1 In the first model the symbol of martyrdom provides the moral basis for defining the larger Sikh community by establishing a consubstantiation between the violence of sacrifice and the moral community of Sikhs. The second model of violence is based on the negative reciprocity of feud and vendetta2 through which the specific identity of Jat Sikhs is established within the larger community of Sikhs. For the moment we reserve the question of whether such negative reciprocity can provide the basis for defining a moral community. Finally, in order to avoid the common misunderstanding that community formations occur independently of modem structures of power and governance, we show how the symbols of martyrdom and vengeance are transformed within these structures. Thus martyrdom is used as a symbol to construct Sikh identity in the modern militant movement against the state in India while processes of vengeance become incorporated into the legal discourse on criminality.

3Our data consist of three parts. The first is the oral and written discourse of the militant movement in Punjab in which special attention has been paid to the magazines brought out by various militant groups and the oral discourses of the militant leader, Bhindranwale who is revered as a sant (saint) by many Sikhs. The second part consists of narrative accounts of on-going feuds within the Jat Sikh community given by participants, eye witnesses of violent encounters and many others who claimed to have special knowledge on several such encounters. The accounts have been collected from the three major areas of Majha, Doab and Malwa regions. Finally we have been fortunate in getting access to lawyer’s briefs pertaining to sixty cases of Jat Sikh feuds that have come up in the Sessions Courts of Patiala, Jallandhar, and Amritsar. In some cases, appeals have been made in the High Court of Punjab, and one case is pending in the Supreme Court. The period covered is 1950 to 1987. We are aware of the dangers of using such a heterogeneous set of data, but the nature of the subject rules out the methods of normal anthropological enquiry such as participant observation in either the militant movement or in feuds.

MARTYRDOM AND FEUD: THE CONCEPTUAL MODELS

4We first attempt to construct ideal typical models of martyrdom and feud in terms of a binary opposition which is not sustained in the analysis of the empirical cases, but is ‘good to think’ with. We present the features of the two discourses in a highly stylized way before showing their modification and mutual contamination in the development of actual cases.

5In the modem militant literature of the Sikhs, martyrdom as a symbol has a special place in the construction of the past. The execution of Guru Teg Bahadur, the defiant “Epistle of Victory” (Zafarnama) addressed to Emperor Aurengzeb by Guru Gobind Singh at the moment when he had lost all including his four sons, the willing submission of Banda Bahadur to torture and his execution, provide root metaphors for Sikh history through which the idea of the self is constructed.3 The transformation of these root metaphors in contemporary political writing may be seen in the organization of images in which Sikh identity is constructed primarily through the metaphor of martyrdom. The self of the Sikh as it emerges is that of a martyr whose sacrifices have fed the community. Indeed, even when there is a difference of emphasis, an important image in all the texts of modem Sikh militants is that of charkhi chadna and khopdi utarvana – i.e. being slowly ground to death over a churning wheel or offering one’s head at the stake. These are punishments that the defiant Sikhs are said to have received at the hands of several Mughal emperors because of the insistence of the Sikhs to protest against injustice. Consider the following example in which the construction of the self and the construction of the past appear as conjoint themes.

“History has always been repeating itself. Sikh people passed through a critical phase after the death of Banda Bahadur Gurbaksh Singh in 1716, that some historians called it the darkest period of Sikh history [...] time again took a new turn with the martyrdom of Bhai Man Singh in 1734 A. D. [...] In this way began once again the era of struggle for the Sikhs that subsequently was converted into the golden age of the Sikhs. Which sacrifice is there in the history of the world that Sikhs had not to pay for this conversion? A terribly dark route from the teeth of ‘Charhi’ to the edge of the sword was traversed. Every inch of the land where we today have assembled was covered by the precious blood of the Khalsa, then and then only could we harness the days when Kashmir, Jamraud, and Ladakh bowed before the Kesri Nisan Sahib and Nanak-Shahi coins could replace the Muslim one’s [sic].”4

6Thus the image of the community as one created through heroic sacrifice pervades this discourse and threats to the solidarity of the community are also translated into threats to its heroic image as in the following passage.

