Columnists
An Armour of Lies
by I.J. SINGH
For once, I am utterly confused.
Many historians say that in 1915, the Ottoman Empire was responsible for the death of a million Armenians in an organized campaign of genocide. But there are important voices, admittedly just a few, that deny any such happenings or mass killings ever occurred.
Most recently, at a Barnes & Noble bookstore last month, when Margaret Ajemian Ahnert read from her book, "The Knock on the Door", about her mother's survival during those days, some people in the audience heckled her, holding up signs that proclaimed, "It Never Happened."
This history is less than a hundred years old. Could records be so difficult to interpret? Could memory become degraded so quickly?
Then I am reminded of the Holocaust and Nazi Germany's efforts to eliminate the Jews. I can understand disagreements over the fine points and details of exactly what was done to whom and under what circumstances, but the basic facts and the larger framework are established beyond doubt.
Yet, only a few months ago, the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, opened a conference in Teheran, whose sole focus was denial of the Holocaust as a historical event.
And the history of the Holocaust is young - barely sixty years old.
The glaring distortions that emerge from such attempts to rewrite history become obvious from ironic twists - like the fact that mentioning the Armenian genocide in Turkey is a crime, but denying it would be illegal in France. Denying the Holocaust would be unacceptable in Israel; in Iran, insisting that it occurred would be equally unacceptable.
Then my mind goes to a gathering that I attended just days ago. It was a largely Indian group, with only a sprinkling of Sikhs. The focus was to take note of the events of June 1984, and rejoice in the fact that India and Indians were moving forward.
Yes, we are moving ahead, as we should.
(For the uninitiated, I summarize the events here: Between June 2 and 5, 1984, a massive force of the Indian army invaded the Golden Temple (Darbar Sahib) at Amritsar, wreaking extensive havoc on the premises and killing countless numbers of pilgrims. Five months later, in precisely orchestrated attacks on Sikh homes and businesses, thousands of innocent men, women and children were killed in several cities across India, including its capital, New Delhi.
Much of Punjab was sealed off from the outside world and, over the next decade, thousands of young Sikh men disappeared. Ten judicial commissions and investigative reports later, there is no accounting of the dead, and justice is still pending.)
One way to move forward would be to remember what happened, so as not to repeat history. By nurturing and preserving the history in our cultural memory, we would honor it so that our goal would become, "Never Again."
The alternative would be to bury the painful and the unpleasant by denying it ever happened, and that is precisely what many speakers, even some Sikhs, attempted to do at this conference that I attended.
Speaker after speaker insisted that the damage to the Darbar Sahib was minimal, there were only scattered, random killings of Sikhs, and no fake encounters or extra-judicial killings ever occurred.
To be fair, a few speakers did present evidence against such a rosy view, but the prevailing, most powerful, voices dismissed such claims as sporadic events of no consequence. Claims of organized mayhem against the Sikhs were clearly unfounded, they argued, because such brutality would never occur in a civilized society like India. So, they said, these atrocities never happened as alleged.
I heard this Kafkaesque reasoning and I thought my head would spin. It is like the claim that President Bush or his aides might make that our army never brutalizes prisoners in Iraq.
I know that "History has cunning passages and contrived corridors.... And deceives us by vanities," as T.S. Eliot reminds us, but the events of 1984 happened only 23 years ago. That is not even a full generation ago. The evidence is still available; it is degraded somewhat, but not entirely.
Oral history can still be preserved. And already we have deniers of this history. If we fail to preserve it, fifty or a hundred years from now, its deniers will be seen as reputable scholars.
Then I remind myself that the mind is the most powerful organ of the human body. It is both a shield and a weapon. Perhaps the deniers of history are trying to protect themselves from it. Denial then can become both a powerful armor, as well as a sharp lance, when offense serves as the best defense.
Affirming painful history can be cataclysmic and shattering to one's sense of self. It is more comforting sometimes to tell a lie than to confess a painful truth. Self-preservation and self-protection are universal human needs. The harsher the truth, the greater the need to lie.
