Regional/ International Affairs
By N. P. Upadhyaya (Aryal)
Kathmandu: A November 7 news on Twitter attracted my attention which stated, (sic) “Over 70, 000 Canadian Sikhs voted in favor of Khalistan and that India failed diplomatically to convince Canada’s Trudeau government”.
India’s Telegraph online on November 10 also informed that a Sikh ‘separatist group’ had organized a so-called referendum in the Canadian city of Brampton on November 6, asking the Sikh diaspora in the North American country to vote on whether areas of India where the Sikh religion is in the majority should be an independent country known as “Khalistan.”
Informed sources opine that Canada is currently home to 1. 6 million plus people of Indian origin and non-resident Indians, presumed to be one of the largest concentrations of the Indian diaspora across the world.
The United Kingdom and the USA perhaps follow after the Canadian populace of the Sikhs.
Sikhs in Canada, reports reveal, account for some 3% or even more of the total population.
In Nepal, the Khalistani movement was heard for the first time in the mid-eighties.
The online Indian news portal further informs that while the Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), which has been outlawed in India as a terrorist organization but not in the developed West, claims thousands of people took part in the vote, however, it was not clear how many exactly participated and when the results would be out”.
The fact is that a referendum took place immaterial of the number of participants in the plebiscite. This also means that the movement for Khalistan has not died a premature death. It is alive and kicking.
If India has the right to foment troubles in Nepal’s Tarai/Madhesh then we too could reciprocate and as a media man, I deserve the right to speak in favor of those who remain oppressed and persecuted in India.
Understandably, New Delhi was not happy with the Canadian government which allowed the referendum to take place.
In a strongly worded statement, New Delhi had demanded that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s administration ban the groups behind the demand for a separate Khalistani State.
Canada is a democratic nation which adheres to universal democratic values.
However, as per the Hindustan Times report as quoted by MINT on 24 September the Canadian government refused to stop them from expressing their views by holding the Khalistan Referendum and linking it with a peaceful and democratic process within the legal parameters of the country’s (Canada) laws.
The Sikhs for Justice (SJF) claim that the Khalistani demand of carving out a separate country from what is India’s Punjab today is their ultimate penchant.
The SJF adds that “once there is a consensus within the Panjabi people that independence from India is desired, we (the Sikhs for Justice) will then approach the UN and other international forums and bodies with the goal of what they call for “reestablishing Punjab as a nation-state, according to the media outlet The First Post.
The Canadian Sikhs:
In July 2017, I happened to be in Toronto, Canada wherein I got an opportunity to talk to some Canadian Sikh nationals and ask them why the demand for a separate state “Khalistan” well inside India.
I, by the way, met a small group of Sikhs residing in Toronto, Canada and who had fled from India during the 1984 New Delhi and Amritsar massacre of the Sikhs.
Almost ten days of my stay in Toronto, Canada, provided me with firsthand knowledge to understand the trials and the tribulations of the Sikhs living in India, more so in Delhi that they had to undergo at the time of the great massacre after Jallianwala Bagh incident (also known as the Amritsar massacre, took place on 13 April 1919) and later the Sikh massacre immediately followed after the death of Mrs Indira Gandhi.
Indian PM Mrs Gandhi Shot:
Photo courtesy: Internet
Mrs Indira Gandhi, the then Indian Prime Minister was shot dead by her own Sikh security guards, Beant and Satwant Singh on the fateful day of October 31, 1984.
Beant Singh fired the bullets from point blank range which saw Madame Gandhi falling to the ground and then, as per the media reports, Satwant Singh pumped more bullets to ensure that the “Lady Prime Minister” was dead.
We in Nepal were given to understand that the two security men — the Singhs – were Sikh bodyguards of Mrs Gandhi who had felt offended by Mrs Gandhi’s sending of the Indian military men right inside the Amritsar Golden Temple like a blizzard, which is taken by the entire Sikhs scattered over the world as the most sacred and revered place and thus the forced entrance of the Indian military men in search of “the hiding terrorists” inside the temple made the Sikh community restless which gave a new impetus to the demand for a new nation-state, Khalistan from within the Indian territory.
