‘The Stateless Body’: Remembering resistance across borders
By Amitoj Hari, November 24 2025—
Sikh Academic Forum’s ‘The Stateless Body: Sovereignty, Resistance, and Identity’ conference was bigger than a UCalgary club event, it was an act of resistance and advocacy. From the first speaker to the final reflection, every voice carried the weight of generations who have fought, bled and achieved martyrdom under the crushing weight of state power. The event brought together Indigenous, Sikh, and Palestinian perspectives around a shared question: what does it mean to live and to resist in a world that wishes to wipe you from existence?
Elder Cheryle opened the space with her land acknowledgment, straight from the Creator, providing peace and calm for all before discussing the heavy topics of the night. She reminded everyone that colonization is not an abstract process, but a calculated one; governments sent chicken-pox infested blankets, enacted the Indian Act and separated families through residential schools and the Sixties Scoop. When speaking of her own mother’s experience with this, her voice was soft and unyielding, highlighting the intergenerational grief and the journey to self-acceptance and pride that many Indigenous persons experienced.
From there, the conversation shifted to Sikh sovereignty and the politics of statelessness. Dr. Harjeet Grewal traced the narrative of 1984, the Delhi massacre and the state’s subsequent attempts to silence Sikh identity, as part of a longer colonial story. To be Sikh, he argued, is to inhabit a paradox: to seek freedom within a structure that criminalizes your existence; to hold an Indian passport, yet be prisoners of a constitution that we’ve never given approval to. Statelessness, then, is not a deficit, but a refusal to seek validation from the very systems that seek to eliminate you. He drew parallels with the Indigenous movements where statelessness is converted into a state of pride rather than loss.
Dr. Pallavi Banerjee spoke of the epistemic violence of silence, and how her privilege as an immigrant settler to Turtle Island and an upper-caste Brahmin Hindu woman protects complicity. She highlighted the voices of Dr. Ather Zia and the late Jeer Kaur Matharu, who spoke on the experience of Sikh and Kashmiri women during the struggle for independence. She reminded us that solidarity demands discomfort, the importance of confronting privilege and how uplifting others is part of decolonization.
The idea of resistance as a sacred responsibility carried through the next speaker, Bhai Pardeep Singh “Solidarity,” he said, “ is a manifestation of seva.” From his perspective, colonialism transforms the world into a commodity. Land has become real estate, people are now statistics and spirituality is performed, not felt; to resist is to reject this commodification. Lastly, his invocation of Sant Baba Jarnail SIngh Bhindranwale carried through the room: live with dignity and die with faith. For Singh, Khalistan is not a political project, but a divine one, a state based on mutual care, not domination.
Born in Al-Auds, Dr. Muhammad Ayyashh described the First Intifada as a mass movement built not only on protest but on care. Communities organized local economies, formed popular committees and reclaimed safety from the state. Ayyash drew parallels between Palestinian, Indigenous and Sikh struggles, arguing that sovereignty is always perceived as a threat because it exposes the fragility of the empire. He ended by stating that Israel will not be able to outlast the truth.“
This echoed for Besan Jadaloween, president of the Palestine Advocacy Club here on campus. Last year during the encampment here at UCalgary, she was faced with the question: how far are we willing to go for the causes we champion? After months of email campaigns urging the university administration to address their role in the ongoing conflict in Gaza, she decided that her advocacy mattered more than her education and freedom. She argued that the journey towards liberation is never meant to be easy, but as students, the choices we make are often historic. In the face of several broken agreements and no long lasting ceasefires, she reminds students that advocacy, in the last few years especially, is making a difference. Her defiance captured the spirit of the night, that justice is not guaranteed, but earned through community, sacrifice and advocacy.
As the night drew to a close, the message was clear, sovereignty is not about power, but about preservation. This conference reminds us that all of our causes are one. From Turtle Island, to Punjab and Palestine, our struggles are woven together by shared memory, shared grief and shared resistance. Protect what is sacred, speak even when silence feels safer and remember that every breath you take is an act of defiance.