The Sikh community in Metro Vancouver is remembering the victims of a state-sponsored massacre that left thousands of their compatriots dead in India, the world’s largest democracy, in the first week of November 1984.
As part of this remembrance week, local Sikhs have organized a series of events, including prayers, film showings, candle light vigils and blood donation camps.
The massacre followed the assassination of then Indian Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, by two of her Sikh bodyguards on October 31, 1984.
Satwant Singh and Beant Singh shot Gandhi to death to avenge the infamous Operation Bluestar of June 1984.
The military operation was ordered to flush out the religious extremists who had stockpiled weapons inside the Golden Temple Complex, the holiest shrine of the Sikhs in Amritsar, Punjab, and commonly referred to as ‘The Sikh Vatican.’
While Beant Singh was killed by his security colleagues almost immediately, Satwant Singh was hanged much later.
Shortly after her assassination, mobs led by Indira Gandhi’s Indian National Congress Party leaders started attacking Sikh homes, temples and businesses. The violence continued for almost one week in the country’s capital, New Delhi, and in the states governed by the Congress Party.
At least 3,000 Sikhs died in Delhi alone.
Although ten panels - two commissions of inquiry and eight investigative committees - were appointed, and criminal proceedings were launched in response to pressure from international human rights groups and the Indian public, the Congress leaders who were seen leading the mobs remain free and at large in India.
“Since the victims of the massacre have not been given justice, we decided to bring their voices out,” Harpreet Kaur, the maker of a documentary, The Widow Colony, told an audience that gathered to see her film last week at the Surrey Arts Club.
Parvkar Singh Dulley, a young Sikh activist, was among the local organizers sponsoring the showing the film, which is based on interviews with the widows of the anti-Sikh pogroms.
“The West should know how the so-called secular state of India is treating its minorities,” Dulley told the South Asian Post.
“It’s a shame that there is such a locality called the Widow Colony existing in Delhi today.”
The Gurdwara Dashmesh Durbar, a Sikh temple in Surrey, invited Jasbir Singh, a witness of the massacre, to higlight local remembrances.
Singh now lives in California, but allegedly witnessed Congress Party Member of Parliament Jagdish Tytler leading mobs during those dark days in Delhi.
He narrated his tale to the congregation at the temple last Sunday.
“I am ready to testify before the CBI (the Central Bureau of Investigation, the highest investigative agency in India), but the CBI is trying to avoid me by claiming that I am not participating in the probe launched against Tytler,” he told the South Asian Post.
The Gurdwara Dashmesh Durbar management supports a separate homeland for the Sikhs – or Khalistan, a Sikh-based theocracy, in northern India - and reportedly considers the assassination of Indira Gandhi an act of justifiable political violence.
The temple organized a candle light vigil a night before Singh’s visit.
Many members of the community, including women and children, showed up despite heavy rain and chilly weather.
The vigil was held below large, open tents with Sikh balladeers singing songs portraying the assassins of Gandhi as folk heroes.
Jasbir Singh moved to the United States in late 2002 fearing for his life, but has visited India three times since.
He has made submissions before two official panels.
According to his affidavit, he allegedly heard Tytler rebuking his party cohorts for “not killing enough Sikhs.”
“The Indian state lacks the will to punish the guilty of the massacre,” he said. “It has punished the killers of Indira Gandhi, but it has a different yardstick for the mass murderers of the Sikhs.”
Singh is now seeking protection so that he can appear before the CBI without fear of intimidation or attack.
“Alternatively, the Indian court can record my statement through video conference,” he allowed.
Tytler was indicted by the Nanavati Commission of Inquiry and was forced to resign as Minister in 2005, following pressure from India’s communist party members, who were supporting the Congress-led coalition government from outside.
In fact, the communist government in the Indian state of West Bengal did not let the Congress-backed thugs attack Sikhs in its territory.
Tytler, however, continues to be a member of parliament.
Surinder Sangha, President of the Indo Canadian Workers’ Association – an offshoot of India’s Communist Party of India (Marxist) - said that though he does not approve of the ideologies of Sikh separatists and religious fundamentalists, he feels that the quarter-century-old massacre has left a permanent scar on democracy and secularism in India.
“The ruling elite of the country has done nothing to punish the guilty,” he said.
The Sikh Nation, meanwhile, has organized a number of blood donation camps throughout B.C. in memory of the innocent victims of the carnage.
The Sikh Nation is a Surrey-based human rights group that was formed in 1999 to commemorate the 1994 massacre.
The mandate of the group in the words of its non-Sikh volunteer, Sunil Kumar, is “to highlight the sufferings of the victims in a dignified way.”
The group organize the annual blood camps at this time every year, and its signs can be seen along many roads in Metro Vancouver.
“We try to make people aware of the injustice meted out to the Sikhs in a positive way,” said volunteer Kumar.
“We wish to tell people that we value human lives and do not believe in shedding blood for blood.”
The phone number of the Sikh Nation ends with ‘-1984,’ the year of the massacre.
“The blood service complains about lack of donors around this time of the year, whereas the Sikhs donate maximum units of blood in the first week of November,” said Kumar.
The Sikh massacre of 1984 remains a dark, indelible stain in India’s modern history.
But many Sikhs - both in India and abroad - feel that as India emerges as a world power, as it positions itself on the global stage as a truly inclusive, secular democracy, it must take steps to learn from past mistakes and heal old wounds by ensuring justice is done.
“But unfortunately, the Indian ruling elite has learnt nothing from that tragedy,” laments Surinder Sangha, of the Indo Canadian Workers’ Association.
“As a result we have seen similar attacks directed at Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, and recently against the Christians in Orissa.”
By Gurpreet Singh
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