HOMAGE TO THE SIKH MARTYRS IN AN INTERRELIGIOUS CONFERENCE By Dr. Harbans S. Sraon
Interreligious prayer and solidarity conference was arranged to commemorate 3rd anniversary of desecration of the Golden Temple. Conference was held at Holiday Inn, Anaheim, California. Over 100 people attended from five different religions (Sikhs, Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Hindus). Major objective was to give true picture of Sikh history and religions to non-Sikhs, and pay homage to the Sikh martyrs. A video was prepared by a professional movie production company.
Amnesty International gave an accurate report on violations of human rights in India with a specific reference to Sikh victims. India Alert exposed Indian government in identifying injustice towards minorities in India. There was lively discussion by the panel of speakers. The Sikh cause was fully supported. Meeting concluded with a universal silent prayer.
World Sikh News is searching the papers read at the conference beginning with Sandra Bourne’s perspective on “Violations of Human Rights”.
I am speaking to you today as a member of Amnesty International. Amnesty is an independent worldwide movement for the international protection of human rights. It seeks the release of men and women detained anywhere because of their beliefs, color, sex, ethnic origin, language or religious creed, provided they have not used or advocated violence. These are termed prisoners of conscience. Amnesty works for fair and prompt trials for all political prisoners and works on behalf of such people detained without charge or trial. It opposes the death penalty and torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment of all prisoners without reservation.
Amnesty has known of the plight of Sikhs in their own country for some time, but their efforts have been hampered by the complete foreign news blackout and the inaccessibility of visas. With the help of material and eye witness accounts obtained from Dr. Sraon, Amnesty has the ammunition needed to aid the Sikhs in telling the world the truth of the human rights abuses in India.
In the 1920’s and 30’s, the Nazis of Germany were the perpetrators of a holocaust so horrible that we, in the darkest corners of our minds, can never imagine. We are reminded of this black time of our recent history on occasion, although many of us would choose to forget it or to simply let it lie, holding onto the thought that this type of heinous attacking of human beings could never happen again. Well, it is happening. Now. Today. In India. The Nazis massacred indiscriminately all those who did not fit in their “perfect society”. Catholics, gypsies, Poles, although the Jews were their main target, the extermination of the Jews their objective. In India, the government of Rajiv Gandhi is the force behind such a holocaust. Anyone who is not a Hindu is subject to their persecution, but their main target: the Sikhs.
I have only recently come to know about the Sikhs and their religion and without hesitation I say that they espouse many beliefs | greatly admire. They practice a life of service, humility, tolerance and purity. The Sikhs are a peaceful people; their living principle requires them to follow the path of nonviolence and prayer. These are the people now labeled “terrorist” by the Indian government. It is a sin for a Sikh to use weapons to hurt any innocent person, yet there exists today a campaign to defame the Sikhs, blaming them for many crimes, accusing them of things for which their very religion would excommunicate them. These humiliations would be bad enough for the Sikhs, but the violence against them is the greater sin.
Ever since India’s freedom from British rules, there have been planned, repeated, flagrant and widespread violations of human rights of the Sikhs by the Indian government. A nonviolent movement against this treatment resulted in hundreds of thousands of Sikhs courting arrest. Instead of heeding their protest and providing redress, Mrs. Gandhi’s government decided to suppress the movement with torture and murder. This culminated in the Indian army’s invasion of the Golden Temple in June, 1984. The machinery of war was used on men, women and children kneeling in prayer.
Ten thousand were massacred. Over forty places of worship were invaded simultaneously. In the times following these atrocities, abuse of Sikh people, including denial of the due process of law, beating and torture of adults and children alike, indiscriminate arrests and harassment has been escalated. According to the Christian Science Monitor, “Thousands have disappeared in the Punjab since the army operation began. The government has provided no lists of names; families don’t know if sons and husbands are arrested, underground or dead”.
