Above: Part of a list of the 3870 innocent men, women and children who are recorded as being murdered by the government-led mobs in the streets in broad daylight in the very first couple of days of the November 1984 anti-Sikh pogroms of Delhi, India.
Columnists
August 15
India - Shackles, Old & New:
The Roundtable Open Forum # 73
by I.J. SINGH & T. SHER SINGH
History tells us that on August 15, 1947, India became independent of the British after 200 years of colonization. (Its north-western territories that had been ruled by the Sikhs were under the British for only half that time - less than a hundred years.)
But it remained a British dominion for another three years before becoming totally free of foreign rule, with a Constitution of its own in 1950.
It is also true that India as we know it today is a 1947 creation; It was never a single unified nation, except loosely under the British under the moniker of the Raj.
This extension of the British Empire was primarily an umbrella covering several hundred kingdoms and fiefdoms of various sizes and import, cobbled together for the sole purpose of serving British commercial interests.
Earlier, large chunks of the sub-continent had been under Mughal suzerainty, off and on, for about 200 years.
When the British fled in 1947, in was only after they had carved the subcontinent into two countries, which in turn became three nations in 1971 - India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
The Partition and freedom of India in 1947 were accompanied by the forced migration of millions across arbitrarily drawn lines and the dreadful loss of life and limb that easily exceeded the havoc wrought by the World War that immediately preceded it.
Punjab, the Sikh homeland, bore the brunt of the crude ripping apart of the country.
Today, India is touted as the largest democracy in the world; but, in reality, how honest or functional it is, is a different matter.
Moreover, not surprisingly, it has been displaying strong fissiparous tendencies since its very inception, some emerging from its diverse peoples, others from its administrative failures and lack of political will.
All along its borders, each one of India‘s regions has been in violent ferment at one time or another, 1947 onwards. Also, India has been at war, or involved in violent conflict, at some point or the other, with each of its neighbours. With some, more than once, even within its short history.
We think the only glue that unites India today - the patina that gives India its unified entity - is Bollywood, the mind-numbing film industry which corresponds in function and impact to the role of opium in pre-modern China.
Surely, any nation deserves better.
How should we Sikhs then mark the occasion of another independence day in India? Many of us were born there or have still family connections there. If nothing else, the fact that Sikhi came to us from the subcontinent, part of which is today’s India, attaches us to that land.
But there is a litany of issues that hang between Sikhs and India today, starting with 1947.
Free India’s Constitution still rudely lumps Sikhs under the Hindu Code Bill. This insults Sikhs and denies them their independent entity as a religion distinct from Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. All it accomplishes is to perhaps save two lines and a drop or two of ink.
The rejection by Sikhs and their protests over this, all the way back to the enactment of this defective Constitution in 1950, have been many and continue to fall on deaf ears. That only pours salt on the wounds.
Around the same time, when the rest of India was being reorganized on linguistic basis, Sikhs (and Punjabis) had to wage a monumental struggle to win the same right. However, though a truncated Punjabi-speaking state was finally awarded in 1966, the process still grates as being dishonest.
Until recently (General J.J. Singh), there never was a Sikh Chief of the Indian Army even though at one time as many as 40 percent of the officer corps were Sikh. Now we have a Sikh Prime Minister of the country (Manmohan Singh), a Sikh who directs India’s economic planning (Montek Singh Ahluwalia) and a Sikh who is India’s face of diplomacy on the world’s stage (Hardeep Singh Puri as Ambassador to the United Nations).
Do these Sikh faces stand for a hopeful future for India or are they merely like the fig leaf that has become so necessary?
Yet, even today, Punjab’s industrial and economic development is in the dumps or non-existent.
Through openly discriminatory practices and intentional neglect, India’s most prosperous state has been turned into a problem one.
The injustices of 1984 that claimed an undetermined number, surely several thousand, of Sikh lives (women and children included) remain unsettled after 11 national Inquiry Commissions. Justice has been unabashedly denied in this so-called secular democracy for 27 years ... and so it continues.
Forget not that Punjab is a border state. The Sikhs of Punjab have made an undeniably major contribution to Indian independence, unity, security, prosperity and in its three full-fledged wars to date with Pakistan and one with China. One would think that to neglect Punjab and the Sikhs would be somewhat of a suicidal course for any Indian government.
How then does August 15 speak to us?
Are Sikhs in India free or have they merely exchanged one set of shackles for another?
Should we Sikhs celebrate August 15 as the peoples of India and of Indian origin will? Join them in parades, parties and lavish cultural programs? Many Indian community organizations will do exactly that; often they will have the support and patronage of the Indian government, which will gladly add jingoisms, through song and dance, to the mix.
