Abstract
This chapter captures how the shock of the events around the protagonists led to their politicization and activism rather than resignation.
The chapter provides glimpses into the events immediately before and after 1984. Sikh demands cohered in 1985; the central government was at the negotiating table facing the nontrivial threat of Punjab’s secession; many Dalits, Sikhs, and communists in Punjab were working together; there was a promise of change in the aftermath of the carnage. There was worldwide sympathy and outrage following the events of 1984, before a devastating event eviscerated much of this compassion. Then, in April 1986, at a large spirited gathering of Sikhs in Amritsar, a collective community declaration for a separate homeland, Khalistan, was announced.
The year 1982 was marked by protests launched by the farmers who felt they were getting an only worsening deal even while providing food security to the nation. Their desperation was comingled with fear and alienation, especially after the targeting of Sikhs preceding the 1983 Asian Games. Punjab came under the impervious Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), giving the armed forces widespread powers and immunity from prosecution. Punjab would soon be declared a “disturbed area” and brought under President’s Rule. The popular leader Bhindranwale became a larger legend, living now in the golden Darbar Sahib complex.
ਭੈ ਕਾਹੂ ਕਉ ਦੇਤ ਨਹਿ ਨਹਿ ਭੈ ਮਾਨਤ ਆਨ ॥
:Guru Tegh Bahadur:
Guru Granth Sahib, 1427
Frighten None. Fear None.
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Notes
- 1.
See, for example, J.S. Grewal, “Sikh Identity, the Akalis and Khalistan,” in Punjab in Prosperity & Violence: Administration, Politics and Social Change 1947–1997, J. S. Grewal and Indu Banga, eds. (New Delhi: K.K. Publishers, 1998), 80–81.
- 2.
Harnik Deol, Religion and Nationalism in India (London and New York: Routledge, 2011), 105.
- 3.
See, Aman Sidhu with Inderjit Singh Jaijee , Death and Debt in Rural India: The Punjab Story (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2011).
- 4.
G.S. Bhalla, Green Revolution and the Small Peasant (New Delhi: Concept Publishing Co., 1983), v.
- 5.
See, Gurdarshan Singh Dhillon, Truth About Punjab: SGPC White Paper (Amritsar: SGPC, 1996), 199–200.
- 6.
Jaijee, Politics of Genocide: Punjab, 1984–1998 (Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 2002), 20.
- 7.
Khushwant Singh, History of the Sikhs, Volume II; 1839–2004 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), 332.
- 8.
Khushwant Singh, History of the Sikhs II, 347.
- 9.
See, Satish Jacob and Mark Tully, Amritsar: Mrs Gandhi’s Last Battle (New Delhi: Rupa, 1985), 96–97.
- 10.
See, Ranbir Singh Sandhu, Struggle for Justice: Speeches and Conversations of Sant Jarnail Singh Khalsa Bhindranwale (Ohio: Sikh Educational and Religious Foundation, 1999), li.
- 11.
Chand Joshi, Bhindranwale: Myth and Reality (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1984), 139.
- 12.
Khushwant Singh, History of the Sikhs, Volume II, 332.
- 13.
See, for example, Sandhu, Struggle for Justice, vi.
- 14.
See, also, Lieutenant Colonel Partap’s notes: “[Bhinder] revealed that arms and ammunition were carried inside the Temple Complex in Kar Seva (voluntary service) trucks meant to carry food and construction material. They were not intercepted because there were oral instructions ‘from the top’ until two months ago not to check any of the Kar Seva trucks.” 33
- 15.
Gurtej Singh, Chakravyuh (Chandigarh: Institute of Sikh Studies, 2000), 49–50.
- 16.
Rattanamol Singh, “Labh,” Lighthouse Collective, republished on Naujawani.com, July 13, 2015, https://naujawani.com/blog/labh-by-rattanamol-singh/.
- 17.
See, Sandhu, Struggle for Justice, xxxvi–vii.
- 18.
See, “Black Laws in Punjab: Report of an Enquiry,” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 20, No. 19 (May 11, 1985), 826–830.
- 19.
See, for example, Human Rights Watch, “Getting Away with Murder 50 Years of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act,” August 2008.
- 20.
Rajeev K. Bajaj, “Dead Men Tell No Tales,” Surya (September 1984), 10.
- 21.
Khushwant Singh, 348–49.
- 22.
See, for example, UPI, “700 Sikhs Seized as Asian Games Are Due,” The New York Times, November 16, 1982.
- 23.
See Sandhu, Struggle for Justice, 332.
- 24.
Chand Joshi, Bhindranwale: Myth and Reality, 149.
- 25.
See, for example, Tavleen Singh, “Terrorists in the Temple,” in The Punjab Story (New Delhi: Roli Books, 1985), 42–43, describing a “civil war” between the “extremists” (Bhindranwale and his men) and the “moderates” (Longowal, assisted by the Sten-gun-strapped Babbar Khalsas).
- 26.
Iqbal Singh, Punjab Under Siege: A Critical Analysis (New York: Allen, McMillan, and Enderson, 1985), 18.
- 27.
Khushwant Singh, History of the Sikhs II, 334.
- 28.
“The Punjab Situation,” Baat Cheet, Serial No. 153, July 1984.
- 29.