"... the Sikhs have been softened and conditioned during the last fifty years to bear and put up with insults to their religion and all forms of other oppression, patiently and without demur, under the sinister preaching and spell of the narcotic cult of non-violence, much against the clear directive of their gurus, their Prophets, not to turn the other cheek before a tyrant, not to take lying down any insult to their religion, their self-respect, and their human dignity.”5

7The defining feature of the discourse of the martyr is that sacrifice is undertaken on behalf of the community. Just as it was said about Banda Bahadur that he was a shy and retiring man, who was compelled into a heroic stance because of the threat to the Sikh community, so it is said about Bhindranwale that he was a religious man who would have liked to have spent his life in quiet meditation if he had not been compelled by the danger to the Sikh identity in modem India to take to political action (siyasi masle).

8What is the threat to the community that is sought to be averted by the sacrifice offered by the martyr? The first threat is the reduction of life to the sphere of the personal to the exclusion of the political. The paradigmatic text in this context is the Zafarnama, the “Epistle of Victory” addressed to Emperor Aurengzeb by Guru Gobind Singh. According to one interpretation, what Aurengzeb offered to the Guru was a life of peace in return for his silence on the oppression unleashed by the Emperor. As one contributor to the militant discourse told us, “There was one moment in history when either a revolution could occur or society could continue on the same path. When the Guru addressed the Epistle of Victory at the moment of defeat, he showed the Emperor that the Sikhs were not willing to reduce their life and their faith to tilling their lands and breeding children. At that moment he established a right over the public sphere and the subsequent sacrifices of the Sikhs have been about reclaiming that right.”

9The sacrifice of the martyr, then, has to be public, spectacular, undertaken on behalf of the community, but also unique because it is undertaken with the specific understanding that the martyr invites violence upon himself. By virtue of this invitation, he forbids a return in the same coin; there is no vengeance because the violence should not be allowed to degenerate into the violence of the feud. It is the stoic acceptance of pain that makes the martyr’s blood feed that of the community.

10In the narratives woven around the life and death of Bhindranwale, these motifs are repeatedly used. For example, when he was arrested following charges of murder of a prominent journalist against him, his arrest was represented as something that he ‘voluntarily gave’. In a speech given just before his imminent arrest, Bhindranwale urged his followers to remain peaceful. “Every stone thrown at a policeman, every abuse hurled at those who have come to arrest me, will be like a stone thrown at my body, an abuse hurled against me.” In this motif, we can see that the martyr presents his body that can absorb the violence of the oppressor without allowing it become generalized violence in the community. In this sense, the insight provided by the work of Girard (1972) that sacrifice is a means by which violence may be transformed into community is substantiated by the narrative organization of images here. This is not to say that either Bhindranwale or the other writers in the militant magazines are consistent in inviting violence only upon themselves, for as one of us has argued elsewhere, the discourse also directs violence against others. However the exhortations to kill others are always couched in ambiguity, whereas the image of the martyr does not evoke any ambivalence about the morality of the action.

11In view of the fact that Sikh history is presented in terms of a series of repetitions in which a community that is at the point of disintegration is recreated through the blood of the martyr, what does one mean when one says that the martyr is unique? This may be understood in two related senses. First, in the case of the feud, violence undertaken by a person may be avenged by the victim or someone acting on behalf of the victim by killing a substitute. In the case of the martyr, the question of substitution does not arise because his sacrifice is unique. Second, martyrdom does not allow the martyr to claim the status of a Guru. In fact every sacrifice is a way of relating to the Guru – the Sikh (lit. ‘disciple’) ‘buys’ his Guru by his sacrifice and conversely a martyr undertaking a sacrificial death on behalf of the community is protected by the Guru, which is why he is unaffected by torture and fear of death. It is interesting that the discourse of martyrdom is haunted by the fleeting possibility that it may become converted into the discourse of feud. For example, although Bhindranwale never claimed that he was a sant – indeed, such honour can be bestowed only by others on a person – his claims to sainthood were dependent upon the capacity of the community to create a shared narrative about his activities. Such a shared narrative could not be created because there were always doubts whether he was acting on behalf of the community or on the behest of some factional leaders of the Congress Party. Further, his manner of dying was not considered by many to be the manner in which a martyr seeks death. Bhindranwale was killed during the Blue Star Operation against militants hidden in the Golden Temple undertaken by the Indian Army in 1984.6 This operation itself produced contesting claims on the meaning of sacred spaces. For the militants, the Golden Temple was claimed as a sanctuary from which they could legitimately wage a violent conflict against the state. For the state on the other hand, the stockpiling of weapons in the temple was a desecration of the sacred space and a misuse of the gurudwara. Whatever the claims and the counterclaims, there is little doubt that the action of the military resulted in death, destruction, and hardship for many innocent pilgrims who were caught between the two opposing forces.