In April and June of 1984 the National Security Ordinance and the Terrorist Affected Areas Ordinance were passed by the Indian government. These Black Laws restrict civil liberties and take away those basic rights recognized in any democracy. They allow the detention of people for up to two years without being charged. A person can be detained for this seeming eternity simply because the government believes that he is likely to behave in a prejudicial manner in the future. Now, 40 years after Independence, the people of India have been subjected to laws which violate all principles of natural justice.
In some ways, they are worse than laws under the colonial regime. Not only do they subvert the right to fair trial, but they could also be used against individuals and groups working for social and political justice. In the words of Srinivasa Sastri, “A bad law once passed is not always used against the bad…… when government undertakes a repressive policy, the innocent are not safe”.
Indira Gandhi was assassinated on October 31, 1984. The communal riots following her death were like the sudden eruption of a gigantic volcano. The ferocity of both the victimized community and the community in whose names the draconian campaign of looting, arson, killing, burning, rape and molestation took place. What happened in the next three days makes it impossible to dismiss those events as spontaneous expressions of outrage. The perpetrators of these atrocities were well led, well-armed and well informed about where Sikh families lived. The police stood idle while the brutality proceeded or else arrested Sikhs who tried to defend themselves with weapons. Women were abducted and raped as they ran fleeing from their burning homes. There was systematic slaughter that accompanied looting and arson in Sikh community. The government run television flashed provocative slogans such as “blood for blood”. The army was placed on the alert, but mysteriously it was not called out to restore law and order for several days. It is not plausible that lapses so conducive to criminality would have occurred without orders from political leaders. The accusatory finger is pointed at several prominent Congress Party activists. Two of them are currently Cabinet Minister. The rioting lasted four days. The following are eyewitness accounts:
Professor Ashwini Ray, Head of the Department of Political Science: At the Bhogal market on Mathura Road the police were making way for a truck put on fire and being driven by the arsonist himself. The arsonist jumped out and the truck bumped into a railline within 15 meters of a police car. Policemen were reading newspapers and drinking tea inside the car while the arson was going on all around. I went to the police car to ask why they were not stopping the arson and was told to mind my own business. Already 70 to 80 trucks were burning in Bhogal. A short while later, I saw a Texla TV Service Centre owned by a Sikh set on fire, radio sets and TVs were being carried off right in front of the parked police vehicle. Some policemen in the vehicle asked the people to hurry with the loot. Within half an hour of this I saw the ghastly sight of about eighty Sikhs of all ages from toddlers. To 80 years of age, including women and children, crowded on the back verandah of the second floor of a corner house, some of whom were attempting to jump. The mob was waiting in front with sticks and weapons for the occupants to emerge out of the houses.
Dipankar Gupta, Assistant Professor at JNU: reports that he saw a group of about 60 young men attacking the gurdwara. There were four policemen with guns slung on their shoulders that at the point turned away from the gurdwara and walked away. Gupta also heard rumours that Sikhs with sten guns were on the rampage killing Hindus. He made repeated attempts to substantiate this allegation, all of which failed.
Swapan Lahiri, an Engineer, viewed a group of 50 to 60 people wielding sticks and iron rods from Parliament Street to Raising Road. There they attacked the house of Atal B. Vajpayee. The mob then found Vajpayee and abused him. Then they moved to the Press Club Taxi Stand and burned the cars, attacking some of the drivers. They damaged everything in their path. During all these incidents Lahiri saw the police standing and watching without intervening at any Stage.
In Kotla Mubarakpur, a domestic worker said that the police had encouraged the looting. Later they were reported to have said to the looters, “We gave you 36 ours. Had we given the Sikhs that ‘amount of time, they would have called every Hindu”.
In Mangolpun, anticipating trouble, several Sikhs from different locks approached the police for yelp. One woman, the sole suryivor of her family at the Shakurour relief camp on November 5th, said that she went to the police station for protection, and was old, “We cannot do anything you are on your own”. One group of survivors from Block X reported that the police took them out of their houses on the plea of rescuing them and then timed them over to the mob waiting outside.
