Gurdip Singh Chaggar Demo 1976 | Iconic Moments

Gurdip Singh Chaggar Demo 1976 – In 1976 Gurdip Singh Chaggar, an 18 year old Sikh schoolboy, was fatally stabbed in a racist attack outside the Dominion theatre in Southall. When one passer-by asked a police officer who had been killed, he responded “just an Asian”. His racist murder prompted widespread demonstrations and rioting in Southall.

To celebrate Southall Black Sisters’ 40th anniversary, we have printed a pack of six greeting cards depicting key moments in our long and radical history of campaigning on a range of issues of particular concern to BAME women. Taking his inspiration from photographs of these ‘Iconic Moments’, Jagdeep Raina, used his artistic sensibility to recast these scenes with mixed media on paper. He kindly donated these drawings to SBS.

Jagdeep Raina, a young Canadian visual artist, visited Southall in 2016 to explore his Punjabi heritage through archived material and meetings with migrants, activists and organisations. His work has appeared in a number of group and solo exhibitions internationally, including the UK, China, the US and Canada.

Raina says that ‘My artistic practice has always been heavily research-based, mobilising the archive as a medium and subject. … Connecting with the archives of Southall Black Sisters has allowed me to embrace a shift that had been steadily building  in my artistic practice; a shift that had led to uncomfortable truths about how marginalised diasporic communities—in particular, the Kashmiri and Punjabi Sikh Community—can perpetuate further marginalisation against their own people including those of different castes, of nationalities, economic status, sexuality or gender, and more widely against people of other races and religions.’