Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site decwrl.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!ucbvax!decwrl!bajwa@nacho.DEC (BAJ DTN 381-2851)
From: bajwa@nacho.DEC (BAJ DTN 381-2851)
Newsgroups: net.nlang.india
Subject: Response by a Sikh
Message-ID: <643@decwrl.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 1-Oct-85 23:07:32 EDT
Article-I.D.: decwrl.643
Posted: Tue Oct  1 23:07:32 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 3-Oct-85 06:06:47 EDT
Sender: daemon@decwrl.UUCP
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 439



    
    A while back someone asked to hear from a Sikh on the happenings 
    in Punjab and elsewhere concerning the Sikhs. Let me respond.
    
    ( By the time I finished, I realised that this message was 
    outrageously long, therefore you may want to print it and read it 
    off line. My apoligies for that; but then again the issue is of 
    serious concern).
    
    The fundamental issues involved are things like justice, equality, 
    rights, etc.; issues which are fundamental to a democratic system 
    and without which all the nonsense about democracy is just that. 
    India, it is claimed, is the largest democracy. Unfortunately only 
    one of those is true. In my opinion, over the last decade or two, 
    most fundamental institutions of democracy ( press, media, the 
    judicial system, police, etc.) have been highly politicised. The 
    "Sikh problem" is just a symptom of these problems and unless some 
    of the fundamental issues are addressed I predict that there may 
    be several more of these problems. 
    
    As regards the "Sikh problem" in particular, I think that the 
    factor that has contributed the most to making the situation 
    deteriorate so much is the stranglehold of the Indian govt. on the 
    media. Most Indians are really not aware of what has been really 
    happening to the Sikhs. The govt has used it's control over the 
    media to give a false picture of the happenings in the Punjab 
    region. 
    
    Until about two years ago, Sikhs were considered to be simple, 
    loyal, hard-working, patriotic people. In the last two years, tens 
    of thousands of them have been killed, their holiest shrine 
    desecrated and destroyed and now they are the outcasts in India, 
    and their loyalty id being seriously questioned. Yes, it is also 
    true that Indira Gandhi was assasinated by two Sikhs ( as 
    individuals and not as a conspiracy as publicly stated by several 
    govt officials immidiately after the assasination ) and also that 
    some non-Sikhs were killed in Punjab during the same time. But 
    overall, the sequence does not make logical sense. It is almost 
    that the victims are being pointed out as being the villians. 
    Sikhs constitute one of the wealthiest communities -- that does 
    not constitute an environment that would foster terrorism; they 
    would stand to lose the most. Before the Golden Temple assault, 
    there was perhaps a handfull of Sikhs talking of Khalistan, after 
    the attack many in Punjab began to talk about it and then after 
    the massacres in Delhi and other North Indian cities, most Sikhs 
    talk about a Khalistan. Note that the talk about Khalistan is 
    merely a reaction and in my opinion is borne out of a feeling of 
    insecurity caused by diminished trust of the govt.
    
    I will list a few issues here which may not be known or well 
    understood outside the Sikh community;
    
    -- Most linguistic states were automatically formed within a few 
    years of independence. Punjab, as a punjabi-speaking state, was 
    the last to be formed in the late sixties, and that too after much 
    peacefull agitation by the Sikhs (Tara Singh, Fateh Singh etc.).
    This irked the Sikhs even more considering that more than 75% of 
    those either killed or sent to Andaman during the independence 
    struggle were Sikhs (a fact not well publicised in commonly 
    prescribed history books in schools; yet another sour point from 
    the Sikhs' perspective).
    