All religions revere the Truth.
Hinduism, for example, tells us that truth is ever triumphant. "Ye shall know the Truth and the Truth shall make you free," promises the Bible.
Guru Nanak, the founder of the Sikh faith, too, reminds us that "Truth is the panacea of all ills," and that "Truth is high, but higher still is truthful living." Truth is God and is eternal, according to Sikhi. This sentiment lives through the daily greeting of the Sikhs, "Sat Sri Akaal."
Other religions speak similarly.
The other side of the coin highlights the quiet desperation of our lives. T.S. Eliot reminds us that, "Between the conception and the reality, falls the shadow." It is eloquently captured by the celebrated Modern Greek poet, C.P. Cavafy:
"With words, countenance and manners,
I shall make an excellent suit of armor ...
None will know where my wounds are, my vulnerable parts,
Under all the lies that will cover me."
[Image, Top of the page - Courtesy, Cox & Forkum. Photo, second from bottom - A scene from a concentration camp during the Nazi Holocaust.]
Conversation about this article
1: Harinder (Pune, India), June 02, 2007, 5:41 AM.
Our writers and historians should be working hard on documenting the stories from those people who witnessed these pivotal events. Also, I want to add that we should not lose heart ... all good things seem to generate, in nature, an opposing force, a resistance!
2: Inni Kaur (New Jersey, U.S.A.), June 02, 2007, 3:09 PM.
Thank you, I.J. Singh. I too have been told to forget! They say, do not write .. They say, do not speak .. They say, forget it all and move on .. If I agree - then, in my silence will lie a world of guilt. As long as there is a breath, As long as there is strength, I will write; I will speak. For I remember ...
3: Gurpreet Singh Dhillon (Tracy, USA), June 03, 2007, 12:24 PM.
We need a strong, united global panthic organization (not the little factions), with determined active members who can spread the teaching of Sikhi, amd its history, to our coming generations. It is the moral responsibility of every Sikh to do this. Although 23 years have passed since 1984, justice has yet to be served. Looking at the current state of the leadership in the community, it is clear that our work is cut out for us. The dera culture in Punjab has infliterated into the Sikh community because there is no united opposition. The dera is enjoying government patronage. The need of the hour is to have our own committed Sikh TV channel, run by eminent personalities within the community. Sikhchic.com is doing an excellent job by bringing up various issues affecting Sikh way of life. Thanks!
4: Ari Singh Birdi (Reykjavik, Iceland), June 04, 2007, 2:31 PM.
Congratulations for explaining it so clearly. Unfortunately, Jews, Armenians and Sikhs - and others like them - are small and therefore vulnerable communities. Let's assign a day to remember this modern-day holocaust in 1984.
5: Manjit Singh (U.S.A), June 04, 2007, 3:09 PM.
Thank you for a great article. I agree 100% that that the damage to the Darbar Sahib was enormous, killings of Sikhs was not random and scattered, and yes! everyone knows that fake encounters or extra-judicial killings took place at mass proportions. And, furthermore, I say this that there is no question that it was all orchestrated by the Indira Gandhi Government to teach Sikhs a lesson of whatever she thougtht was needed. It is no coincidence that it all happened on one of Sikhdom's high holidays. But I do still have problems with Bhindranwala taking refuge in the Golden Temple and turning a Gurdwara into a fort. Why did he not use his dera? And, secondly, the innocent killings of newspaper editors and others travelling on buses? Our Gurus would have never allowed killing of innocents and themsleves never used Gurdwaras as forts.
6: Kuljit Singh Pandher (Vancouver, Canada), June 04, 2007, 4:16 PM.
Thank you, I.J. Singh, for this excellent article. I too am sad and dismayed to hear people, including many Sikhs, deny the events of 1984 and the decade that followed. I sometimes wish that Punjab was located atop some huge oil reserves. Maybe then some of the so-called superpowers of the world would not have turned a blind eye while countless innocent men, women and children were murdered and an entire community was brutalized - all under the watchful eye of governmental authorities.
