Recalling The Bloodbath

Dr. Ujagar Singh Bawa, Ph.D. Sikh Review, June 1995

It is ironic that on June 2, 1984, when Mrs. Gandhi on a national radio broadcast was preaching for national ’harmony and normalcy’, her armed forces were being secretly dispatched to unleash a bloodbath in Punjab. Thousands of Sikhs were gunned down under a complete news blackout. All communications, including telephone and telex lines, were cut. All independent journalists, foreign and Indian, were either expelled or put under house arrest and their permits to report on the events revoked. Road blocks were strictly enforced. No buses, no trains and no newspapers were allowed. All this accompanied by a virtual Martial Law promising dire consequences for the violators, thereby totally denying civil liberties. Punjab was completely sealed off from the rest of the world to hide the massacre. Truth was being suppressed. Television videos giving the government’s version were being sent abroad in massive numbers to suggest that the Sikhs were the villains. People were forced to make misleading statements at gunpoint. The most savage propaganda by the Indian government was initiated to discredit Sikhs repeatedly so as to substantiate its charges of calling Sikhs ’extremists’ or ’terrorists’.

The government’s propaganda was also designed to incite the majority community for possible reprisals against the Sikhs, particularly, outside Punjab, where their numbers were very few. This is not a scenario of the self-professed (largest) democracy, but it is a grim reminder of a fascist, totalitarian dictatorship.

In the wake of unprecedented, organized and ruthless attack by the regular armed forces, equipped with most modern and sophisticated weaponry, on the Golden Temple, the government clamped Martial Law, invoked the National Security Act, barred the press and news media to report, imposed censorship, curbed the civil liberties of the citizenry, denying access to the records and interview. This was a fundamental encroachment on the basic guarantees of a democratic political structure. The merciless suppression of the Sikh ’movement’ and their religious sentiment was - and continues to be - an extremely painful experience and memory. Under such gag orders, the government was exclusively responsible for changing the moderate attitudes and demands of the Sikhs for autonomy, political and constitutional, territorial, religious and economic settlement, into the demands of a separate Sikh homeland, particularly, when the means to achieve these goals were squarely constitutional and peaceful.

In spite of their proven record of nationalism, and patriotism during the war of Indian independence, the Sikhs were denied economic and political justice and human rights deserving of a loyal community. Even though, numerically, they were only 2% of the total Indian population, their contribution and sacrifices far exceeded their proportional representation during the struggle for Indian Independence. The following statistics from Maulana Abul Kalam Azad’s book amply proves the Sikhs’ deep sense of patriotism and nationalism:

Not only did India’s population make by far the largest contribution to the country’s freedom, they have maintained a high tempo even after Independence. Today, more than a third of the country’s population lives on foodgrains produced and supplied from the land of Punjab which was a deficit area with barren lands at the time of Independence in 1947. In spite of an impressive track record of diligence, courage, and patriotism, Sikhs have been the victims of continued intimidation, suspicion, and discrimination.

The Sikhs started a campaign (Dharam Yudh) for certain specific demands in political, territorial, religious and economic areas on the basis of and using democratic principles of peaceful demonstrations seeking human rights and justice in 1981. This movement was one of the most peaceful movements in the modern history. As many as 150,000 volunteered to go to jails without any violence or resistance. Even in the Quit India movement of 1942 for Indian Independence, (in which I modestly participated as a teenager) when all communities of India, including Sikhs, participated, the total number sent to jails was only 62,000. Furthermore, most of the Sikhs, including their leaders, were moderates. Not one of the representatives of the Sikhs ever asked for a separate Sikh state.

In fact, when the Sikhs were being offered an opportunity to ask and get one homeland for themselves during the 1947 negotiations, they declined the offer so that they could continue to perpetuate their tradition - to be partners (equal) and work alongside their fellow countrymen for the betterment and growth of India. But the outrageous and unprecedented sacrilegious action of the government to attack the holiest shrine of Sikhs in ruthless manner, first time in the history of India, by using a massive armed force as if they were combating a foreign country, and killing thousands of Sikhs, mostly innocent worshippers, men, women and children, did infuriate the Sikh community the world over. This action of inhuman butchery and colossal sacrilege drove the Sikhs to the demand of a separate homeland. To curb any reaction by the Sikhs on these undemocratic and unjust acts, the government virtually imposed Martial Law, banned newspapers and news reports, blocked the entries and exits of Sikhs to and from Punjab and enforced censorship.

The unresolved conflict in Punjab and elsewhere in India between Sikhs and the government before June 1984 was in relation to certain basic, legitimate and reasonable demands by the Sikhs. The government successfully planted its proteges in the Akali Dal party ranks so that the whole gambit of Sikh activities would lead to a general ’disarray’ and ’confusion’. Then Mrs. Gandhi and her representatives kept insisting that the Punjab demands, which have always been characteristically and erroneously projected as Sikh demands, shall be considered only if the Sikhs would come up with a single voice. it is interesting to note that these demands had been put forward by the Shiromani Akali Dal, the only representative body of the Sikhs.

The attack on the Golden Temple was a blatant violation of the basic democratic and religious rights of the Sikhs guaranteed to them under the Indian constitution, theoretically at least. Government’s defense for this unpardonable act has been that ’certain extremists’ who were a danger to civil life, had to be flushed out. Martial Law conditions remained in force for several months after the army’s invasion, civil liberties and human rights of speech and expression, religious worshipping, and free movement in their homeland, was denied for over a year to the Sikhs. They felt under a genocidal attack. They were threatened with reprisals at the hands of army and police with unlimited authority. These powers were used by the police and the army to do any or everything in the name of ’combating extremism’. Even the modes of communications, letters and telephones were intercepted. Under these circumstances, the economic and political life had been paralysed, disrupting the bloodline of once a prosperous state. This was another punishment to the community.

For a year and a half, simple humanitarian gesture of preparing a list of the dead and the missing, under the International Laws of Human Rights to their families and loved ones, was not shown by the government. Any attempt on the part of Sikh Organizations in this direction was misconstrued by the government as ’anti-national’, and ’extremist’. Instead of showing any gesture of possible appeasement to the brutally hurt Sikhs to their deep sentiments in the desecration of their holy shrines and inhuman killing of thousands of Sikh patriots, the government unleashed relentless reprisals in the urban and rural areas where youngsters of age group of 15 to 30 were apprehended on arbitrary pretexts and detained without charge, denied trials for months, and allowed to rot in sub-human condition in Jodhpur and other jails with no decent facilities. Some of them were even forcibly injected with drugs that rendered them mentally deranged or sterile. Such treatment is inhuman and barbaric in the ’largest democracy’.

The New York Times in an editorial entitled "Mrs Gandhi’s Version," deprecated the suppresio-veri when it observed: "The credibility problem is serious. For eight days after the (Bluestar Operation) action, the Punjab was closed to journalists.... Without independent assessment of New Delhi’s version of the events in Amritsar, questions persist about the number of casualties and the scale of assault." No information was allowed to come out about such a barbaric event. By any reckoning, an independent judicial enquiry into these genocidal deeds should have been instituted long ago. Strangely, a decade later, there is only deafening silence.