By B.S Mahal Dollard-Des-Ormeaux, Quebec
No single idea, wrapped up in ne single word, stirs the blood more than “Khalistan” It is one idea which means different things to different Sikhs. On the one side here are some people, recalling he great Sikh kingdom of yesteryears, who promise that Khalistan will usher in the dawn of in other golden age, On the other side there are those, caring little over what’s what, who willfully raise the specter of the bogeyman. And in-between, which is where most of the people are most of the time; no one has given serious thought to what Khalistan is all about, taking for granted their instinctive understanding of what he word means.
Although a mention of Khalistan usually sets the teeth instantly on edge, no one has engaged in a paper War over it and it is the least debated or talked of subject. And yet, Khalistan remains India’s singular excuse for all that has gone to ruin in Punjab. By adroit management of the news, the government has brainwashed the populace into believing that Khalistan is an illicit child of a misguided Sikh, that its crusaders are mostly offshore, that the whole idea spells national ruin and that unless its menacing fire is quickly put out, its flicker will set Punjab afire. Even some scholarly Sikhs also tend to look only at one side of the shield, and who forgetful of their ingrained self-control, lash into a histrionic display of outrage, subjecting all argument to child-like logic.
Thus, what Khalistan means and stands for or what is the nature of its essence remains substantially obscured. Simplistic definitions of sovereignty are not enough; and, if the concept is to be understood then one needs to know if the idea is rooted in perceived reform or an urge for an unencumbered control over economic resources, Essentially, it is debate about the future of Sikhism, a debate that seeks to reflect over the limits of heritage, that ponders over the frontiers of dreams, that calls for an understanding of the lessons of history, because unlike any other religion, Sikhism is the only one in which land, nation and spirit are all intertwined. Khalistan was basically hewn out of these same Clements which in times past were used to press for a greater autonomy for Punjab. Thus arguments for Khalistan can be said to encompass wish to manage one’s own destiny, liberation from the curse of brutal domination by another people, and freedom to protect and enhance the Sikh religion language, culture and identity.
From the start Punjab has been waging a war on two fights at the same times. On the one front it faces an icy confrontation with the Centre over the division of residual powers of governance, which some Sikhs feel has stunted the furtherance of their interest in their own homeland, All the while, a since independence, Punjab has been made to feel like a step-child. Even though uncared for, Sikhs have done well thanks to their own me self-reliance and enterprise. But there are limits to how far one can go on one’s own. Unjust and unfair resource allocations, reduced economic incentives, employment quotas and general insensitivity to Sikh aspirations have convinced i the Sikhs that only a radical shift in power will allow them to freely manage their destiny.
On the other front Sikhs are locked in a fiery clash over liberty and equality with Hindu zealots who see in each socio-political gain for the Sikh, a loss for their kind. With the dawn of independence, the Sikhs woke up to the sober truth that the indigenous Hindus, fearing Sikh domination, in what is to them made facto Hindu India, lined up against the Sikhs by first renouncing their native Punjabi tongue and thereafter mounting a massive lobbying campaign against anything and everything which would advance Sikh interest, Thus the more the Sikhs asserted themselves for wanting to be masters of their own home, the more the Hindus resisted.
Because of their concentration and inveterate ownership of their homeland of Punjab, the Sikhs — thought that they would endure to the end of time, happy and well contented. They felt assured that they could do it alone to build quasi nation-state within a nation. But the countless Hindus felt differently, they felt threatened by the upstart Sikhs and were in no mood to let anyone divide the government, never mind the well-being of the nation, Punjab’s history, therefore, since independence, is contaminated with fraud, betrayal and prejudice.
Such ethnic prejudices were visible right from day one of India’s dependence. For example, Moslem-bashing has taken place in India, now and again, here and there, with great regularity. The problem is that the Sikhs paid no regard to this raging virus of communal violence, lulled perhaps if a false sense of security by a world seemingly safe and snug, And many Sikhs have failed to get it into their heads that no amount of lip-devotion to secularism nor any amount of paper-law can purge communal prejudices from the hearts of hatemongers, who cannot justify themselves except by their ability to diminish and destroy others.
Hatemongers, such as the RSS and Shiv Sena, have kept doggedly at stoking the smoldering embers of religious intolerance and communal discord. Both of these groups, formed at the grass-roots level, openly advocate Hindu supremacy as their raison deter. Minorities, thus, continue to live on the lip of a volcano not knowing when the next wave of Hindu wrath will strike them. Even some unscrupulous politicians have joined hands in an unholy alliance with these fanatics to perpetuate power and terror.