Sangat Singh, The Sikhs in History, 2nd ed. (New Delhi: Uncommon Books, 1996), 428.
- 30.
Harji Malik, “The Politics of Alienation,” in Punjab: the Fatal Miscalculation, Patwant Singh and Harji Malik, eds. (New Delhi: Patwant Singh, 1985), 56.
- 31.
Bhapaas—a term often used pejoratively—are nonfarmers (non-Jatts), often business families, most of whom had migrated from west Punjab during the Partition .
- 32.
Arjun Singh had quickly fled. His government’s mismanagement and complicity before and after the disaster was well documented. Following thousands of deaths and little succor to the stricken city, years later, Rajiv Gandhi’s role in facilitating the escape of Union Carbide’s executive would become clearer.
- 33.
See, Sangat Singh, The Sikhs in History, 432–33, on the coordinated series of bomb blasts across North India in May 1985, pointing back to the government. In another example, he notes the attack on a political leader who survived and reported to Rajiv Gandhi that a senior Congress leader had ordered the hit.
- 34.
See, for example, Sangat Singh, The Sikhs in History, 434–35.
- 35.
Zuhair Kashmeri and Brian McAndrew, Soft Target (Toronto: Lorimer, 1989), 52.
- 36.
Kashmeri and McAndrew, Soft Target, 52–53.
- 37.
See also, David Kilgour, Betrayal: The Spy Canada Abandoned (Ontario: Prentice Hall, 1994), Chap. 9 on Air India bombing.
- 38.
Kashmeri and McAndrew, Soft Target, 85.
- 39.
Kashmeri and McAndrew, v–vi.
- 40.
See, for example, 1984 Living History Project, T. Sher Singh interview, http://www.1984livinghistory.org/2014/10/29/t-sher-singh/.
- 41.
Kashmeri and McAndrew, 84.
- 42.
Kashmeri and McAndrew, 86.
- 43.
Kashmeri and McAndrew, 87.
- 44.
Kashmeri and McAndrew, 92.
- 45.
See, Kashmeri and McAndrew, 45.
- 46.
Marvine Howe, “Sikh Parley: ‘We are United, We are Angry,’” The New York Times, July 29, 1984.
- 47.
Sangat Singh, The Sikhs in History, 434.
- 48.
See, Ram Narayan Kumar , Amrik Singh, Ashok Aggarwal, and Jaskaran Kaur, Reduced to Ashes: The Insurgency and Human Rights in Punjab (Kathmandu, Nepal: South Asian Forum for Human Rights, 2003), 45–46.
- 49.
Jaijee, Politics of Genocide, 142.
- 50.
Kirpal Dhillon, Time Present and Time Past: Memoirs of a Top Cop (New Delhi, Penguin: 2013), 278–79. Dhillon had been transferred from Punjab soon after Longowal’s death.
- 51.
Dhillon, Time Present and Time Past, 272.
- 52.
Sangat Singh, The Sikhs in History, 439–40.
- 53.
Indian Administrative Services.
- 54.
Justice Ajit Singh Bains, Siege of the Sikhs (Toronto: New Magazine Publishing Co., 1988), 34.
- 55.
Bains, Siege of the Sikhs, 35.
- 56.
Bains, 34.
- 57.
Kumar et al., Reduced to Ashes, 46.
- 58.
PHRO determined that these killings of several young Sikh students in Nakodar were “unjustified.” Bains, Siege of the Sikhs, 37.
- 59.
“Chaheru organised the attack on the police escort party at the Jalandhar courts on 25 April 1986 in which Labh Singh was freed from custody.” Joyce J.M. Pettigrew, The Sikhs of the Punjab: Unheard Voices of State and Guerilla Violence (London: Zed Books, 1995), 82.
- 60.
See, for example, Sangat Singh, The Sikhs in History, 452–53.
- 61.
See Pettigrew, The Sikhs of the Punjab.
- 62.
Sangat Singh, 453.
- 63.
See Julio Ribeiro, Bullet for Bullet: My Life as a Police Officer (New Delhi: Penguin India, 1998). Ribeiro maintains that the popular slogan attributed to him was not coined by him, but was helpful for police morale nonetheless.
- 64.
Jaijee, Politics of Genocide, 131–32.
- 65.
Pettigrew, The Sikhs of the Punjab, 82.
- 66.
See, for example, “3 Sikhs Sought in Slaying,” The Los Angeles Times, June 6, 1986.
Jaijee would later go with Justice Bains to investigate Bimal Kaur Khalsa’s own death. The widow of one of Indira Gandhi’s alleged assassins, Beant Singh (shot dead before he could be tried and convicted), Bimal Kaur had been elected MP during the jubilant sweep by Simranjit Singh Mann’s Akalis in 1989. Her suspicious death inside her home, protected by security, remained contested. Jaijee wrote, “The only thing certain about her death is the date: September 2, 1990.” Politics of Genocide, 119.
- 67.
Excerpts of letter from Khalsa Press, “Text of Bhai Sukha and Bhai Jinda’s Letter to the President of India,” Panthic.org, http://panthic.org/articles/5155. See also, on reactions to their executions, Pettigrew, The Sikhs of the Punjab, 41.
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© 2019 Mallika Kaur
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Kaur, M. (2019). Glasnost. In: Faith, Gender, and Activism in the Punjab Conflict. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24674-7_9
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