How Sikhs Abroad Are Rewriting a Suppressed History?
The Sikh of India have harsh history of treachery, unfinished commitments and humiliation by the state that can be defined as merely painful since the division of 1947. Even after all their contributions to India in the name of independence and defense, Sikhs time have been used, war heroes to graphically display, a loyal vote bank and dumped once they demanded justice, rights or autonomy. Sikhs Abroad Are Rewriting a Suppressed History This is a sad history of repression, which exists in each Indian government not only Congress but that BJP too, and therefore it cannot be said that the Sikh and their cause of dignity was ever acceptable.
This betrayal was started by the Nehru era by cold bloodedly turning down the Anandpur Sahib Resolution, a plan of Sikh autonomy that made no demands other than equal federal powers within the constitution of India. Political demands of the Sikhs, Nehru and other later Congress leaders termed these demands as dangerous and communal, a trend that continued to develop distrust between the Sikhs and the Congress all through the decades. In the 1950s and 1960s the Sikhs peacefully campaigned for Punjabi Suba, a mere linguistic reorganization to defend the Punjabi language and culture, they were more demonized as separatists. India was ready to carve new states to Tamils, Bengalis, and Gujaratis without reproach but in the case of Sikhs.
Even worse, none of the Indian Prime ministers ever made a national apology concerning the operation blue star of 1984, whereby the Indian army led by Indira Gandhi raided the golden temple of Amritsar killing thousands of innocents and desecrating the holiest shrine of the faith. People been asked to give an account of the 1984 anti-Sikh pogroms in Delhi when more than 3,000 Sikhs were slain in broad daylight and Congress leaders incited the mobs and the police passively watched. The BJP government with Modi has achieved nothing in that sense either. The BJP has rather entombed accountability, made the killers and organizers of the genocide scamper around with safety as there is nothing left to victims and their generations except a piece of memory and sorrow. When Punjab burst out into insurgency in 1984-95 the Indian state did not react with reconciliation at all but with unleashed repression. The police picked up tens of thousands of Sikh youths, torture, and killed them in fake police encounters. Whole villages were plundered and families disarmed women were widowed. The actual handlers of the torture police officers, armed forces and intelligence were not punished but promoted when reported that several police officers had participated in torture of the Afghans.
This dark history came back in 2023, when the Indian government undertook an iron fisted and legally opaque campaign of censorship, raids, and arbitrary arrests without warrants against the movement led by Amritpal Singh, once more bringing up the old bug bear of a Khalistani terrorist threat as an excuse to clamp down. These acts bring the Sikh community to the 1980s terror that they had hoped to forget. The state has also continually compromised the Akal Takht that is the highest religious authority among Sikhs. The process of appointing Jathedar (priests) is interfered with the government thus reducing the level of its autonomy and the institution becomes subject to political influences instead of being the supreme authority of the Sikh religion. The official response of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) to the historical body in charge of handling religious affairs of Sikhs sovereignty and uniqueness.
The horror of 1984 might have been committed by the Congress party, but under the rule of the BJP it has become obvious that the justice is forever entombed there. The people who carried out the massacre in Delhi, even after the court orders and world outcry are still on the loose. With the advent of Modi, the Sikh community had hoped to get closure. Rather they were further vilified. The 2020 -2021 farmers protest, whose chief organizers were Sikhs, heralded the deaths of 750 farmers and the BJP government termed these protestors as Khalistan’s and traitors. They were farmers who required reasonable agricultural rules and not separatists. However, barricades and water cannons with all the fury of the state-controlled media that labelled them as anti-nationals met their displeasure.
This memory is one of the inspirations of Sikhs to Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale since he had the courage of opposing this very action by the state in the religious and political roles of Sikhs. His objections did not have any roots in militancy, it was its expression, a product of decades of perfidiousness. The kill operation called Operation Blue Star, which was supposed to result in the death of Bhindranwale, did the reverse and turned out to make him a legend that defined Sikhs of having a right to self-determination and dignity in his death. The fact that in the present time as well Modi and his BJP do not want to condemn this atrocity because it will bring in light the same chain of state repression that stretched since the days of the Congress party through the BJP.
It is this trend of oppression that has spawned the international Khalistan movement which has not come as a result of a foreign plot, which has come into being as the result of a promise unfulfilled and justice denied for decades. Tens of thousands of Sikhs all around the world, not extremists but just simple people, have turned up in Khalistan referendums peacefully held in Canada, UK, Australia, Germany, and US. Why is the world largest democracy afraid of democratic expression in other countries? Since these referendums reveal the reality, the fact that the Sikh diaspora has become globalized after being frustrated with being betrayed by India. In the meantime, the efforts of India to discredit all foreign based Sikhs, as Khalistani agents, have boomeranged and even the moderates are moving to the extreme ends. The Sikhs are becoming more alienated by repression and paranoia by the state instead of being integrated into it.
It is the Sikh diaspora in particular, Canada, UK, and Australia, which has established schools, media outlets, and communal centers without Indian control, and scandalized Sikh history with a Khalistan cause, which India governments have attempted to eliminate in school books and newsrooms. The term Khalistani has turned out to be the most effective tool in the hands of the Indian government when it comes to suppressing criticism not only of militants but also of farmers, artists, journalists, students and religious leaders. All Indian governments, congressional, BJP and even so-called secular coalitions have used this slur to dismiss Sikh demands as illegitimate. But the Khalistan demand that was, in a way, a marginal voice, is being heard all over the world, as a demand by Sikh youngsters who have kept 1984 and the Operation Blue Star, the pogroms, and the false encounters during the period of 1990s, always in their minds.
In result the national betrayal of Sikh people in India how a people once proud and loyal enough to serve state, became enemy within, against their own will, but persecution blinkered to the point of paranoia. All governments were full of promises of healing and full of humiliation. When Sikhs insist the world chants Khalistan Zindabad, it is not because of hate towards India, but because their hearts have been broken time and again after being constantly regarded as the never belonging in their own nation. India is losing what is diaspora is gaining as the Indian state attempts to change history by destroying the history of Sikhs whereas the rest of the world with a significant Sikh population is recording a new history that can no longer be changed, controlled or suppressed by the Indian government.
