Remembering Baljit Malik

Pritam Singh

The news of the sudden and unexpected death of Baljit Malik, a well-known social activist and journalist, on February 18 in Delhi sent shock waves among his large circle of friends and admirers in India and abroad.

Bal, as he was known to his family and friends, was born in Delhi on July 21, 1939 in one of the old wealthiest families of the city. His was an unusual life. He grew up in a social matrix of privilege but used the power and influence a life of privilege brings to support dissident groups and individuals opposed to the capitalist state in India. He spent his school years in Doon School in Dehradun and then went for university education to the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Nanu Mitchell, his classmate at SOAS, says ‘he adored jazz and was such a cool cat in his young days’. He married Diana MacLehose in 1967 when he was teaching at Doon and she was working with Tibetan refugees in Mussoorie, and has a daughter Sonya Malik Butterfield and granddaughter Laila.

His second marriage was with Kamla Bhasin, a very well-known feminist and peace activist. Their sprawling house on Bhagwan Das Road in Delhi was the nerve centre of many social initiatives and refuge for many rebels.

Baljit belonged to the elite by social background but showed utter disdain and contempt for that elite. He often said that he knew the hollowness of the elite from inside. Baljit felt more at home with environmentalists, human rights activists, Indo-Pak peace campaigners and music lovers than with suit and tie-wearing business managers. As if to make fun of such tie-wearing yuppies, he wore, in the words of a friend, ‘floral printed salwars and outlandish long shirts’. He lived a lifestyle which some people called bohemian with different and conflicting meanings attached to bohemianism. It was a tag of honour for some but unacceptable social deviance for some others. In my view, his was an unorthodox life of a social rebel who defied many structures of traditions and practices. At a personal level, he was known for his friendship, warmth, generosity and affection.

He combined his cosmopolitanism with deep attachment to Punjab and his Sikh heritage in his own way. He once wrote an article on how he felt attached to Guru Nanak, whom he viewed as a wanderer, restless seeker of truth, breaker of social conventions and hierarchies, political rebel, poet and a music lover. Sometimes, Baljit came up with absolutely original, perhaps even shocking, ideas and insights. One of them he shared with me a few years back was that Guru Gobind Singh was strongly influenced by Jharkhand’s tribal culture of weapon worship and social egalitarianism due to some years of Guru’s early childhood spent in the region. When I responded by suggesting that it was a new angle and that he should further explore it, he retorted with friendly warmth: ‘Nahin yaar, eh explore karan wala kam mera nahin, tera ai (my friend, this exploration is your task and not mine)’.

He had many difficult moments in life. One of them was during the anti-Sikh carnage of 1984 in Delhi when every male Sikh, high or low, felt a danger to his life. Baljit cut his hair to disguise his Sikh identity and later wrote and published an article on that experience, which conveyed conflicting emotions of guilt and self-loathing for having surrendered to the fear, along with denunciation of the regime of governance in India that forced him to do this humiliating and self-negating act. Only he could write such a piece which denounced others, but was also deeply self-critical.

The most painful blow in his life was the death of his beloved daughter Meeto Malik (from his former wife Kamla Bhasin), who was a history research student at Oxford. I was not formally supervising Meeto's work on Punjab’s history but had looked at everything she had written and had advised her whenever needed. Meeto told me that Baljit felt reassured about her academic wellbeing in the way she was able to interact with me. She was a brilliant young woman with a great potential. Her tragic death in 2006 was one of the most painful experiences in the life of Oxford’s South Asian academic community. Baljit did not really recover from this terrible blow.

He tried to restart life. He married Mary, his house assistant for many years, and had a son Jonathan from this marriage. This did bring some happiness in his life. He also loved his seriously disabled son Jeet Kamal (aka Chhotu), who lives with Kamla Bhasin. Both Baljit and Kamla are an example of utter devotion in looking after a disabled child.

He was truly an unforgettable person endowed with the best of human values.

The writer is Professor of Economics at Oxford Brookes University, UK