    -- At the time of partition there were about 40% Sikhs in the 
    armed forces. Now there are about 15%. This was accomplished by a 
    concious policy to limit their recruitment to 2% (their population 
    ratio). (This was done despite the fact that there was an overall 
    shortage of volunteers). What is wrong with such a "quota system" 
    you might ask? Well, this was not a case of normal quota 
    allocation; normal quota rules are used to promote, rather than 
    limit, a minority's participation! For example, would it be 
    acceptable to limit Brahmins to say 3% of govt jobs, because that 
    might be their population representation? Of course not!
    I really believe that many of the young Sikhs who were followers 
    of Bhindranwale and died fighting the Indian army in the Golden 
    Temple, would have been soldiers in the Indian army, had this 
    ceiling not been the policy. What a pity, when you consider that 
    they would have fought just as fiercely defending India if they 
    hadn't been denied recruitment.
    
    -- The Indian govt would have you believe that the assault on the 
    Golden Temple was necessary and justified. The facts, however, do 
    not back up the rhetoric. Consider the following;
       . No charges were filed and warrants issued against 
    Bhindranwale and his men. There had been a media blitz against him 
    with implications that he was involved in the killings in Punjab 
    (which may or may not be true; but the proper process is very 
    essential).
       . Bhindranwale was a smalltime religous leader before the govt 
    (Sanjay Gandhi and Congress people in Punjab, in particular) built 
    him up (with money, publicity, political backing etc.) in order to 
    divide the Sikh votes and ensure Congress rule in Punjab.
       . Bhindranwale had been arrested on at least two occassions and 
    released by orders from some 'highups' in the govt.
       . Bhindranwale went into the Golden Temple when he realised 
    that the govt had decided that he was then expendible.( It may be 
    interesting to note that Indira's father, Nehru, had also taken 
    shelter in the same temple to avoid arrest during British rule).
       . The Indian army had been rehearsing an attack on the Golden 
    Temple almost a year prior to the actual assault. This was being 
    done at Chakratta (in UP) where a mockup model of the temple had 
    been constructed.
       . It wasn't only the Golden Temple in Amritsar that was 
    attacked by the army. All major Sikh temples in Punjab were 
    simultaneously attacked. At some of these several hundred pilgrims 
    were indiscrimately killed.
       . The particular day chosen for the attack was a Gurpurab (Sikh 
    holy day) when tens of thousands of pilgrims visit the Golden 
    Temple and other Sikh shrines.
      
    -- Mutinees by Sikh soldiers were an unfortunate but 
    understandable happenings. Knowing the part that religon plays in 
    the psychology of the Indian soldier, the mutinees should have 
    been anticipated. Most of the soldiers involved are being punished 
    and at least one Sikh battallion has been disbanded. What irks the 
    Sikh community, however, is the inconsistancy with which these 
    incidents are being handled as compared to others. In the past 
    there have been wartime mutinees by large groups of non-Sikh 
    soldiers, at which time those involved were let off with light 
    reprimands.   
    
    -- By now everyone is aware that the post-assasination riots in 
    Delhi etc. were planned and directed by various leaders of the 
    Congress party, with the active participation of the police in 
    many instances. The investigation by the People's Union 0f Civil 
    Liberties and the Citizens for Democracy is summed up in their 
    report titled "Who Are the Guilty?". The govt, including Rajiv 
    Gandhi, have stated that there was no need of an inquiry. The govt 
    agreed to an investigation in April (after 5 months), but as of 
    now nothing much has been done. Although I don't condone the 
    rationale, most people believe that the assasinations of the two 
    congress leaders (Lallit Maken and Arjun Dass) in Delhi were a 
    result of their involvement in the massacres. Union ministers like 
    HKL Bhagat have also been named in the civil liberties groups' 
    report. The report by the way has been banned in India, but 
    substansial copies are circulating there and abroad.
    