12Let us, however, return to the question of the disputes over the manner of dying of Bhindranwale. For some time the militants claimed that he had not been killed but had escaped and would come back to lead the Sikh masses. They claimed that the government of India was engaged in false propaganda when they claimed that Bhindranwale had been killed while hiding in the temple. This is not how a martyr would have courted death, it was claimed. À martyr seeks death with the same passion and ardor as if it were his beautiful bride. A martyr is never ‘killed’ – he surrenders to death as one would surrender to a lover. However, since no public accounts of such courting of death on the part of Bhindranwale could be sustained, his death could not be put in the genealogy of heroic deaths. For a time it seemed that Bhindranwale would be consecrated as a saint by the evolution of a shared narrative about his heroic life and death – but in the end, the discourse of feud claimed him.

THE FEUD IN THE JAT SIKH COMMUNITY

13The anthropological literature has long recognized that the institution of feud is intimately related to conceptions of social order. In the classic monographs of Evans-Pritchard on the Nuer, feud was recognized as an expression of the social order. The typical genealogical map for the stylized representation of feud in his work is one in which men are represented through patrilineal connections. According to the influential segmentary theory developed by him, the genealogical map provides a paradigm of political alliances. The typical feature of this genealogical map is that each man is shown to have two sons thus providing the nucleus of two groups of equal size, pitted against each other. The institution of feud provides an opportunity for the dramatic expression of lineage solidarity at every level of the social structure, the typical division of the tribe being the division into maximal, major, minor and minimal lineages.

14This mechanical model of segmentation assumes that relations between men can only be conceived through the exercice of paternal authority and filial unity. In a remarkable critique of this model, Meeker (1979) argues that the major failure of such mechanical models of segmentation lies in the fact that they cannot tell us how men’s desires are implicated in their genealogies. As an alternate he suggests that, “The near-Eastem tribal genealogy can be plausibly viewed as the product of men who define themselves as a society of men struggling with one another, a society in which men do not come together to live in peace, but come apart to live by war.”

15In the case of the Jat Sikhs, violence and conflict mark the relationships within the biradari. The conflicts are mostly over land although as we shall see later, they can also grow out of rivalries over women and can gather in themselves other issues such as betrayals in courts of law, or sharing of spoils in the political arena. However, what is clear is that they do not follow any pattern of genealogical nearness or distance. Of the 75 cases of homicide on which we were able to get detailed data, 38 were cases pertaining to the Jat Sikhs, while the rest of the 37 cases were distributed among other castes such as the Majhabi Sikhs, Adharmis, Ramgariahs, Brahmins, and various service castes. Of the 38 cases 30 involved disputes over land. No clear genealogical pattern emerges in the formation of solidarities and conflicts so that contending parties in the dispute could be patrilateral parallel cousins, one set of brothers against another, a set of brothers against the father, one set of brothers along with the father against another set of brothers. In addition, as disputes unfold over time, new alliances are made so that genealogy alone cannot provide a map of political alliances. It is our main contention that whereas a genealogical representation of alliances in a feud presumes a degree of descriptive certainty, in fact it is essential that we understand the uncertainty of relationships within the biradari and even within the family to understand the nature of vendetta among the Jat Sikhs.

16It may be useful at this point to consider the model of feud and vendetta (as distinct from the model of the martyr) in schematic form to show how differently are these notions structured among the Jat Sikhs.

1. There is no mediation of gods, goddesses, or gurus in the case of vendetta. This mediation is only reserved for the discourse of the martyr. As we showed earlier, several stories about the martyrdom of Sikh heroes dwell upon the torture and slow killing to which they may have been subjected. The narrator, however, always adds a framing sentence to the effect that because of the mediation and protection of the Guru, the pain and suffering were not felt by the martyr. In all the narratives of vendetta that we have collected, any reference to the mediation of exalted beings is absent. This shows that the violence of vendetta cannot be seen as consecrated by the sacred.

2. Genealogy does not provide a map for political alliances. Relations are so uncertain that any combination is possible. This uncertainty attaches itself to the domain of property of which land is the most important signifier, and to the domain of sexuality of which women are the most important signifiers.