More than the deep-rooted ancient grudges, the savageness of the attacks at Delhi and Ahmedabad reflects a systematic campaign to terrorize the minorities from asserting their regular rights. Total silence and inaction by the government to rein in the criminals, and the muted half-hearted disapproval of racism by the community at Targe, has increasingly threatened communal disintegration, persuading the minorities to sense the” inevitable reality of the apocalyptical words of Johh Milton:
Never can true reconcilement
grow
Where wounds of deadly hate
have pierced so deep
(Paradise Lost)
Self-preservation is what finally gave shape to the idea of Khalistan, triggered by the tribal instincts to circle the wagons in defense of one’s faith and family honor. Sikhs ought to thank their stars that they are not scantily sprinkled all over India, that an odd quirk of fate rooted them in the soil of Punjab. Otherwise they 109, like the Moslems, will have been doomed to a life of permanent degradation and economic deprivation.
While Khalistan’s backers are exclusively Sikhs, its opponents come from a curious admixture of diverse interests. The bulk of the opposition, however, comes from natural rivals, such as the government in its role as the custodian of the landmass, scores of Hindus who dream of imperial rule (e.g. RSS) and thousands of other Hindus who favor a milder form of paternalism, Blending in with the mixture are some Sikhs, who believe in the separatism of Khalistan but not its reality, and whose opposition flows from estrangement from Punjab and in grafted self-interest. And ironically, this same Sikh opposition also has its genesis in self-preservation; though such preservation is of own self as opposed to that of the tribe. Setting aside raw passions and dismissing school boyish comparisons to bananas-republics, the opposition to Khalistan coming mostly from Sikhs living in India, outside of Punjab stem from a deep-seated fear of insecurity. It conjures up the cruel and bestial images of 1947 partition and its after-effects. The opponents are worried that this time again it will force a choice between staying put and moving out into Punjab.
Staying-put will have its own attendant problems, notably one prompting a reassessment of social will mean a fate not dissimilar from one the Moslems find themselves placed in the so-called secular India. As a minority they too will begin to face prejudice, some loss of liberty and equality. Many Sikhs will be forced to make irksom decisions about their environment. Because of changing attitudes within the neighbor hoods, and the likelihood that suspicion and distrust will spread their shadow where once there was communal harmony and fellowship, some Sikhs may choose to move out of their long-established habitats o the relative safety of neighborhoods made securer by the numerousness of fellow ethnics. Like the Moslems, the Sikhs too will have created their own ghettos.
By staying-put most Sikhs will have to come to terms with their changed role, It will mean a drastic change in life-style. It will mean restricted opportunities, mounting discrimination, less recognition and condemnation to the Orwellian world of askewed equality Chants of “Sikh a, go home” will echo in his ears. The once proud and respected Sikh will have been turned into a weak-kneed humble person condemned, like his Moslem counterpart, to bondage of poverty and dependence.
Moving out into Punjab will be equally traumatic, Ties in Punjab were severed long ago. Most of these Sikhs know little or nothing of Punjab. Many have no friends to tum to or relatives to settle down with. Staking a claim in the professions or finding a worthwhile blue-color work or starting anew a business will mean endless headaches; Moving from a secure and good life into an uncertain future is seen as a blind bargain Just the thought of it raises the temperature in these same Sikhs tack a feverish heat.
Clearly these Sikhs are at cross purposes. Their troubled plight appears to be a god-sent opportunity for the government to magnify their dilemma a thousand fold. History has coached the government well to master the once repugnant British doctrine of di vide and rule to deepen the historical and geo-political inner conflicts among the various Sikh subgroups. Sikhs have seldom spoken with one voice, and when they did following the Bluestar sacrilege of the Golden Temple and the November, 84 carnage, the government was ready-prepared to put one Sikh group against another to tame the deafening chorus of rage. The government started to classify Sikhs relative to their rage from a whisperer (moderate) to the howler (extremist). Free and loose name-calling and giving of shameful political labels became commonplace. Like the McCarthyism of the 1950s, the modern day Indian voodooist too has reduced all debate to the basic ultra-patriotic call that “if you are not with us, you are against us”. Such illogic has driven most thinking Sikhs to a muted silence, which unfortunately is taken to mean a vote for the status quo.
Khalistan also poses a serious threat to the polity of the Indian nation. And history teaches us that no government will allow itself to be fractured willingly, no matter what the cost. Nations wherein democracy itself is fragile, such as India, ideas of separatism will be fiercely opposed, no matter how far the government must go to pervert truth and justice. More so in a heterogeneous nation like India since any giving in to one separatist movement may produce the domino-effect. Such nations, therefore, help inflame the public the rhetoric to throttle all. Political activists and raise the specter of the straw man to agitate their supporters. Thus, stripped of logic, the debate over Khalistan gets reduced to raw emotionalism.
