Dr Gurmit Singh

Dr Gurmit Singh is the author of History of Sikh Struggles, a multi-volume chronicle of the Sikh movement from the 1940s through Operation Blue Star and the November 1984 killings, with large banks of documents. The title page of volume I gives his qualifications as M.A., LL.B., Ph.D., and he signs its preface from Mohali. In volume I he says he tried to use all his wits as "a lawyer, historian, political scientist and a journalist", and in volume II he signs as "(Dr.) Gurmit Singh, Advocate". The volumes give no biography of him.

The volumes

• Volume I (Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, New Delhi; Open Library dates it to 1989): its preface calls it "the first authentic and systematic study of the Khalistan movement" and says it was planned as two volumes. It gives a short history of the Sikh movement from its start and a detailed one for 1946 to 1966, and it includes the House of Lords judgment in Mandla v Dowell Lee and Lord Denning's comments on it.
• Volume II (1991): covers 1966 to the middle of 1984, the eve of Operation Blue Star. Its preface says the work had grown to four volumes.
• Volume III (1991): a day-to-day account from Operation Blue Star to the judgment in the Indira Gandhi murder case, with documents. It is dedicated to Prof. Harbans Singh, chief editor of the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism, and its preface promises a separate analytical volume. Open Library lists a fourth volume (South Asia Books, 1992).

How the books argue: Each volume has a short chronological narrative followed by a large set of documents: speeches, resolutions, white papers, court judgments and press articles. The narrative argues from the Sikh side and says so. The preface of volume I says Sikh history is the history of a people struggling to be sovereign in their homeland, and the preface of volume II says the Sikhs were "forced to take to militancy" to save their identity and reach a homeland. The author says he has freely borrowed from other authors and journalists, and he thanks Shri Bal Krishna, formerly of the Publication Bureau of Punjab University, Chandigarh, for polishing the manuscript.

Known for: The collection of documents on the Sikh struggle that the first preface says were "compiled for the first time".