3. The possibility of a feud exists when a line, however jagged, can be drawn within the biradari.

4. In accordance with the uncertainty of relations to which we alluded earlier, genealogy is never sufficient for political alliances in vendetta. This requires a further contractual relation which has a ritual character. Relations of alliance for purposes of securing vendetta may be secured by taking of vows (e.g. we shall remain friends, yar, till our dying breath) or by exchange and mixing of blood.

5. Vendetta is seen as punishment meted to someone who has broken a relationship of solidarity by betrayal. This is why vendetta cannot occur between strangers. The symbolic marker that signifies vendetta is a speech form known as lalkara. Typically the victim is ambushed or lured into a situation from which he cannot escape. But at the moment of his death, he must know that this death is in the form of an execution. Thus, if he is asleep he must be woken up. If it is dark he must know who his executors are. In addition he must hear the lalkara that takes a form such as this: adalat wich jhuthi gavahi den da maja chakh ( “enjoy the fruit of having given false witness in the court”).

17We shall demonstrate the above points by one case study. But let us first attempt a definition of community as it is defined through vendetta. The contrast between the notion of community created through sharing with community created through exchange lies at the heart of many anthropological distinctions, the most prominent of which is the community of descent and the community created through alliance. In his classic study, Lévi-Strauss (1967) shows that it is only through restricted or generalized exchange that a global (in the sense of total) structure of exchange can be built which has at its basis the moral community of men created through exchange of women. However, even in this form of community Lévi-Strauss notices the possibilities of rupture and the ambivalence around exchange as it is expressed through protracted marriage negotiations: female poetry, as well as the tendency to deal with the ‘risks’ of exchange through curtailing the long cycles of exchange into short cycles. Thus human desire intervenes; it sometimes impels human beings to recognize the limits of their moral communities which are created through laws of exchange by presenting the possibility of evading these laws – at other times “... the prohibited marriage appears in spectral form: it gnaws at the social conscience with a kind of nostalgia and remorse.” (Levi-Strauss 1967)

18Thus darker passions which underlie all socially approved forms of exchange are recognized by Lévi-Strauss but are banished from his theory of exchange. We suggest that in the case of feud and vendetta we are witnessing this underside of exchange, its shadowy existence to which substance is given through a recognition of the darker passions of man. If rules of marriage exchange give a cultural structure to desire as it is consecrated by society, rules of vendetta give form to desires that are not consecrated by society but are nevertheless recognized. These, then, may be considered as providing rules of disorder. Thus at one level we can compare the creation of community through rules of exchange expressed in marriage and gift-giving (as has been done by Lévi-Strauss and Dumont), with the creation of community through rules of exchange relating to vendetta. Both types of rules split the society by instituting difference and then unite it by exchange. This level is to be opposed to another level at which a different definition of community comes into being through the discourse of the martyr which institutes the oneness of community. This non-differentiated unity is expressed in the uniqueness of the martyr, the destruction of resemblance, the intervention of the divine, and through commemoration of the sacrifice of the martyr in public memory.

19The violence of vendetta is always viewed with an ambivalence, that is completely absent in the discourse of the martyr. Thus community is not only created through laws and desires that society consecrates but also has a dark side corresponding to the darker passions. This is seen in all narratives that describe the origins of a vendetta. Typically such descriptions make reference to the darker passions. “His behavior made bitter anger arise within me”; “The woman saw Amar Singh for the first time and was infatuated. This gave rise to vendetta among the cousins”; “His neighbor would pass over his fields everyday, knowing he had no right of passage. Smouldering anger arose within him at this slight.”

20The recognition that community has a dark underside reflected in rules of vendetta is shown by the fact that such feelings of envy, anger, bitterness and hate are not treated only as individual disorders but as passions, the pursuit of which defines relations between men and values of masculinity among the Jat Sikhs. What then differentiates this form of violence from purely individual instances of violence is the fact that there are well understood rules by which darker passions may be pursued through vendetta which are absent in the case of individual transgressions. For instance, a woman killing another woman in a fit of passion would be treated by the Jat Sikhs as having committed an individual transgression. Her violence could not be made the origin of an ongoing vendetta. In contrast, one may vow to avenge the death of a brother or a friend if they form an alliance against another feuding party.