The Sikh-opponents of Khalistan have no moral qualms over their open opposition, if anything such a stance has placed them favorably in the eyes of their Indian patrons. The government and the Sikh-opponents of Khalistan have drawn up their battle lines to purvey all sorts misinformation. They intend primarily to accuse pro-Khalistan forces of anti-nationalistic behavior, which in itself is a self-contradiction. To say that one who espouses independence and freedom is also at the same time a traitor is absurd, though it is an argument most likely to be advanced by the sophists, The creation of the enemies, imaginary or real in response to a challenge to the nation’s political polity, is a function of a coldblooded drive to hold on to power to the nth degree.
Blind faith in the constitution appears to be the criteria for measuring the loyalty of a citizen. Suddenly everyone seems to have unearthed Indiana’s, and to wear it on ones sleeve as a badge of loyalty. It is the new state religion. And just like any other religion, cone is exhorted to embrace it on blind faith. Doubters, such as the Khalistan is, are the kaffirs. To discourage catechism the government has enacted, without rising of a single eyebrow, the blackest of the black laws. Ironically, it was watered down version of such a black law which in 1919 caused the infamous massacre of Sikhs at Jallianwala Bagh, Even at the cost of pitilessness, the government intends to obtain unquestioned alliance to the constitution, which is seen as sacrosanct and strictly un-alterable, One seems to forget that the Indian constitution is a child of an alien mind-culture (British). As a primer it has served the nation well, but time has shown it as flawed and in urgent need of revision into reflects the pulse of the times.
Call what one may, agitation or an uprising, Punjab has been on deathbed for several years. And plainly speaking, wrongs upon great wrongs have been committed against the Sikhs, be it Bluestar assault on the Golden Temple or Nov. 84 butchery or betrayal of the accords. Everybody in India ought to know all about these episodic outbursts of madness, but strange to say thousands of Indians feign collective amnesia, while many others wonder aloud what is all the bellyaching about. They think no more of deaths odour, stemming from the November, 84 program, which hangs so heavily on the Indian landscape. Why? Because for them reality is stranger than fiction and because unbroken exposure to brutality of poverty has calloused their conscience.
Not many Indians have delved deep into their souls for a serious introspective look into the nauseous goings-on, although any god-fearing person will have been tossing and turning with guilt. Not to remember any images of violence is to believe that nothing untoward ever happened. Like the Germans before them, the Indians too by their eerie quietude imply no happenings. No one has sounded the alarm at the rot that has set in India’s soul, Just imagine, copying of identical circumstances in a Western democracy will have derailed any government. No such self-reproach by the Indian savants or students who, like the ostrich, see not the normally side-tracked nation.
To suffer anguish through some-one else’s eyes is not easy. And Indians appear to have proven Shakespeare right, that “he jests at sears who haven’t felt a wound” But what about the wretched victims: the Sikh body-politic. Some Sikhs want to bury the hatchet; others are beginning to be smitten with schizophrenia, These Sikhs want to push the painful memories of the past back into the dark recesses of their mind. They are now unconcerned about such things as honor and justice. And they care not whether Indians show any remorse over past events or whether there are no guarantees of recurrences of the plague of communal violence. They simply feel safe in their little cocoons and refuse to accept that their Edenic world has crumbled to dust.
That the known perpetrators and accomplices of heinous crimes against the Sikhs walk freely the city-streets in a mocking disregard of justice is no mystery. What adds the poignancy to the tragic drama is the self-emasculation of some of the Sikhs, who are slowly edging away from the unsavory events. Apart from these Sikhs who see or hear no evil, there are those who knowingly wink to say “Lets kiss and make-up”, purposely downgrading the horrid events to some petty domestic quarrel. The driving force behind this gratuitous reconcilement is a gamble some may say erroneous belief that somehow in time the Sikhs will manage to crawl back into their lost dreamland. These Sikhs appear to live in lotus-land, by being blind of eye and deaf of ear to the serialized communal between Hindu-Moslem, Hindu-Dalit and now the of repeated Hindu backlash in reply to the events in Punjab.
Because of the highly charged raw emotions, the extent of the support or the opposition to Khalistan remains at best hazy and incalculable and in the absence of an open, honest debate no one can gauge who has the advantage. There are those who claim that the debate has been rendered redundant by the September, 85 results of the Punjab elections. These opponents of Khalistan will have you believe that the Akali Dal electoral victory spelled a political status quo, an unqualified support for the July, 85 accords and more importantly a vote against separatism. Truth is that leitmotiv of presidential rules, armed sieges, communal tyranny and an unending parade of broken promises all combined to bring about the anti-Congress (I) vote, Thus, the September, 85 Punjab election was basically a one-issue election and the burning issue was Congress (I) and not Khalistan. To say otherwise is to use words divorced from reason and an obsession to lie, lie and lie. And as the entire world know, if one were to speak a lie once too often one will begin to believe in its truth.
Article extracted from this publication >> August 29, 1986
