The recent request for amnesty for Sikh rebels settled outside India by the country’s National Commission for Minorities (NCM) has raised hopes among blacklisted members of the community in British Columbia, and across Canada.
These Sikhs have been denied entry to their home country for indulging in “anti-national” activities since 1984, the year in which political events in India galvanized the Sikh separatist movement across the world.
As a result, the Indian government prepared a “blacklist” of Sikhs suspected of being involved in separatist activities in order to deny them entry to the country for security reasons.
NCM member Harcharan Singh Josh recently recommended that those Sikhs who “have realized their faults” and want to return to the “mainstream” shall be allowed to visit their homeland for the first time in nearly 25 years.
Although no official record is available to suggest how many Sikh rebels are on the blacklist, these migrants are now primarily settled in Canada, the U.S., Britain, France and Germany and number around 15,000, according to Josh.
The now defunct South Asian Human Rights’ Group (SAHRG), which campaigned for the blacklistees’ cause, estimates that between 70 to 80 Sikhs living in Western Canada continue to be denied a visa and an Indian passport by the Indian government.
Among them is Surdev Singh Jatana of Abbotsford. He was associated with the now banned International Sikh Youth Federation (ISYF).
Jatana claims that he was never involved in violence, but was in the forefront of peaceful protests.
“The situation has changed now and I wish to return to the mainstream,” Jatana told the South Asian Post.
Jatana, who is a former employee of Canada Post, became a member of the militant ISYF group following Operation Bluestar in June of 1984. There were angry protests in B.C. and across North America following the infamous military operation, which was launched to flush out extremists who had stockpiled weapons inside the holiest shrine of the Sikhs, the Golden Temple in Amritsar, India.
The government-backed military operation resulted in massive destruction to the temple complex.
The army operation was linked to the Oct. 31, 1984 assassination of then prime minister Indira Gandhi by two of her Sikh bodyguards. A wave of anti-Sikh violence subsequently swept India, alienating the Sikh community from the Indian mainstream and leaving nearly 3,000 innocent Sikhs dead.
The army operation and the subsequent anti-Sikh pogroms had a far reaching effect on the Sikh community in Canada, the U.S. and Europe, with a number of emotional Sikh men joining a movement for Khalistan, a separate homeland for the Sikhs.
Even in B.C., Sikh protesters stormed the Indian Consulate in downtown Vancouver in the weeks following the initial troubles in India.
Jatana came to Canada in 1969 and visited India twice before 1984. He says Operation Bluestar changed his life. He could not visit his ailing mother, who died in 2001.
Though he was granted amnesty in 2003 and was allowed to visit India following negotiations between the SAHRG and India’s Bharatiya Janata Party government, he was later blacklisted again and couldn’t visit India at the time of his brother’s death in 2004.
The story of Kuldip Singh Malhi is similar. An editor of Surrey-based Phulwari, a Sikh cultural magazine, he has not been able to visit India since 1981. Malhi participated in the 1984 protest rally in Vancouver.
“My close relatives were also denied a visa because of my participation in the anti-India rallies,” he said.
Like Jatana, Malhi was also associated with the ISYF and was once accused of assaulting a moderate Sikh in Surrey – although he was acquitted by the B.C. courts.
His daughter is getting married in July this year and his family plans to visit India for shopping.
“I won’t be able to join them although I wish to visit the place of my birth,” he lamented.
SAHRG leader Harpal Singh Nagra recalled that the BJP government allowed 22 Sikhs to return to India in 2003.
“Most of them had participated in the protest rallies and had nothing to do with violence, except three convicts, who were denied visas at the last moment,” he told the South Asian Post.
Since Operation Bluestar was blamed on the Congress Party, its opponent, the BJP has tried to woo the Sikh minority for political survival in Punjab.
The BJP is a coalition partner in the current Punjab government led by the Akali Dal, the mainstream political party of the Sikh-dominated province.
Ironically, these overtures suffered a major jolt after the Congress regained power in India with Manmohan Singh, the country’s first Sikh Prime Minister. Singh rejected a demand to scrap the blacklist.
There are some die hard separatists, however, who are not impressed by such campaigns and do not even wish to apply for a visa to enter India.
“It’s all drama,” said Satinderpal Singh Gill, a former member of the Panthic Committee, an umbrella group of the Sikh militants. “The Indian government continues to discriminate against the Sikhs.”
Gill has not visited India since 1983. His father passed away in March this year, but he still did not apply for a visa.
“Since the tenth master of the Sikhs had lost his father and four sons in his war against the Islamist Empire, we shall also be determined to suffer personal losses instead of begging for the mercy of the Indian state,” Gill opined.
Harcharan Singh Josh said in his amnesty-request report to the Indian government: “The migrants admitted that being disturbed by the Bluestar operation and the 1984 (anti-Sikh) riots in India, they joined extremist groups and terrorist camps.”
But many, he suggested, were simply young men caught up in the times.
“Now they are well settled in these countries and are financially supporting their families in India. They are separated from their families for the last 24 years and want to come back home,” he said.
Kashmir Singh Dhaliwal, the moderate president of Vancouver’s oldest Sikh temple on Ross Street, said that he welcomes the amnesty initiative, but only for those men who have “realized their mistakes.”
He cautioned against a general pardon for those who continue to indulge in anti-India propaganda and politics of violence.
The Indian government is currently reviewing the amnesty request.
Khalistani cause not forgotten in B.C
A decade of Sikh militancy began in the Indian border state of Punjab in the early 1980s and officially ended in 1993. The violence during this period claimed more than 25,000 lives.
The problem began with political and religious demands that brought a sense of alienation among the Sikhs. The full scale terrorist violence for the achievement of a separate homeland for the Sikhs was also supported by Pakistan, the country next door.
With the return of normalcy, several top Khalistani ideologues have already returned to India.
Among them was the late Jagjit Singh Chauhan, who was running a Khalistan government-in-exile in the UK and opened a Khalistan consulate in Vancouver.
Wassan Singh Zaffarwal, another top notch militant leader, has also returned to India, as has Didar Singh Bains, another Khalistani ideologue from the U.S.
Although many Sikhs in Western countries have bid goodbye to the Khalistan cause, Indian officials believe a small section is still active. Indeed, a low intensity campaign for Khalistan continues in B.C. and other parts of Canada.
The pro-Khalistan management of the Dashmesh Durbar Sikh temple in Surrey recently organized special prayers for the assassins of the former military chief of India, A.S.Vaidya, who led Operation Bluestar against the holy Golden Temple.
The two assassins, Harjinder Singh Jinda and Sukhdev Singh Sukha, were hanged in 1992.
The father of a Sikh prisoner who allegedly murdered a Punjab police spy was also honoured on this occasion. Hem Singh came from the U.S. to accept the “award” on behalf of his son, who allegedly burnt to death Ajit Singh Poohla, a Punjab police agent who was detained in Amritsar jail on human rights’ violations.
By Gurpreet Singh
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