AN EXAMPLE

21This is a case study of a feud which had its origin in 1952 and found its most dramatic expression in 1975 when 22 people were shot dead in the Sessions Court at Jallandhar. We first relate the story as it was told by a friend of one of the principal accused.7

It all started in 1952 or 53 over a woman called Joginder Kaur who lived in a moffusil town called Nakodar. She was of incomparable beauty. She was married to Mihan Singh and till then they had lived a happy married life. One day two brothers, Amar Singh and Pyara Singh, who were biradari relatives of Mihan Singh came to the village. They happened to meet Joginder Kaur in a relative’s house. Joginder Kaur was infatuated by Amar Singh. They met several times and Amar Singh confided his relationship with this woman to his younger brother Pyara Singh. Together they persuaded her to elope with them. They fled to a village away from Punjab, in Pilbhit district, where one of their relatives Umrao Singh had a farm. Mihan Singh, the husband of the woman filed a complaint at the Police Station. After some time, the police were able to trace them to this village in Pilbhit and Umrao Singh, Amar Singh and Pyara Singh were arrested. However, Joginder Kaur made a statement in court that she had gone with Pyara Singh8 of her own will and that she was married to him.

22Mihan Singh had come with many of his relatives to the court ready for a fight. He and his relatives were so humiliated by this public confession of Joginder Kaur that they wanted to kill her along with her lovers right outside the court, but relatives of Amar Singh, Umrao Singh and Joginder Kaur had come prepared for precisely such an encounter. When Mihan Singh saw that they were outnumbered by the other side (ona da pasa bhari si), he withdrew swearing vengeance.

23That night Amar Singh and Pyara Singh went to have drinks with a friend Charan Singh who was a Nambardar of Nurpur village, and his brother Swaran Singh. A distant cousin of Charan Singh, called Darshan Singh, shot him dead when they were all drunk pretending that he had really wanted to shoot Amar Singh because of an altercation over Joginder Kaur. Darshan Singh was arrested. Pyara Singh was to give witness against Darshan Singh but he took a bribe from Darshan Singh’s ‘party’ and rescinded his earlier statement. Now Swaran Singh swore to take revenge for his brother’s death. So the feud now shifted between Amar, Pyara, and Darshan against Swaran Singh and his party.

24Swaran Singh had to lie low for several years. In 1960 he came in touch with Udai Singh who had made quite a name for himself as a hired killer. The two men struck a great friendship. Now Swaran Singh, Udai Singh and another cousin Harbhajan Singh disguised themselves as hired laborers and were able to shoot Pyara Singh dead. They were arrested but were acquitted for lack of witnesses. It now fell on Amar Singh to avenge the death of his brother Pyara Singh from his enemies, Swaran Singh, Harbhajan Singh, and Udai Singh.

25In 1964 or so, another incident happened. One of the biradari called ‘Maikian’ came to visit people in Amar Singh’s village. As they were leaving, their relatives along with Amar Singh and some others came to the borders of the village to see them off. However, one of Amar Singh’s enemies had made contact with them and persuaded a member of their clan to take this opportunity and kill him. This man suddenly shot at Amar Singh but even as he was falling, Amar Singh shot him dead. Amar Singh was injured but he recovered. He was also acquitted in the court on the charge of murder as he was supposed to have fired in self-defence.

26In 1966, Amar Singh made another attempt to take revenge against Swaran Singh and his party. Amar Singh and his friends went disguised as policemen to Rusulpur village and enacted the whole drama (pura drama keeta) of a police raid. They arrested Swaran Singh and his two brothers and as they were bringing them to the outskirts of the village to shoot him, he recognized one Sadhu Singh who was accompanying Amar Singh and cried out that it was an ambush. Amar Singh and his friends shot dead the three brothers. They were arrested but were acquitted again. Meanwhile Harbhajan Singh and a friend called Bau who had been arrested on another murder charge, were also acquitted and they took on the responsibility of avenging the death of Swaran Singh and his brothers.