    -- The Indian Government's 5-year $270 million relief plan for the 
    Bhopal victims is commendable. The unfortunate aspect of this, 
    however, is the glaring inconsistency it shows when contrasted to 
    the government's attitude towards the victims of the horrible 
    anti-Sikh massacres. The differences become even more apparent 
    when one considers that the Bhopal tragedy occured later than the 
    anti-Sikh riots and that it was an industrial accident as compared 
    to the massacres which were acts of contemplated criminal 
    behaviour, perpetrated over several days. Furthermore, the 
    government initially refused to even hold an inquiry into the 
    anti-Sikh events despite several reports by civil liberties groups 
    indicating that several Congress Party officials and the Police 
    were involved. This was in contrast to a flurry of activity by the 
    government in mobilizing legal assistance in trying to maximize 
    compensation for the Bhopal victims.
    	This is just one example, amongst many, of the anti-Sikh bias of 
    the Indian government. It also casts serious doubts about its 
    sincerity in solving the crisis involving the Sikh community. 
    
    -- The same civil liberties group's have published the results of 
    their investigations of the events in Punjab, clearly indicating 
    the brute repression carried out by the police and the army. The 
    report has been banned and its writer and publisher jailed. Some 
    excerpts of what appeared on the news wires a few days ago:
    
    [Details are now available on the banning of a report on Punjab 
    and arrest of a civil right activist. The police arrested on Sept. 
    11 two people, ND Pancholi, general secretary for Citizens for 
    Democracy and Prakash Gupta, printer of the document "Report to 
    the Nation - Oppression in Punjab." They along with other authors 
    - Amiya Rao, Aurobindo Ghose, Tejinder Singh and Sunil 
    Bhattacharjee- of the report were charged with sedition and 
    inciting disaffection between Hindus and Sikhs. Two days later, 
    Pancholi and Gupta were granted bail. The police had also seized 
    over 2000 copies of the report. The report was released to the 
    press by an eminent jurist VM Tarkunde on Sept. 8 and it 
    reportedly created a furor in Congress headquarters. Congress(I) 
    general secretary Srikant Varma immediately  demanded the arrest 
    of Tarkunde and the authors of the report. According to many, the 
    arrests were politically motivated. The report is in there parts: 
    first part describes what it calls the "inhuman barbarities
    the Sikhs in Punjab were subjected." It gives specific instances 
    of alleged army atrocities holding it responsible for "harassing, 
    torturing, and killing innocents on fake suspicion of being
    terrorists." The second part gives the nonofficial version of what 
    happened before  and during the Operation Bluestar. It said, "June 
    4 was the wrong date to enter the temple since on June 3, nearly 
    10,000 pilgrims were inside the temple for gurpurab and most of
    them were killed during the operation. "The last part details an 
    account of several "existing black laws in Punjab." It declares 
    "the situation is really desperate and it will be surprising if 
    the brutal torture by the police does not encourage retalitation 
    and fresh violence and create fresh terrorists." Opposition 
    leaders condemned the arrests and banning of the report.]
    
    This report sheds a totally different light on the situation in 
    Punjab than the one projected by the Indian govt through its 
    controlled media. Perhaps it helps non-Sikh Indians understand why 
    the Sikhs are so angry and it might explain why so many of them 
    have turned into "extremists and terrorists". The history of the 
    Sikhs is one of fighting against tyranny, opression and injustice. 
    One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
    
    -- Most of us here in the US are aware of the haste with which the 
    Indian govt. blamed the Sikhs for the Air India crash. Within a 
    few hours of the crash the Civil Aviation minister was sure that 
    it was an explosion that brought down the plane and that the Sikhs 
    were responsible. Most Indian Newspapers carried bold headlines 
    indicating that the "Khalistanis" were involved. Many months later 
    with  many experts working on the investigation, it is yet to be 
    established that it was in fact an explosion that downed the 
    aircraft, let alone that the Sikhs were responsible. The 
    damage, however, had been done; people all over the world have the 
    impression that Sikhs blew up the plane. 
    
