Can we forget? Forget the spirits crushed and Gurdwaras desecrated; forget the prison cells, the bloody walls, the torture chambers, the fake police encounters, the “burials” in the canals, the pernicious and fur live cremations; forget the lovers parted and hopes shattered? Forget the fear and the emptiness, the torment and the pain? Forget the petty sneers of the security officers or daring those innocent of any wrong doing to come to the police station for questioning—then ordering them to return the next day, and the next, and the next, each trip to the police station raising the fearsome prospect of the person never again being seen alive? Can Sikhs forget the terrible pictures of the anti-Sikh riots of 1984, the graphic descriptions of tape and massacre?
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are what modem nation States are committed to deliver to their peoples. To avoid fragmentation, however, nation states have to be prepared to guarantee security, ethnic identity, national pride, at least some modest degree of “pros parity,” individual fulfillment, and, finally, individual and collective Tights to all of the state’s minorities. The Indian constitution never guar anteed Sikhs the above mentioned things and failed to recognize Sikhs as a distinct religious and ethnic group. This unfortunate failure to Recognize and satisfy Sikh aspirations resulted in the refusal by Sikh leaders to ratify the Indian constitution after India’s independence.
In our view, India is a fictional nation state, filling the vacuum left by the receding British Empire, Satisfying the emotional aspirations of nationhood has always been particularly difficult for India. Sikhs, Kashmiris, and other ethnic minorities, such as Nagas, have never felt like, or identified themselves as; “Indians.” In India today, minorities are demanding more autonomy and de centralization of power from Delhi. Instead of listening to its minorities, the Delhi government, supported by the Hindu majority, has let loose a reign of terror on its minorities.
In India today, there is no one man pulling the trigger, Rather, as the central government labors to subdue the oppressed minorities, there are more than a few who give malevolent orders, and large numbers who follow them, Where does it end when evil is not one criminal mind, but rather a criminal nation, and no one with moral authority is left standing to pass judgment on the wrongdoing of those in power?
Over 120,000 Indian army soldiers are deployed over Punjab and around 175,000 in Kashmir. These troops are to “aid” the civil authority. They are in addition to the 50,000strong state police and the 20,000 paramilitary personnel in each state. In rendering “aid” to the civil authority, this huge deployment has all but crushed the voice of the people. After the destruction of Babri Mosque in December 1992, in the ensuing anti-Muslim riots in the industrial city of Surat, Gujarat, eight thousand rapes of Muslim women were documented. Asif rape itself were not heinous enough, the Hindu mob videotaped some of the Tapes. More gruesome is that these gross videotapes have appeared in Hindi circles in Delhi.
The Hindu fundamentalism that has spawned these dangerous excesses has every evil dynamic of a mob. When government support— both overt and covert—is added to it, this phenomenon at its worst is nothing less than a super mob. The weak and vicious are transferring their worst defects to the larger cause of establishing a Hindu nation. Pur suant to a well-orchestrated plan by certain Hindu leaders, today growing numbers of the Hindu masses are fooled into believing that their nights will have to be sacrificed by the government in an effort to appease the minorities, the rise of Hindu fundamentalism is thus by no means an injured virtue catching up. The majority Hindu community is indifferent to world opinion. It has successfully charmed and manipulated the world community into obduracy. The Hindu majority, by tolerating, if not encouraging, programs, has acquired all the characteristics of a beast. Sometimes this beast can be talked out—negotiated out—and be calmed and re civilized. But the bully beast loves to play with the peoples’ hopeful illusions. Sometimes the beast once rose. Among us, needs to be subdued until it is helpless to trample any longer on the human rights of the oppressed minorities.
In India, human rights are used as a political device, to be granted as reward and taken away as punishment. They are not 2 set of principles designed to allow individual responsibility to flourish in the society.
As a result of this cynical attitude, Sikhs have been paying with their lives and homes, if the world does not intervene, it too will ultimately pay for its blindness with the perhaps irremediable corruption of its principles. Under present circumstances, moral authority has to come: from outside India if India’s problems are to be solved. The germs of atrocity will have trouble surviving international scrutiny, if the inertia of disregard for minority rights is not challenged in India, India will follow in the footsteps of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia and inevitable Balkanization. No nation or government, even” “the world’s largest democracy,” has the inherent right to survive for all time. They’ rise and fall on the tide of history —26new states have joined the United Nations in the last 10years. We are heartsick when India’ is routinely identified as being the biggest democracy in the world. It is: not and never has been. If we “for give” and forget our history, we will be forced to repeat it, and the tragedy will simply continue, by: Sukhminder Singh Sandhu, Inmate No.08442050, and Ranjit Singh Gill.
Inmate No, 08443050 Metropolitan Correctional Center
150 Park Row South
New York, New York 100071704 Note: Ranjit Singh Gill and: Sukhminder Singh Sandhu have been held for more than six years in federal prison in the United States, despite being uncharged with any offense against U.S. criminal law, ‘The government of India seeks their extradition, although a federal judge earlier prohibited their return to that country. Messrs. Sandhu and Gill are represented by William M. Kunstler, Mary Boresz Pike, and Ronald L. Kuby.
Article extracted from this publication >> July 23, 1993