27In 1970 a marriage took place in which Amar Singh was a guest. Harbhajan Singh and Bhaji, along with their friends disguised themselves as military men and positioned themselves in the way in order to ambush and kill Amar Singh. Bhaji threw grenades at their party and Amar Singh and his five supporters were killed. Amar Singh had also made friends with a notorious criminal and smuggler, Mohinder Singh Azad, who in revenge killed a man called Mota Mikka (motta meaning ‘fat’, is the nickname) of Harbhajan’s group. Harbhajan made an oath, “If I survive, I will avenge this killing.” Harbhajan was arrested and tried for the five murders and was sentenced to life imprisonment. His other friends were declared absconding. In 1975 he requested the court to be allowed to go and attend the marriage of his brother. His enemies Mohinder Singh Azad and five others came to know that Harbhajan would be present in court for the hearing of his petition. So, disguised as ragis (musicians) they took position in a hotel room near the court. When Harbhajan Singh, with his brother, sister’s husband and some friends, who had come to see him, was waiting in the courtyard of the Kachari, they shot and killed six people and six others were injured.

28In the attempt to capture them, the police shot and killed Mohinder Singh Azad and Bissa, one of his associates. Mita, Chindda, and Surinder Singh, the other associates were arrested and given life imprisonment. This was reduced in the High Court and they came out of jail in 1983. Mita and Chindda took shelter into the Golden Temple and joined Bhindranwale’s fold. Chindda was butchered by Bhindranwale’s men in May 1984, for having killed Surinder Singh Sodhi who was also involved in all this and had become a trusted confidant of Bhindranwale. Mita decided to live a peaceful life and married Joginder Kaur whose elopement with Amar Singh and Pyara Singh gave birth to this whole feud.

29As this narrative reveals it self, we are struck by the uncertainty which prevails in all relationships. Mihan Singh loses his wife Joginder Kaur to two of his biradari relatives. The woman is mentioned as the first cause of the enmity but we notice that while she may have provided for the solidarity of the two brothers for she is supposed to have been infatuated by both, her husband cannot muster the resources to pursue vendetta against them. Soon the narrative shifts in emphasis and vendetta due to betrayals among men becomes the focus of the story. Cousins betraying each other; friends rescinding in court; and an ever changing composition in which hired assassins, factions against the state level as well as involvement of different sets of relatives make it possible for the story of vendetta to be pursued. In order to appreciate how contingent are the events and relationships through which the story of vendetta is pursued, we simply give below the bare bones of the narrative in sequential terms:

301952/53 A woman’s infatuation creates a line of conflict within the biradari. An alliance between Amar Singh, Pyara Singh and Umrao Singh defeats the husband and his close relatives through show of force in the court of law.

311953 Pyara Singh gets entangled through pure contingency of having been present in a violent encounter between two cousins – Darshan Singh and Charan Singh. He gives false witness leading to feud between Amar Singh, Pyara Singh, and Darshan Singh – the assassin, on one side – and Swaran Singh – the brother of the slain man, on the other.

321960 Swaran Singh recruits and befriends hired assassin Udai Singh and is also joined by a cousin, Harbhajan Singh, through ties of friendship. Swaran Singh, Udai Singh, and Harbhajan Singh shoot Pyara Singh dead. Amar Singh vows vengeance.

331966 Amar Singh shoots dead Swaran Singh and two of his surviving brothers (the narrative does not mention their active participation in the feud). Harbhajan Singh swears to avenge the death of his friend. He recruits five others. Amar Singh makes friends with a notorious smuggler Mohinder Singh Azad.

341970 In an encounter between the two groups, Harbhajan Singh kills Amar Singh but his associate Mikka Mota is killed by Amar Singh’s friend Mohinder Singh Azad.

351975 Harbhajan Singh is arrested but on one occasion when he is out on parole for the day, he is attacked and killed by Mohinder Singh and his associates. In the chase police kill Mohinder Singh and one of his associates, Bissa. Two others – Mita and Chindda – are arrested.

361983 On being released, Chindda and Mita take refuge with Bhindranwale. Chindda is killed in an act of vengeance within the disputing groups of the militants. Mita decides to live a peaceful life and marries Joginder Kaur who makes an appearance in the narrative only at the beginning and the end.

IN THE COURT OF LAW

37We shall now try to see how this narrative is transformed in the context of the court case. We are going to limit ourselves to the judgement in the High Court arising out of the appeal against the judgement of the Sessions Court in the case of the Jallandhar murders in which Harbhajan was butchered. Although as it is clear from the narrative, that the feud is interspersed with several murders, court cases and criminal trials, we cannot go into all of these here.