The 1984 massacre stigma still has been haunting the Sikhs wherever they may have been residing as of now.
Mrs Gandhi had ordered the Indian military to pounce upon the sacred temple of the Sikhs.
And the two Sikhs, Beant and Satwant Singh killed Mrs Gandhi as an act of vengeance for having dented the sanctity of the sacred Golden Temple.
The seeds of revenge, it appears, have been sown right after this “unfortunate” incident which had already annoyed the entire Indian Sikhs.
The 1984 killings of the Indian Sikhs, sources say, was an organized pogrom and the killing spree began in earnest on October 31, ‘84 and continued till November 3, 1984 which took the precious lives of innocent Indian Sikhs of somewhere about 3, 350 which is a figure made known to the Indian nationals across India by the then government.
However, Indian Sikhs and the Sikhs who now reside in various Western countries reveal the “figure” of the wanton killing could touch the number of some 6,000.
The figure or for that matter the statistics may vary of the Sikhs being killed but yet the fact is that the “organized” pogrom against the Indian Sikhs must have tripled the desire of the oppressed Sikhs to have a separate Sikh landmass called the Khalistan.
The Canadian Sikh(s) from Ontario provided me with a small booklet entitled “Chaurasi Ki Na-Insafi” (its literal meaning is the injustice of 1984).
The booklet handed over to me speaks of the panicked and the terrified sorry tale of the Indian Sikhs who faced the brunt of the carnage that it was which we had heard being in Kathmandu.
A Human Rights Watch, New York, October 29, 2014, a long time back said that “many women were raped in the capital. Hundreds of Sikhs were killed elsewhere in the country. The authorities quickly blamed every incident of mass communal violence on a spontaneous public reaction-Gandhi’s son and successor, Rajiv Gandhi, declared at a rally in the capital, “Once a mighty tree falls, it is only natural that the earth around it shakes.”
That was just a lame excuse to cover up the follies or say the inability of the then government in India to assuage the panicked and terrified Sikh nationals.
Rajiv’s buffoonery statements appear to have made the Sikhs realize that their “stay in India” were numbered and hence they must seek a separate nation-state for them time permitting.
So said then Meenakshi Ganguly -the South Asia director at Human Rights Watch that “India’s failure to prosecute those most responsible for the anti-Sikh violence in 1984 has not only denied justice to Sikhs but has made all Indians more vulnerable to communal violence”.
What hindered the justice delivery to the Sikhs, Ms. Ganguly continues saying that “the authorities repeatedly blocked investigations to protect the perpetrators of atrocities against Sikhs, deepening public distrust in India’s justice system.”
Doesn’t it look like the Government of India is trying to cover up the largest killing of the Sikhs? Indeed yes.
The Sikhs have abundant reasons to think of the unthinkable from the government’s point of view.
The separation idea:
The backlash of the killing of Indian Prime Minister Mrs Gandhi followed in a ghastly manner.
Indian media reported then that from 31 October to 3 November 1984, over 3000 Sikh men and women together with children, as stated earlier, were tentatively butchered by the erratic and violent mobs following the assassination of the then Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The statistics even can go much higher. (Angry mobs speak the language of violence only).
Veteran Bollywood actor, Aamir Khan, has also added a small clip of the Sikhs being chased during that time (after the death of Mrs Gandhi) in Delhi in his newly released film “Lal Singh Chaddha”.
The massacre of 1984 was to a greater extent a shame for India, so said a Sikh gentleman while talking to this scribe during my short stay in Toronto, Canada in July 2017.
This Sikh gentleman (who preferred anonymity and I assured him that I shall never reveal his personality even if he was in a different country) who had fled to Canada to save his life talked with me for about an hour in Toronto. (It was a boulevard wherein Sri Lanka. Korean and Sikh community have their shops-Upadhyaya).
It was in this avenue that I was offered tea by the Sikhs who were perhaps the high-flying officials and had been now demanding the existence of Khalistan.
It was their demand.
