Painted by Kanwal Dhaliwal as the subject of his paintings, ‘ The Valiant Ones’ is a series of personality portraits of unique individuals who lived on the Indian soil in the country’s recent history. Initiated in 2008 with the portrait of Gaihal Singh Chhajjalwadi, an obscure martyr to be slaughtered by his ‘own kind’, a bizarre victim of the religious brutality that was the legacy of India’s partition, Kanwal has kept on choosing controversial in their own respect, but certainly the most humanistic personalities of India, who may have been either the victim of the unjust socio-political system or the ones who challenged such a system, or both.

Where there are writers, poets, social activists, freedom-fighters and scholars in his selection, there also are ordinary souls who became extraordinary just by being subjected to live under such circumstances that turned them into the rare examples of human endurance of pain and humiliation. Whoever they may have been as regards to their deeds, that significantly contributed in the history of humankind, there is one thing common among them: their dare to challenge the set norms, taboos, authority of tradition, and establishment, through whatever means they had either intellect or arms, or both.