THE LEGAL NARRATIVE

38In any legal narrative we would find contested versions about the events under legal scrutiny. We give first, the master summary of the case as it appears in the High Court judgement in which appeal was made against the order of Sh. Prithipal Singh Grewal, Addl. Sessions Judge on 24 May 1978 convicting the eight appellants with punishments ranging from seven years to life imprisonment. There was also an appeal made by Surinder Singh who was convicted and awarded death sentence. The summary of the case as pronounced by the judge is as follows.9

This appeal arises out of a case in which 6 men lost their lives and 6 men were injured in the courtyard of Sessions Court in Jullundher when they were waiting with the accused Harbhajan Singh who was charged with the murder of Amar Singh. 22 men were said to have been responsible for the occurrence. 16 accused persons were prosecuted together. 4 of the accused were acquitted. Mohinder Singh Azad was killed in a police encounter while the case was going on on 15 or 16th January. One of the accused Gajjan Singh turned approver and is now being separately prosecuted. 4 of the accused are absconding.
The background of the case is said to be an old enmity extending to 22 years. Murder of 12 persons had already taken place. 2 persons (a father and a son) were killed on May 25, 1978. Five persons concerned in the present case were being prosecuted in earlier cases. They were absconding. Harbhajan Singh was helping the police in pursuing them but was himself placed under arrest for reasons of security.
The Sessions Court had awarded imprisonment from 7 years to life imprisonment on the testimony of Jaswant Singh, brother of Harbhajan Singh who was himself injured and who was supported by Charan Singh. The court examined the testimony of Preetam Singh who was in charge of Police Post No. 4 and who is supposed to have found Jaswant Singh as he was going in an injured state to the police post. The court found this testimony to be suspect because although the incident occurred at 11 in the morning, the fir was only filed at 7 in the evening. Thus the testimony regarding time of recording of fir is considered unreliable and it seems likely that the fir was dictated by the police. The car plate No. in which the assailants were escaping was identified by Jaswant Singh. It is improbable that in an injured state Jaswant Singh would have been able to read and remember precisely the car plate No. The suspicion is therefore strengthened that the fir was recorded later and information about the car was supplied to the police after they had found the abandoned car in which the assailants had escaped.
About the major assailants, Malkiat Singh and Surinder Singh who were supposed to have first fired and killed Harbhajan Singh, and who were absconding, the court felt that their behavior strengthened the case against them. The case against the other appellants was that they fired from outside the court walls in order to help the five major assailants to escape. This firing resulted in injuries and death of a constable and a hawker. These appellants were supposed to have helped the two major accused because of the old enmity over women and because of their involvement in smuggling. The court rejected these motives and stated that if the motives were ascribed collectively then the guilt of each particular appellant became difficult to establish.

39This reasoning of the court was further strengthened because the corroborative evidence of Charan Singh could not be trusted as he had been convicted of several excise offenses and therefore it would be easy for the police to influence him in giving collaborative evidence. Gajjan Singh who had turned approver was not brought as witness because he was not willing to support the prosecution. Finally the police had been unable to supply the various pertinent documents including the roznamchah.

40The court’s conclusion was that “Taking advantage of a heinous occurrence which had taken place, the police wanted to collect together as many dangerous persons as possible for being prosecuted in this case.” Thus while the court acquitted the 8 persons who had appealed, it reduced the death sentence against Surinder Singh on the ground that the fir as well as the evidence of the police personnel was perjured and it was not possible to prove as to whose act was responsible for which murder.

DISCUSSION

41In the modem legal system, vendetta becomes transformed into crime. However, the nature of this transformation is not very clear for one could also say that from another perspective it is the procedures of the court and the investigative procedures which become part of the uncertainty of relations which are the mark of the culture of vendetta.

42First of all, courts introduce a new arena of uncertainty simply because the normal assumption that the court proceedings take place in the natural language of the people is not valid here. Two kinds of transformations at the level of language take place in the court and even before that in the investigative proceedings. The first transformation relates to the oral discourse being converted into a written one. The judge in the High Court was certain that the fir had been dictated because of the timing and the manner in which details had been specified. But in fact it is common practice in the police station that the fir must follow a format dictated by the presiding police officer. In almost every fir that we have examined that reports a murder, there is a formulaic beginning: “We were coming to you to report this murder when we saw a police patrol quite near the place of murder and we reported it.” Thus the fir filed by Harbhajan’s brother that said that the police man had found him injured and bandaged and willing to give a statement as eye witness of the murder was contrived; but this formulaic rendering is simply part of the linguistic culture of police conventions at the local level of the thana.