    -- Most people wonder why most of the Sikhs aren't rejoicing at 
    the recent Rajiv-Longowal agreement. As usual most people go by 
    their impressions (which are formed by what the media puts out) 
    rather than actually reading the text of the agreement. Except for 
    the transfer of Chandigarh (although what portion of the Union 
    territory goes to Haryana is yet to be decided) by 26-Jan-86, most 
    of the rest of the agreement is vague and to be decided by 
    commissions to be appointed by the govt. For instance, one of the 
    points calls for the center to send a circular to all state 
    governments to provide protection for the minorities!  More 
    importantly, however, the Sikhs find it difficult, based on its 
    past record, to trust the govt. Had te agreement been more 
    concrete and assured that the Sikhs did not get short changed (by 
    giving them an adequate say in the commission appointments, for 
    example), I'm sure most Sikhs would have been satisfied and happy.
    
    
    I hope that some of the points made above will help in trying to 
    understand why the Sikhs feel so alienated. I would like others to 
    comment on these or add to them. It is always good to have a 
    healthy dialogue amongst people with  differing viewpoints.
    
    I am appending two articles written by friends. They represents 
    more of the feelings within the Sikh community.
    
    [                THE PUNJAB PROBLEM - AN ANALYSIS
    
    "The political independence of the new Third World countries," 
    according to the French sociologist Jean Duvignaud, "must be followed 
    by social independence, which today does not exist."  He continues on 
    to say that " the elite group that won political freedom has become a 
    petrified ruling class whose very existence broadens the gap between 
    the city and the steppe."
    
    	    Though Duvignaud wrote this in the year 1968 in his study of the 
    Tunisian village of Shebika, he could easily have been talking about a 
    village in India.  Does India have social independence today even 
    thirty-seven years after gaining political independence?  If by the 
    concept of "social independence" we mean the ability to obtain for 
    itself an individual or collective freedom and to find "spontaneously 
    ... the social forms of its adaptation to change," the answer is no, it 
    does not.  India is colonized by its urban elite, who have stepped in 
    where the British left off.
    
    	    The killing of thousands of Sikhs in the Indian state of Punjab 
    last June seems a repetition of the massacre by the British of hundreds 
    of Indians at Jallianwalla Bagh (Amritsar), which, curiously enough, 
    lies only a few hundred yards from the Golden Temple.  Mrs. Gandhi's 
    action showed the same callous disregard for human life that was shown 
    by the British, furthermore it reveals a disregard for religious 
    sentiment by the invasion of the religious shrine of an industrious, 
    thriving minority of India.
    
    	    The government in India has openly shown that it has become, to 
    the Sikhs, a colonial power.  Like the British, it governs the Punjab 
    as though it were a colony, exploiting its labor and its resources 
    while not putting anything back into it.  It governs by means of a 
    bureaucratic structure that was taken over intact from the British, 
    except that now an urban elite, which Duvignaud so aptly called a 
    "petrified ruling class," fills the slots that were the prerogative of 
    the British.  Indians have to, even today, call these Tax Collectors 
    and District Administrators "Sahib" as they did their British masters.  
    They must still treat them as an aristocracy that is far above them in 
    rank.  And it is not merely that anti-egalitarian, hierarchical aspect 
    of this bureaucracy that is objectionable to the common people, it is 
    also that this bureaucracy is riddled with corruption.  Every cog in 
    this bureaucratic machine takes, or demands bribes as their right and 
    as a prerequisite of their position.  From the District Administrator 
    to the peon who guards the Administrator's door, to every official in 
    the Tax service, the public works department, the police, the telephone 
    service, graft and bribery is the normal way of living.  No ordinary 
    person can exist without giving bribes at some time or the other, 
    whether it is to get the very essentials of life like cooking gas or 
    train tickets, or to obtain electricity or water for the farms, or even 
    the use of government-owned harvesters when the crops have ripened.  
    Every person must compromise her or his integrity regularly in order to 
    survive.
    
