Presented to the Governor of California on June 4, 1986, the Second Anniversary of Indian Army’s Brutal Attack on the Golden Temple
Your Excellency.
On the second anniversary of history’s most diabolic massacre of a religious minority and fundamentalist destruction of its sanctum sanctorum, the Golden Temple, the Sikhs of California submit this memorandum to you, Sir, with the hope that your excellency will use your powerful voice and considerable influence in putting an end {o the fanatical persecution of Sikhs in India. We also hope that your Excellency will persuade the concerned authorities in the United States of ‘America to be more understanding and responsive for the Sikh predicament.
We would like to add, Sir, that there is nothing more fallacious than Indian secularism. Because caste consciousness is too old and too deep-seated to be neutralized by a couple of ‘casual’ clauses in the constitution. Besides, the Hindu polity is highly communal and rigidly conservative. It is just not possible for a fragile sapling like secularism to take roots in such an unfriendly soil. Equally difficult is the task of evolving a truly democratic system in such a climate. The fact that communal Hindus forma permanent majority rules our justice and equality for Muslims, Sikhs, untouchables and Christians. The minorities can never hope to gain supremacy or even equality through democratic processes. They are doomed to the fate of second class citizens, because the majority ‘community is paying only lip service to secularism. It is using secularism more as a window dressing to mislead the outside world than as a moral commitment to legal and constitutional instrument. The post-independence history presents a sad spectacle of successive governments resorting to policy decisions based on short-term political expediency of pandering to the communal intolerance of the majority community rather than mobilizing it to adopt fraternal and patronizing attitude towards the minorities. This policy pattern is singularly responsible for the escalating scale and frequency of social violence, in India, It is already clearly understood in India that there are wide range of conditions in which it is quite possible to get away with large scale murder. The results are profoundly destabilizing and demoralizing. A number of India’s leading civil liberties and human rights organization are convinced that government has become a partner in a process that is tearing India apart.” State-gangsters and terrorism through police and Para-military forces have rendered all norms of the free world irrelevant.
A regimented fundamentalist suppression of the legitimate aspirations of the minorities is being carried out through black laws like The National Security (Amendment) Ordinance No. 5 and 6 1984. The Terrorist Affected Areas (Special Courts) No. 9 of 1984 and the Amendment to Indian Evidence Act making it obligatory upon the accused to prove that he or she is innocent. Government White Papers state anything but truth. Writing about the White Papers issued after the Operation Blue Star, Justice V.M. Tarkunde says, ““What is stated by the government’s White Paper is far from the truth. The 4th June, 1984, was wrongly chosen by the Army for an attack on the inmates of the Golden Temple because the 3rd of June being a Gurpurb (martyrdom day of, Guru Arjan Dev Ji), a large number of pilgrims nearly 10,000 had come to stay in the temple. Many of them appeared to have been killed in the army action,
We found that the Army was hated rot only by the common villager but by their own retired Havildars and Captains. Today the image of the Army is of a communal, corrupt, cruel and grossly insensitive force,” he asserted.
“Ordinary citizen who becomes victim of Army’s arbitrary power is left without any channel for redress of his/her grievances. The section 7 of the Act lays down; ‘no prosecution’ suit or other legal proceedings shall be instituted, except with the previous sanction of the Central Government, against any person in respect of anything done in exercise of powers conferred by this Act.’
Thousands of innocent Sikh pilgrims were mercilessly massacred and the sanctity of Sikh shrines was wickedly outraged on this day two years to accomplish the dubious objective of restoring ‘law and order.’ It was given out that the army action had become inevitable for establishing peace and normalcy. Today Sikh shrines stand ‘flushed’ and the country-side presents a grim spectacle of a victorious army engaged in the task of teaching a bitter lesson to the ‘enemy? Population. There is not a diabolic atrocity or a bestial barbarity known to the world that is not. Being shamelessly perpetrated against the Sikhs. Sikh youngmen are being tortured, hunted and killed in cold-blooded, yet the law and order’ problem is assuming frightening proportions, what a colossal waste and a stupid gamble!
A perfectly just charter of constitutional demands has been forced to grow into a separatist instrument partly by the communal arrogance of the majority community and partly by a government run by those who are more anxious to perpetuate dynastic rule than to evolve a secular society committed to national integration.
In is no coincidence that right from the days of Guru Nanak, Sikhism has been facing the wrath of one imperious tyrant after another. What is it that brings Sikhs in direct clash with despotic rulers? The answer is simple. Fighting against oppression and injustice is an article of with Sikhs. Oppression and Sikhism cannot co-exist. Rulers tend to dominate and discriminate. Sikhism demands of its votaries to challenge and fight all such aberrations, opposed to escapist renunciation or slavish resignation before unjust authority. It does not recoil from the ugly socio-political realities rather considers it a religious obligation to weed out the evil and the wicked. Consequently Sikhs would never submit to tyranny or slavery, it is religion wedded to freedom, equality, brotherhood, love and truth. Its shrines open on all sides and to all the people. It is a religion that embraces the mankind as a whole.
‘The Sikhs in California have adopted this country as their own and are striving to contribute meaningfully and constructively in enriching the human life here and elsewhere. But their spiritual bond with the Golden Temple and their emotional kinship with the persecuted Sikhs in India disturb them as much as the sacrilege of the Vatican would disturb Christians,
We, therefore, urge your Excellency to respond to our appeal and help Sikhs lead a life of dignity and freedom.
(Didar Singh Bains) President
World Sikh Organization
Gurnam Singh Pamma
Vice-President (West)
World Sikh Organization (U.S.A,)
Article extracted from this publication >> May 30, 1986
