Navkiran Kaur Khalra

Some Lesser Known Facts About Navkiran Kaur Khalra

• Navkiran Kaur Khalra is a human rights defender who is known for advocating for the victims of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. She is the daughter of renowned Sikh human rights activist Jaswant Singh Khalra, who garnered global attention for investigating and highlighting the 25,000 illegal killings and cremations by the Punjab Police in the 1980s and 90s.

• Her ancestral village is Khalra, Punjab. In 1985, her parents moved to Amritsar, where Navkiran was born. In Amritsar, Navkiran’s mother started working at the Bhai Gurdas Library at Guru Nanak University, while her father worked as the director of a bank.

• Activism and the zeal to fight against social injustice have existed in the Khalra family for generations. Navkiran’s ancestor Sura Singh fought alongside Banda Singh Bahadur, a Sikh warrior and commander of the Khalsa army. Jaswant Singh’s great-grandfather, Aroor Singh, was a member of the Singh Sabha movement. Navkiran’s great-grandfather, Harnam Singh, was a passenger on the ship Komagata Maru (also called Guru Nanak Jahaz) along with Baba Gurdit Singh, who challenged the British and Canadian exclusion laws that were preventing Punjabis from immigrating to Canada.
  

  

  Out of the 376 passengers on the ship, only 24 were admitted to Canada. The rest were not allowed to disembark in Canada, and the ship was forced to return to India. Upon the ship’s arrival in India, Harnam Singh was arrested and jailed in the Lahore conspiracy case. After completing his sentence Harnam Singh went to Shanghai, China, where he was involved in the revolutionary activities of the Ghadar Party.

• In the aftermath of Operation Blue Star, the assassination of Indira Gandhi, and the 1984 Anti-Sikh Riots,  Navkiran’s father, Jaswant Singh, turned into a human rights activist. His investigation into the Punjab police’s involvement in 25,000 unlawful killings and cremations gained worldwide recognition following which he was abducted and killed by the Punjab Police in 1995. At that time, she was ten years old. Watching her father fighting for human rights embedded activism in Navkiran as well. Therefore, after her father’s death, she joined hands with her mother and brother to keep Jaswant Singh’s legacy alive by advocating for human rights through the Khalra Mission Organization.

  

• In 2004, she enrolled in the Punjab Technical University (PTU), Jalandhar for her bachelor’s degree.

• For six months, from July 2007 to December 2007, she did an internship at CSIR – Central Scientific Instruments Organisation (CSIO).

• In August 2008, she started working as a teacher and taught electrical and electronics engineering courses to undergraduate students for a year.

• After graduation, Navkiran relocated to the United States for her master’s.

• In 2009, he moved to Fresno, California, where she obtained a master’s degree in electrical engineering from California State University, Fresno.

• In August 2011, she joined Juniper Networks as a Hardware Intern and worked there for five months.

• From August 2012 to November 2013, she worked as a Design and Release Engineer at Alert Enterprise in Fremont.

• Later, she moved to Milpitas, CA, where she worked as a Senior Product Engineer at SanDisk from November 2013 to December 2016.

• In January 2017, she joined Western Digital, Milpitas as Staff Engineer. She was promoted to Principal Engineer in July 2017  and Technologist in April 2019. In October 2020, she assumed the position of Senior Manager at Western Digital.

• Navkiran takes an active role in advocating for the Sikh cause to the Sikh diaspora as well as other communities. She passionately shares her father’s story and speaks about him at various religious and cultural gatherings in India and abroad. Her efforts led the City Council of Fresno to rename Victoria Park, Fresno as Jaswant Singh Khalra Park in 2017.

  

• She active supporter of the Khalistan movement. ^[6]Sikh Roots – Gurbani Kirtan, Katha and more. – YouTube In 2021, she took to Twitter to express her approval of the assassination of CM Beant Singh and crediting Dilawar Singh Babbar with putting an end to the massacre of Sikhs in Punjab.

  

• In 2022, it was announced that Punjabi singer and actor Diljit Dosanjh would be portraying the role of Jaswant Singh Khalra in his biopic. Diljit while shooting in Amristar for the biopic faced a lot of criticism and protest on the sets saying that “he was not pious according to them.” They also called him “Videshi” and said that he was too “westernised” to play the role.