A government-appointed judicial commission took the wanton killing of the Sikhs across the Indian Union as “organized carnage”.
I recall, many Delhi-residing Sikh nationals made their way also to Nepal.
Reports said that Sikhs from Amritsar too took shelter in Nepal and saved their lives.
Needless to say, the Indian Sikhs were appalled concluding that their days in India were totalled and in the process thousands and thousands of Sikhs from India entered the US, UK, Canada and some other countries of their preference and choices.
Nepal too is taken as the safest place on earth for the Sikhs to ask for shelter to evade Indian atrocities.
For Nepal, it is said that if Nepal has a threat to its existence, then it is sure that it emanated from the Indian establishment.
If one could add then for the entire South Asian countries, India is a threat to their existence.
The attack on the Indian Sikhs was so callous that the Sikhs apparently began to conclude that the Hindus of India were no less than butchers and that a separate State for the Sikhs was the best solution in that the “living or going together” with the Indian State machinery dominated by the fanatic Hindus, the Sikhs thought, was impossible and thus the idea developed for a separate State or say it got intensified.
To recall, Sikhs possessed abundant respect and honor for the Hindus, however, things have become upside down.
Back to the point:
However, I recall, some western countries too wanted India then to split after the massacre of the Sikhs in 1984. With the passage of time, the separate State idea evaporated into thin air.
The Sikhs based across the developed world gave a new lease of life to the idea of a separate State of the Sikhs at the end of the 90s and the demand thus has intensified in recent years.
The demonstrations freshly in Canada are testimony to the fact that the persecuted Sikh family members (of 1984) now residing across the world have not forgotten the horrifying episode and that they still long for having a separate land inside India for the Sikhs-the Khalistan.
Gurpatwant Singh, the SFJ General Counsel and founder addressing a large crowd of Sikhs said that the 1984 Sikh Genocide is one of the biggest crimes against humanity where an attempt was made to erase Sikh identity and religion”.
Singh further said that the Sikhs await justice and the real justice will be a Sikh Homeland of Khalistan and that the Sikhs want the liberation of Punjab from Indian occupation through a democratic referendum which will allow Sikhs to vote on the question of the future association of Punjab with the Indian Union”.
Having said all this, what remains yet to be seen is whether the movement for a separate Sikh homeland is at all possible or not a distant affair if and when the Sikhs residing across the world converge.
However, the fact is also that not all Sikhs across the world and in India support the idea of a separate Khalistan.
Yet as per the Canadian Sikhs whom I met in Toronto, Canada in 2017 that “any place where five Sikhs assemble is no less than a mini Khalistan.
Fresh news claims that India believes the recently opened Kartarpur Corridor could be misused by Pakistan to encourage the champions of the pro-Khalistan movement, however, Pakistan rebukes the Indian claim and says that this passage shall exclusively be used by the Sikh pilgrims’ entering Pakistan from the Indian side.
India has a habit of accusing Pakistan to hide its follies and inactions.
To recall, one Mahinder Pal Singh was beaten by goons in Hari Nagar, India. The goons used remarks like “Saaley Sardar 84 Yaad Kara Dengey…and “Tumhara Jina Muskil Kar dengey”. Both male members of the Sikh family were severely beaten up and both the son and father are in the hospital undergoing treatment, so wrote the Sikh Sangharsh, on March 27, 2019, from Delhi on Twitter.
End of India:
If the Indian Sikhs or say even Muslims are pushed to the wall by the Indian regime, then people in Nepal recall what veteran writer Khuswant Singh has written in his book “The End of India” wherein he writes that “these are the dark times of India. The carnage in Gujarat-Gandhi’s home state, in early 2002 and the subsequent landslide victory of Narendra Modi in elections will “spell” disaster for our country. Late Singh continues, “After partition, I had thought we would never again experience a similar holocaust.
“I may be proved wrong. Far from becoming great, India is going to the dogs, and unless a miracle saves us, the country will break up! It will not be Pakistan or any other foreign power that will destroy us; we will commit hara-kiri”. That’s all.
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