Explainer: Ram Narayan Kumar, the man who guided Jaswant Singh Khalra

As Punjab revisits the life and work of human rights activist Jaswant Singh Khalra following the controversy over the film ‘Satluj’, a key figure who guided him and shaped his mission has largely slipped out of public memory.

Ram Narayan Kumar, an outsider to Punjab, worked alongside Khalra. Together, they compiled meticulous reports on staged police encounters and forced disappearances in the border state. These later formed the basis of landmark legal cases and definitive books.

Beyond his seminal report ‘Reduced to Ashes’ and his final 2008 work, ‘Terror in Punjab: Narratives, Knowledge and Truth’, Kumar’s extensive bibliography included ‘The Sikh Struggle: Origin, Evolution and Present Phase’, ‘The Sikh Unrest and the Indian State’, and his early political memoir, ‘Confronting the Hindu Sphinx’.

Role of a Mentor

Originally from Andhra Pradesh, Kumar moved to Kathmandu in Nepal and later to Vienna in Austria. He continued working on human rights violations during the Emergency, the Punjab insurgency, the anti-Sikh riots, and later in Jammu and Kashmir, Assam and other parts of the country.

Chandigarh-based advocate Rajwinder Singh Bains, a veteran of numerous legal battles against fake encounters, remembers Kumar as Khalra’s foundational guide. “Jaswant Singh Khalra began the research on cremation of unclaimed bodies, but it was Ram Narayan Kumar who taught him the rigorous methodology of proper legal documentation,” Bains says. Kumar, he adds, also played an important part in investigating the abduction and killing of Akal Takht Jathedar Gurdev Singh Kaunke.

Amritsar-based advocate Sarbjit Singh Verka laments that Kumar did not receive due recognition despite being one of the most relentless chroniclers of custodial killings and enforced disappearances during Punjab’s bloodiest years. Verka says Kumar returned from Austria to Kathmandu, where he died of a sudden illness on June 28, 2009, at the age of 56.

In an obituary published on the website Sikhchic.com, his close associate Jagmohan Singh recalled Kumar as a frail, unassuming man who had immersed himself in the Sikh cause. He described him as a former monk who once lived in Delhi, and took a keen interest in bringing to light human rights violations.

According to Singh, Kumar was perpetually on the move, relentlessly tracking down lawyers, families of victims, and former militants — anyone who could bring him closer to the truth. Singh also disclosed that despite owning a house in Delhi, Kumar would live for months in a hotel room so he could finish his book on the Sikhs undisturbed, a detail known to few.

About the man

Anjuman Ara Begum, who wrote his biographical account, said Kumar’s activism began long before Punjab entered his life. Jailed for 19 months in 1975 for opposing the Emergency, he had no organic or ethnic connection to Punjab. Begum wrote that it was his conscience that drew him to the state’s human rights crisis.

That unwavering commitment led Kumar to co-found the Committee for Coordination on Disappearances in Punjab and co-author ‘Reduced to Ashes’, a report documenting nearly 600 cases of custodial disappearances and killings. This work, Begum noted, prompted the National Human Rights Commission to formally acknowledge the scale of the abuses.

Describing his working method, Begum wrote that Kumar believed “homework” was essential before starting any study, and that no investigation could be complete without speaking directly to the survivors of violence. She said he would travel to the remotest corners to hear out the victims in person.

In his final years, Kumar turned his attention to the Northeast, travelling through Assam, Manipur, Nagaland and Tripura to document rights violations there, a mission cut short by his untimely death.

He is survived by his wife Gertie, daughter Cristina, sister Sita and brother Gopal, all based in Austria.