Without doubt, though he will be re­mem­bered more for his ex­haus­tive Re­port on the Sta­tus of Mus­lims sub­mit­ted in 2006, his affin­ity and friend­ship with the Sikhs and his bold­ness to stand-up to the gov­ern­ment of the day in the eight­ies of the last cen­tury will be a glo­ri­ous chap­ter in the his­tory of those times.

1984 marked a wa­ter­shed in the re­la­tion­ship be­tween In­dia and Pun­jab. Vis­it­ing Delhi from the Pun­jab was in­stilled with fear. The po­lice gave strange looks to every Sikh -young or old. The po­lit­i­cal par­ties, mainly the rul­ing one threw up one poi­so­nous state­ment af­ter an­other tar­nish­ing the Sikhs in gen­eral and the Sikhs of Pun­jab in par­tic­u­lar.

“I have had the op­por­tu­nity to at­tend meet­ings and ex­change notes with him on the sit­u­a­tion in Pun­jab. He al­ways felt home talk­ing in Pun­jabi when­ever he would in­ter­act with any­one from Pun­jab.”

A score of in­di­vid­u­als in Delhi, who were oth­er­wise un­known to Sikhs took upon them­selves to turn the tide around. One of the key per­son amongst the gallery of such brave stal­warts -men and women, who stood up to the gov­ern­ment of the day was none other than Jus­tice Ra­jin­der Sachar, re­tired Chief Jus­tice of the Delhi High Court. Af­ter his re­tire­ment as a judge in De­cem­ber 1985, his civil rights ac­tivism be­came his life’s core.

He was a civil rights ac­tivist at heart and re­mained one till the very end.  Though closely as­so­ci­ated with the main civil rights group of those times -The Peo­ple’s Union for Civil Lib­er­ties -PUCL, he was amenable to one and all. 

Many of the younger gen­er­a­tions in Pun­jab and the Sikh Di­as­pora would like to know that he was the son of Bhim Sen Sachar -two-time Chief Min­is­ter of un­di­vided Pun­jab. He was one of the ar­chi­tects of the Cit­i­zens Jus­tice Com­mit­tee Re­port on Pun­jab with Jus­tice Sikri and Jus­tice Tarkunde. He was part of the pow­er­ful Pun­jabi lobby in Delhi.

I have had the op­por­tu­nity to at­tend meet­ings and ex­change notes with him on the sit­u­a­tion in Pun­jab. He al­ways felt home talk­ing in Pun­jabi when­ever he would in­ter­act with any­one from Pun­jab. One would never get over­awed that one was in con­ver­sa­tion with a for­mer judge. He was jovial and ami­able putting an arm around with lov­ing cor­dial­ity.

“He sta­tis­ti­cally re­butted the right-wing ap­proach of Mus­lim ap­pease­ment in In­dia in his 404 page Re­port on the So­cial, Eco­nomic and Ed­u­ca­tional Sta­tus of the Mus­lim Com­mu­nity in In­dia.”

He has penned many a re­port on hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions in Kash­mir. Though one would dis­agree about his po­lit­i­cal views on self-de­ter­mi­na­tion in Kash­mir and Pun­jab, no­body could ques­tion his stead­fast­ness for an in­clu­sive and equal so­ci­ety. De­spite tremen­dous pres­sure, he was a de­ter­mined ad­vo­cate for abo­li­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.

He sta­tis­ti­cally re­butted the right-wing ap­proach of Mus­lim ap­pease­ment in In­dia in his 404 page Re­port on the So­cial, Eco­nomic and Ed­u­ca­tional Sta­tus of the Mus­lim Com­mu­nity in In­dia. His call to set up an Equal Op­por­tu­nity Com­mis­sion is still to be im­ple­mented. 

One of the lat­est cam­paigns be­ing pur­sued by PUCL, of which Jus­tice Ra­jin­der Sachar too was a votary of abo­li­tion of “sedi­tion” pro­ceed­ings from the In­dian Pe­nal Code. One can­not for­get how he strongly  op­posed and cam­paigned against TADA -Ter­ror­ist and Dis­rup­tive Ac­tiv­i­ties (Pre­ven­tion) Act and POTA -Pre­ven­tion of Ter­ror­ist Ac­tiv­i­ties Act.

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