Or should we Sikhs boycott such events? Should we go all out and protest outside the United Nations, the Consulates, the Embassies and the High Commissions of the Indian government that dot the political landscape all around the globe?
We recall that a year or so after the tragedy of 1984 - and we invite readers to click on the icon “1984” on the sikhchic.com site to learn about that time - the hero of the 1971 war against Pakistan, General Jagjit Singh Aurora, was the Grand Marshall of the Indian Parade in New York on August 15. A few local Sikhs met him and apprised him of the Sikh ambivalence towards the celebration, especially over a Sikh heading it so soon after 1984 when so many innocent Sikhs were butchered in orchestrated killings in cities across the country, inspired by the country’s political leaders. As a recently minted Indian war-hero, though he understood the sentiment, he felt compelled not to accommodate the Sikh-American concerns.
In the next few days and weeks from now, many Sikhs too will get invited to Indian government sponsored community events and celebrations. After all, this is almost like the 4th of July for India.
What do we do then? Do we ignore and rebuff them? Do we overtly turn down such invitations with a note that clearly lays out our opinions? Or do we don our party suits and turbans, salwar kameezes and dupattas, and join the August 15 revelry?
How one should act is not so easy to dissect and decide.
Before we go further, one thing needs to be made perfectly clear - neither of us is, we believe, anti-India by any stretch of the imagination … despite the fact that a few who find themselves on the other side of the fence from us on issues relating to human rights violations in India, find it convenient to hide behind such rhetoric in order to avoid grappling with hard facts.
But we are not reluctant to admit that now, when either of us finds himself in the presence of the Indian flag, it brings no joy whatsoever, no moisture to the eyes, no lump in the throat, no stirrings of the heart-strings.
All that we feel is a deep sense of sadness at the whole-sale loss and waste and squandering of all that we helped them to win by giving so much of the best of ourselves, by a nation and people who seem to have no capacity to be grateful for the blessings they have received, or to enjoy them in gratitude.
No, we don’t celebrate August 15.
Because there is no reason to.
Neither do we waste our time joining protests where Indians gather on the day, or burn their flag, or in any way play the party-pooper where desis gather, shrouded in their fineries of blissful ignorance and wilful blindness.
Why?
Because it is not our loss. It is theirs.
The question that continues to linger in our minds, though, is: Will India ever discover and nurture its potential, indeed its tryst with destiny, or did the dream die shortly after birth?
THE ROUNDTABLE OPEN FORUM
What are your thoughts on August 15 and all that it implies?
Do you mark the day? How? Why?
Has your approach to it changed in time? Why? How?
August 8, 2011
Conversation about this article
1: Jaikar Singh (New Delhi, India), August 08, 2011, 9:18 AM.
Certainly, August 15 has become louder than ever before. The decibel level has risen, but heart and soul of the celebration are gone, not just for the Sikhs (and Muslims, and Dalits, etc.), but for, and in the very being of, everybody I can see around me. India is the ultimate rat-race now. And you know, rats have only one motivation, only one thought in mind, only one emotional response: "Where's the cheese?" Tear-in-eye, head-held-high, soul-stirring responses to August 15 are now but a distant memory. A rot has set in ...
2: Brijesh Mandal (Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, India), August 08, 2011, 12:09 PM.
Marie Antoinette is alive and well in New Delhi. So what if hundreds of millions - actually a majority of our citizens - are starving; living in squalor, with no running water, electricity, education, sanitation, medical services, safety! Yeah, so what? Let them eat cake on Aug 15! They can then shut up and go back to their one-meal-a-day existence ... until Motilal's great-great grandson, Nehru's great grandson, Indira's grandson, Rajiv's son - Rahul Gandhi, of course - comes around to demand their votes, to which he apparently has a god-given right. Bewakoof lo-og, all, these naive people of my country!
3: Arvinder (U.S.A.), August 08, 2011, 12:27 PM.
Is India really a free country? Do Indians have a right to the basic amenities of life? Do they really have the fundamental rights mentioned in the world's longest written constitution? Are they really free of British shackles? These are a few questions we need to ask ourselves and then re-think whether we should celebrate this so-called Independence Day. India has failed in achieving these fundamental requisites since 1947, so let no one boast about it as being a free country.
4: Sahib Singh (New York, U.S.A.), August 08, 2011, 4:44 PM.
I have no emotional attachment to India, its flag or August 15. Vaisakhi and the Fourth of July are my days! The Nishaan Sahib and the Star & Stripes are the only two flags I salute.
5: Manjit Singh (Montreal, Quebec, Canada), August 08, 2011, 4:53 PM.