    	    Indians, consequently, have been rendered effete by this 
    bureaucracy.  They see no escape from a life of servitude to these 
    rulers, and feel bound by a consciousness of their shameful complicity 
    in this dishonesty.  The Sikhs have decided that it is time this 
    slavery ended.  It is time to really be a democracy, to be active 
    participants in their own future, to throw off the cumbersome, stifling 
    colonialistic bureaucracy that hinders dynamism and change.
    
    	    This bureaucracy is, furthermore, governed by a central government 
    that is urban and elite, and which hence has very little knowledge of 
    rural India, or even of the immense differences that exist at a 
    regional, or even village, level in the various parts of the country,  
    imposing plans and projects from a distant, alien city, the rulers are 
    turning villages into merely negative spaces -- spaces that are 
    non-urban, non-dynamic, non-progressive.  The central government 
    encourages the villages to become parasites on it by allowing those 
    changes that it brings itself.  The bureaucracy effectively stifles any 
    self-help or self-transformation.  Consequently, the city becomes, to 
    the villager, the only place where wealth or change is possible, ending 
    up, unfortunately, in the pitiful slums that exist in every Indian 
    city.
    
    	    The Punjab, however, is not a state which thrives on its cities.  
    Its life lies in the farms and the farmers who inhabit the villages -- 
    the same farmers that grow enough food to feed the rest of India.  And 
    the central government prevents improvements in the villages by its 
    efforts to remain a powerful, urban elite.  By electric power cuts of 
    12 hours or more a day, by siphoning off Punjab's waters, by imposing 
    artificial wheat prices that allow a minimal profit to the farmer while 
    allowing the merchant in the city to sell in the free market, by 
    nationalizing banks and farming co-operatives as well as much of the 
    farming industry, the center stifles the transformation of the Punjab.  
    Even though, compared to the other poverty-ridden states of India, 
    Punjab is considered to be well-to-do and its desire for autonomy 
    supposed to be merely a desire to grab whatever cake there is while 
    much of India starves, yet Punjab does not get back anything comparable 
    to what it gives.  New Delhi is, for Punjab, just as exploitative as 
    London was during the British rule.  Punjab is denied the capacity to 
    improve or transform spontaneously into what it has the potential to 
    be.  The Punjab farmers do not feel that their labor is given just 
    recompense.  They do not feel that they are "fated" to remain poor or 
    starving.  Their relegion rejects such passivity.
    
    	    The Sikhs have always been called "progressive."  They are not 
    content to remain a petrified society.  The Sikh relegion, which was 
    essentially a movement of reformation created out of elements of 
    Hinduism and Islam, has built a society and an ethic in Punjab that is 
    very different from that of the Hindu majority in the rest of India.  
    First, it stresses egalitarianism.  Sikhism rejected the cast system, 
    saying instead that all people were born equal.  No person was fated to 
    be a collector of refuse as a consequence of birth.  It is out of this 
    Hindu belief in the caste system that the present toleration of the 
    hierarchy of urban elite and village poor, of Brahman rulers (to which 
    caste Mrs. Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi belong by birth) and common people, 
    exists.  To the Sikhs such hierarchical divisions are intolerable.  
    Sikhism, secondly, proposes that the right way to live is a life of 
    work and family and service to the community.  The life of meditation 
    or reclusion is not requisite for salvation, anyone can be a priest, 
    anyone can have access to holy writings.  To the Sikhs, therefore, work 
    and community are necessary.  Labor that does not benefit the family or 
    the community -- which is what the artificial, minimal price of wheat 
    ensures -- therefore becomes a source of immense dissatisfaction at the 
    grass roots level.
    