7: Harneet Kaur (Los Angeles, USA), June 04, 2007, 7:12 PM.
Great article! This is the time to make sure our history is accurately recorded and preserved. If more time passes and these events do not enter the history books, they will be forgotten forever. History tends to repeat itself; so we owe it to the future generations of Sikhs, and to the world, to properly document 1984. It is not a question of who was right or wrong; those are mere opinions and don't carry much weight in history books. We should concentrate on facts so that future generations can understand what really happened. I am not sure if such a log currently exists but a complete account of Sikhs who were murdered and otherwise brutalized, needs to be kept. Eyewitness accounts need to be taken, with necessary details such as dates, time of occurence, locations, etc. This may not mean much today, but history is a tricky subject that tends to dismiss facts as myths if not recorded and preserved with accuracy.
8: Nirvair Singh (Cupertino, U.S.A.), June 05, 2007, 11:42 AM.
I wish to thank I.J Singh for a well-written account. It is a shame that we, as a community, have become so complacent that the campaign of lies from vested interests is threatening to whitewash our history. We must educate ourselves, speak to (and support) those who have suffered directly from the outrages, collect their accounts and record the history accurately. We should also assist those who are doing a credible job of gathering and recording the facts. The group, ENSAAF, is a good example. We need to collect oral, visual and written accounts as much as possible, and not shy away from organizing events to study, commemorate, educate and/or protest against injustices. Remember, what one man, Simon Wiesenthal, alone was able to accomplish!
9: Atma (U.S.A.), June 05, 2007, 10:21 PM.
I still wake up with the shivers in the night. I was a 16-yr old student who happened to witness everything in Delhi in 1984. My books were burnt. So was my room. Somehow, I escaped. How can I forget what I saw: a man screaming for help, trapped in a burning tire around him, as he underwent a horrific death right before my eyes. How can I forget young children being killed right in front of me. How I can I forget what I saw of our women being assaulted and abused ... My heart cries for them every day. May all of them rest in peace eternally.
10: Amitoj Singh (USA), June 05, 2007, 10:41 PM.
Harimandar Sahib was never used as a fort; it was being defended against an invasion motivated by politics and a hunger for power.
11: Jag Singh, Australia (Australia), June 06, 2007, 3:10 AM.
Well, I was disappointed again the other day when I came across a 25-yr old sikh youth who said he knew nothing about what happened in 1984. The assaults that year were directly involved in destroying our history - they included the systematic destruction of our key institutions, including the Sikh Reference Library, Sikh Museum, etc. Now, the history of those very events is being tampered with. To begin with, we must do two things: first, we should remember in our daily ardaas all those who gave their all in both 1947 and 1984. Secondly, we who are fortunate to live in the free diaspora should take up the task of keeping the memory alive.
12: Jagar singh (India), June 07, 2007, 4:22 AM.
It is surprising that there are people today, including some Sikhs, who still believe that innocent citizens were killed by Bhindrawala's men. There has been ample evidence through the years clearly pointing to the Indian counter intelligence operatives who had freely indulged in atrocities with the sole objective of tarnishing the Sikhs. [Remember the abandoned cars found with fake beards and turbans in the trunks, immediately after the bus massacres?] We need to make serious efforts to preserve the correct history of these recent years.
13: Jugjet Singh Randhawa (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia), June 07, 2007, 7:17 AM.
The man who led the invasion and destruction in Punjab was K.P.S. Gill. Now he is known, even among some uninformed Sikhs, as the man who, they say, saved Punjab from turning into an Afghanistan or an Iraq. Some even believe that he is responsible for the peace in Punjab today by stamping out Sikh separatists. I don't believe this is true. But, in 50 years' time, this story will become a reality in text-books and his(s)tory if there is no attempt among Sikh scholars to document the truth.
14: Amrit (Toronto, Canada), July 25, 2008, 8:25 AM.
I used to work at the BBC when the 1984 invasion happened and we recieved shocking pictures of innocent Sikh men, women and children being killed. These images were confiscated at the request of the Indian government. The truth is out there...