43Secondly, in the transformation of their narrative, the people filing firs, have to rely upon the recording of someone in the police station. This fact can be used by the police to record things which the witness may not have stated or it may be a tool in the hands of the person appearing in court to deny earlier statements. In the Sessions Court, Jaspal Singh who was the eye witness and had initially given the whole history of the feud, completely denied his statements. For instance, he stated, “I did not say in my statement that Tejpal Singh, Mohan Singh, Monni and others were part of the gang of Amar Singh and Pyara Singh.” When confronted with his earlier statement, he said that it is so recorded but “I did not say it.”

44Thirdly, the relation between a person and his speech in a court of law becomes a mediated relationship because of nature of language as well as canons of evidence. In the legal process it is often assumed that the canonic level of the law (here rules of evidence) assume the referential level. However, I would submit that the referential level is itself created by the canon of the law. Thus in describing events, people would often assume both in the thana and in the court that the validity of the statements would be judged by some judicial canons and then tailor their description accordingly. Thus one person describing a murder may say that a particular person inflicted a wound about six inches below the neck. Even if such a description is true, it is not often the language of everyday life. Now what has happened in this description is that the eye witness who has probably been involved in several such cases, imagines what the post-mortem report would say and produces evidence in accordance with that canon. Again a court may find, as the High Court did, that the very precision is suspect since a person witnessing a gruesome murder may not be able to remember the precise location of a wound in terms of inches. Thus nature of memory in the judicial process is quite different from the social context.

45In establishing the legal person in criminal proceedings then, the person is not only a cognitive and a moral person, but also one who is constructed by the court as a manipulator of the legal process. This is most evident in the strictures that are often passed at the High Court level upon the investigative agencies. For instance, perjuring the fir or violating police procedure by not keeping the roznamchah is often grounds for reducing the sentence of someone facing trial or acquitting him. In fact, from our evidence those who take part in the culture of vendetta have assimilated court procedure into their own culture. This is why acquittal of people known to be involved in murders are frequent even when there have been eye witnesses. And as we saw, giving false evidence in court has become a major part of the vendetta culture.

46For those cases which come up to the High Court, the interest of the trial is that it often shows the agencies of the case themselves involved at some level in this culture of vendetta. In the case of Gajjan Singh, the police had taken the case as convenient for implicating all those who were involved either in the feud or were otherwise eluding the police net. Hence although only six people were named in the first information report, the inspector had persuaded other witnesses to name other people. One witness, the court found, had acted as police witness in 200 excise cases. Similarly evidence was procured from one person by turning him into approver.

47It is also interesting to note that while the Sessions Judge was willing to accept enmity as motive for the murders, the High Court found it insufficient motive to fix individual guilt.

48From the perspective of the participants in vendetta – men whose lives seem to be defined by the singular search for avenging the murders and betrayals through which the uncertainty of relationships reveals itself – the court becomes a further arena in which the vendetta may be pursued. It is a symbol both of an institution run by rules but one whose ‘enunciative powers’ can be used by the forces of the community in accordance with its own rules of disorder. In the transformation from vouloir to savoir to pouvoir that Greimas (1976) saw as essential to the legal discourse as a semiotic discourse, the court and the police reveal a series of rules through which illegalities must be pursued. Here, ironically, is an instance in which community integrates the legal culture in its own culture of uncertainty and disorder.

CONCLUDING COMMENTS

49We have described two opposing ways of constructing the community through violence. The discourse of the martyr by attracting violence upon itself, provides a means of transforming violence into community. In the modem extremist discourse, we have shown how such a discourse provides a way of organizing memory and thus using the concept of the community as a resource to challenge the ideological hegemony of the state. The simultaneous existence of the discourse of vendetta, on the other hand, constructs community through the dark underside of exchange – recognizing and giving form to the darker passions of man which are also implicated in the creation of community. These forms of community also touch the institutions of the state and give it a character as in the case of legal institutions. Thus rather than opposing community and society as two different modes of constructing experience, we have tried to show the plurality in the definition of community itself and located the different points in which it shapes and is, in turn, shaped by the institutions of the state in contemporary Punjabi society.