Indian civilization has generally been shaped by Hindu religious and cultural norms which date back to thousands of years. The issue raised in this write-up re thanklessness of the people of India by disregarding the contribution of the Sikhs in freeing and building the nation, is a throw-back to these traditions. The caste system has numbed the feelings of the people because they have been taught that it is the karma of the individual that determines the accident of birth. This is why people in India are not bothered with extreme poverty, starvation and exploitation of the majority of the population, as well as of the members of the minority religions. The highhandedness of the so-called upper castes against the lower castes and non-Hindu minorities does not generate any feelings of compassion or concern in the minds of the overall population. As a consequence of the above practices, an overwhelmingly large proportion of Indian society has, through the past thousands of years, become crass and uncaring about fellow human-beings. This mind-set has continued in a variety of manifestations into this day and age. As Sikhs, we have every right to feel hurt and disappointed with our fellow Indians, but in the end analysis Indian society does not know how to say "thank you" to people who have built the country with their blood, sweat and tears. This is all karma-related. The only conclusion I can draw from the above is that the the mission that Guru Nanak and his nine successors undertook for bringing justice and equality to India still remains a long way from becoming realized. The Sikh community has to re-dedicate itself to working hard to achieve the goals set by the Gurus with the expectation that some day we shall fully overcome these hurdles for all the lands we now live in.
6: N. Singh (Canada), August 08, 2011, 8:23 PM.
Manjit Singh ji: Overall, I agree with your analysis. However, I think it is time for the Sikhs to remove the shackles of slavery from their minds. I disagree that it is the duty of the Sikhs or the will of the Gurus that we attempt to 'save' Indians by interminably making sacrifices and alliances with them. The Gurus emphasized 'sarbat da bhalla', which means 'the wefare of the whole world'. They emphasized 'higher living' and 'living by example'. It is more than just an adage that you can take a horse to water but you can't make it drink. There is only so much we can do for the Indians and I believe we have done enough. Now is the time for us to strengthen our community and heal our wounds. Our first and foremost duty lies towards the Panth and then to the people in whose countries we have made our home. I have never celebrated August 15 and never will. To my people, the Sikhs, I owe the strength of my spirit and my courage, and from them I have learned much; to my country and the British I owe my education, my ability to critically think and live my life in freedom, and to the country of my residence, Canada and its people, I own my sense of integrity and tolerance. To India and the Indians, I own nothing and if is wasn't for the fact that Punjab is the birth-place of my religion and the home of my people, I would not give India even a second thought or a backward glance ...
7: Harpreet Singh (Delhi), August 09, 2011, 3:56 PM.
As per my experience, the general Indian population is simple and people are easily influenced by what is shown to them. For example, they swallowed the mischievous portrayal of Sikhs as being the wrong-doers, by vested interests and a compliant media, before the genocide. But what are we doing to give the true picture of Sikhs, their ideals, etc? Nothing. Thankfully, there is still some fragrance of Sikhi in some individuals and sangats, otherwise there is only display of ugly wealth and rich langars, while hundreds of millions of Indians are poverty-stricken. Our Gurus taught us to be humble and sweet-spoken. Our nyarapan must also be visible in our behaviour. We must avoid leaders who opt for confrontation solely to further their own interests, not caring for the fact that our youth have to pay a heavy price for the same. We have already lost many important historical gurdwaras situated in Pakistan; now, we must be vigilant not to lose the ones in India.
8: Gurjender Singh (Maryland, U.S.A.), August 10, 2011, 9:58 AM.
I would like to request the Sikh leadership to come out on August 15, irrespective of their party affiliations or power-bases, and demand for inclusion of Sikhs in the Indian Constitution as a separate religion, which they are. It is shameful that, after six decades of this ongoing insult, no one is putting this fundamental issue on the front burner.
9: Ajay Singh (Rockville, Maryland, U.S.A.), August 10, 2011, 5:13 PM.
I have often done a comparison of Sikh life (political, cultural, economical, spiritual) pre- and post-partition. Basically, answering the question: Are Sikhs better off, now that India has been "freed"? Just eye-balling our current situation: we have lost our legal identity; lost access to some of our most important religious places (e.g., Nankana Sahib, the birthplace of Sikhi); far more Sikhs murdered by "OUR" government in 60 years than a repressive foreign power in over 100 years, including wars; no right over state resources, natural or otherwise; economically drained (what is the difference if money goes to London or Delhi, as long as it goes out); same politically, the only difference between Delhi and London is that in Delhi the skin is 3 shades darker, a whole lot uglier and 1000 times more corrupt. In my mind, I cannot justify commemorating August 15 for any reason other than for the Partition of Punjab, and there is absolutely nothing to celebrate in that. Our freedom has yet to be realized, of this I am sure.