Through their sheer apathy and dereliction of duty, the police became accessories to one of the most brutal massacres in post independent India. The social and political consequences of the Government’s stance during the carnage, its deliberate inaction and its callousness towards relief and rehabilitation are far reaching. The list of politicians, police and army officials who allegedly instigated violence against Sikhs and protected criminals is a long one.
The government appointed a Mishra Commission, headed by a Supreme court judge, to inquire into whether the violence was organized. When the commission eventually finished its work, Mr. Gandhi suppressed its findings. In February of this year an anticlimactic report was finally made public. The commission ruled that 19 lower level Congress Party functionaries took part in the riots and should be punished, but rejected the notion that they were organized. No Cabinet ministers or senior party officials were implicated. This dubious verdict is unlikely to convince Sikhs, or fair-minded Indians of any faith. The report casts doubt upon the independence of the Indian judiciary.
The Indian government has shown utter disregard for basic human dignity. People have been taken from their homes, tied up and shot. Others have been brutally beaten. Thousands, including children as young as two years of age, have been held without trial and subjected to inhuman torture. The law has been changed to hold anyone accused by the government of any crime or intention to commit any crime guilty until he proves his innocence. Every Sikh is suspect. The only way a Sikh can save himself is to renounce the symbols of his religion. The cry of Rajiv Gandhi and his government of “Hindu, Hindi, and Hindustan” says it all. No other. Religion is.to is tolerated in the country of India. In a November 1984, editing of The Boston Globe, L.S. Rajput was quoted as saying, “Whatever your religious faith, you are first and always a Hindu. Everybody born in India is a Hindu. We are trying to educate the others. Hinduism is our path to unity”. Balasaheb Deoras was quoted in the same article, “The time has come for Indian Sikhs and Muslims and Christians to come back to the Hindu fold. They may have changed their religion four or five generations back: It doesn’t matter. They should still call themselves Hindus”.
The same Sikhs that fought for India against British rule are now completely alienated. This community which prided itself on its patriotism has been literally thrown out by the majority Hindus. Three weeks ago the Indian government issued an edict whereby the police can take a suspect and shoot him on the site. The Sikh youth is being destroyed. 50,000 young men and women have disappeared to date.
In “A Warning for Our Times”, Martin Nimbler sums up what can happen when people are aware of the wrong doings inflicted on those around them, but choose silence instead of speaking out against tyranny. He says, “In Germany, the Nazis came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I was not a Jew. Then they came for trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I was not a unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I was a Protestant and so I didn’t speak up. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak for anyone”.
Freedom is not a gift. Throughout history it has been obtained only through great effort. The freedom enjoyed by those of you here freedom of speech, of the press and of worship is not shared by your fellow Sikhs in India. To be told what religion to follow is to me and I am sure to all of you a reprehensible thought. We sympathize with you. I know that many of you have friends and families still in India. Their constant fear is your fear, too. What is important now is unity. Unite here, where you are, and use your freedom to help those who cannot imagine what freedom is like, who are afraid to speak out, who daily fear for their very lives and for the lives of their loved ones. The Indian government has made it clear that’ this is just the beginning, that their camp. Against the Sikhs is far from over. Where next will they strike? Who will be next?
We must speak out against what is happening to the Sikhs in India. We must tell our government what we know. We must ask for the aid of our own Congressmen in telling the world of the plight of Sikhs and stopping the human rights abuses against the Sikhs in their own country. We must remember that every mind oppressed, every religion persecuted, every soul enslaved diminishes our own precious freedom and the very right to that freedom.
I would like to close today with the plain yet perfect words of a representative of the World Sikh Organization. “All fair minded people. all who hold religious freedom to be a fundamental right, all who believe in justice and in peace would see the enormity of the Indian government’s barbaric crimes against a section of its own people. The Sikhs are engaged in a desperate struggle for survival. God-fearing people, all over the world must raise their voice in defense of truth and liberty”.
Article extracted from this publication >> July 10, 1987