    	    The militancy of the Sikhs, by virtue of which the government of 
    India is branding every Sikh a terrorist, has historically been a 
    result of fighting for freedom against the Mogul rulers and later, the 
    British.  At present the fight for economic, social and religious 
    freedom is arousing militancy that every Sikh can call up because of 
    the historical past.  During the fight for independence against the 
    British, the reputation for being a warrior sect served to make many 
    Sikhs fight and die for India.  It served as well to make Sikhs enlist 
    in the Indian Army in large numbers -- many of them realizing that the 
    farms were getting smaller from generation to generation and that 
    farming would not be profitable if everyone farmed.  So the Sikhs went 
    into the Army.  They also emigrated, in the twentieth century, in large 
    numbers.  Most Sikh families have at least one member who lives abroad 
    -- and sends money home.  The simplest research can reveal that it is 
    not the farming alone that makes Punjab prosperous because the 
    Government's fixed price and policy of allowing only 18 acres of land 
    to any family ensures otherwise.  It is the emigrants who send money 
    home, who buy land, subsidize their families, pump foreign currency 
    into the economy.  Village banks have most of their investments from 
    abroad while at the same time the local farmers remain indebted to 
    them.
    
    	    So the Indian government, the ruling urban, westernized, elite, 
    afraid of Punjab's self-transformation afraid that its wheat and its 
    immigrants, in a free economy would take the power and wealth from the 
    center and make Punjab an island of prosperity which the rest of India 
    does not hope to achieve, is determined to keep Punjab a colony of 
    India.  Under the religious issue, which has become a rallying symbol 
    for the Sikh fight for freedom, lies the threat to the center of 
    Punjab's desire for social independence -- its determination to throw 
    off the neo-colonialist rule of the urban aristocracy.  Punjab is 
    determined to step into a new life and not remain in what George 
    Balandier in Sociologie Actuelle de l'Afrique Noire called "the 
    surviving remnant of the colonial period," by which is meant that no 
    man's land between traditional culture and the new life which keeps a 
    society static.  Having an inadequate concept of the structure of every 
    village community, applying programs and laws across the board without 
    taking into consideration diversities of culture, the center has failed 
    to take India anywhere.  Corruption, poverty, starvation, and religious 
    animosities that have now arisen out of the failure of the elite that 
    governs India.  India, to the dynamic and hardworking Sikhs, seems to 
    be going nowhere.  And Punjab and its people have come to realize that 
    they have to be free to transform themselves and in the process to 
    shake off the parasite that feeds on them.]
    
    
    
    
    [   SIKH MASSACRES IN INDIA -- THE BEGININGS OF ANOTHER HOLOCAUST?
    
    	      On this the 40th anniversary of the holocaust it is not only 
    important to remember those tragic events it is also important to 
    ensure that they will never be repeated. We can achieve that in two 
    ways; we must first attempt to recognize events that bear any 
    resemblance to those that led up to the holocaust and then we must 
    speak out against them and their perpetrators.
    
    	      In this context it was disappointing to observe the general lack 
    of outrage and condemnation, especially amongst the western 
    democracies, at the carnage that took place in India following the 
    assasination of Indira Gandhi. It is not that violence is unheard of in 
    the Indian subcontinent, but what is unusual is that it was directed 
    specifically at the minority Sikhs, much as the Jews were singled out 
    in Nazi Germany. Like the Jews in Nazi Germany the Sikhs in India are a 
    tiny but visible and prosperous minority. Just as in Germany, the 
    masses in the country were aroused by an anti-Sikh hate campaign and 
    the violence often had the sanction of the government. The riots that 
    killed several thousand innocent Sikh men, women and children were 
    master-minded and organized by right wing elements of the major 
    political party. Police and paramilitary forces looked on and in some 
    cases joined in the looting, burning, raping and killing. Fortunately, 
    there were a few non-Sikhs who saw the injustice and had the courage to 
    shelter some of the potential victims at great risk to their own lives. 
    The media and press were used by the government to either misrepresent 
    or supress the extent of the violence towards the Sikhs. The killings 
    were trivialized to the point that the government saw no need to hold 
    an inquiry. And just as during the supression of the Jews, the rest of 
    the world stood by silently.
    
    	      Let us, in remembering the anniversary of the holocaust, resolve 
    that we will never hesitate to speak out when we see something like 
    this happening. That is the surest way to not let history repeat 
    itself.]