With this editorial, WSN launches a series on KPS Gill. The editor of World Sikh News presents a side of KPS Gill, which India would not like us to see. The Sikh world has rightfully denounced him. Now, only God will deal with this mass murderer. Humankind, politics and justice systems on earth failed us.

Carrying a dead conscience for a long time, since he started killing people of his own ilk without remorse and with full impunity from the Indian state structure, Kanwar Pal Singh Gill -the euphemistic super-cop of India, died of heart failure at the age of 82 in Delhi. One of the last images of the man that will haunt the Sikhs will be that of the present Chief Minister of Punjab -Maharaja Amarinder Singh, who soon after taking oath of office, especially visited his residence to greet him knowing fully well as made out in a subsequent disclosure as to how he was privy to the extrajudicial murder of 21 Sikhs which was a legacy of KPS Gill.

One cannot escape comparing KPS Gill with Hitler. The Nazis of Hitler wanted to exterminate the Jews to establish the supremacy of the Germans; KPS Gill wanted to exterminate Sikh youth so that he could please his masters in Delhi to uphold supremacy of Indians over the Sikhs. In no other country would such a person be granted an honour like the Padam Shri after his conviction in a case of moral turpitude involving a lady IAS officer Rupan Deol Bajaj. Lest you forget that in 2002, the present Prime Minister of India -Narendra Modi appointed him a Special Adviser while he was the Gujarat Chief Minister.

“One cannot escape comparing KPS Gill with Hitler. The Nazis of Hitler wanted to exterminate the Jews to establish the supremacy of the Germans; KPS Gill wanted to exterminate Sikh youth so that he could please his masters in Delhi to uphold supremacy of Indians over the Sikhs.”

Across the board, except for some die-hard Congressmen, some shameless Akalis and a few chosen friends in the media enamoured with his brute personality, the Sikh world is overwhelmed with an ominous feeling, “Oh God! He has died a natural death.” While it may sound macabre to some, each and every Sikh has felt that he should have died at the hands of the Sikhs, in a repetition of the historical tale of Massa Rangarh and Ahmed Shah Abdali -the Mughal tyrants whose hands were soaked in Sikh blood. KPS Gill was drenched in Sikh blood, being responsible for the extrajudicial murders of hundreds of Sikh youth, destroying family after family.

The entire Indian establishment and a good cross section of the media was very upset that he was convicted for moral turpitude by a local court, but significantly, “because of his contribution to the country”, the higher courts pardoned the sentence and the government of India continued showering the “hero status.”

A person who till his very end was not apologetic or remorseful for all the Dracula killings that he carried out, a man who would go after human rights defenders in the same way as if he was going after hardened criminals, KPS Gill surrendered his conscience to the Indian state and then was a cannon let loose on the Sikhs whose prize and promotion was determined by the number of Sikh heads he would kill or simply eradicate them from the face of Punjab -leaving no trace of their existence. Sikh history will chronicle how he killed my associate and human rights activist Jaswant Singh Khalra who documented thousands of cases of Sikh youth who were cremated as “unknown” in the districts of Amritsar and Tarn Taran in Punjab. KPS Gill never acknowledged this barbaric practice, even after the Indian judiciary reluctantly accepted the details and ordered a detailed enquiry into it.  Human Rights activists still continue to tenaciously pursue the cases despite an archaic laid-back judicial system.

“WSN salutes all Sikhs, who despite all the stories of repression and brutality, continued their war of resistance against KPS Gill and the Indian police and para-military forces. WSN empathises with all the victim families who have borne pain and misery over the decades and whatever anyone may say, they would not be happy at his death, but would certainly heave a sigh at some kind of heavenly closure to their pain. WSN commends and supports the work of all human rights defenders who resisted and fought KPS Gill during his term and even after.”

He has the dubious distinction of leading Operation Black Thunder into Darbar Sahib -The Golden Temple, the “success” of which operation was much touted then, but actually it was a scripted story involving renegades from within the ranks of the resistance and insurgency forces. As the chief of the Indian Hockey Federation he nearly gilled (read killed) Indian hockey in an attempt to Indianise it, till he was removed from the post.

How hateful he was of the Sikhs can be gauged from his written order to exterminate known resistance fighters and his call to special police officers (a band of vigilantes especially trained by KPS Gill and other junior police officers under him) who were told to rape, maim and kill in the guise of militants to defame the Sikh youth and the cause of their movement.  He is on record to having said this.  As far as the written extermination order is concerned, the courts accepted the withdrawal of the said order without any remarks or punishment to him or those under him.

Responsible for tainting Sikhs as terrorists, he led the campaign to defame Sikhs across the country, while India eulogised him as the saviour of India. Like Indira Gandhi, the name of KPS Gill would remain tied up with the history of the Sikhs.  Notwithstanding, whatever India, some Indians and a section of the media may say, these two will forever remain the butcher of the Sikhs and I am sure that history too would not forgive them.  

WSN salutes all Sikhs, who despite all the stories of repression and brutality, continued their war of resistance against KPS Gill and the Indian police and para-military forces. WSN empathises with all the victim families who have borne pain and misery over the decades and whatever anyone may say, they would not be happy at his death, but would certainly heave a sigh at some kind of heavenly closure to their pain. WSN commends and supports the work of all human rights defenders who resisted and fought KPS Gill during his term and even after.

Columnists and Indian leaders would have us believe that he suppressed the movement for upholding Sikh identity.  Actually, the struggle waned for a multiplicity of reasons, but India needed a hero and who else than a Sikh face! Is the struggle over because KPS Gill and his men killed so many? They forgot the quip that Sikhs have repeated through the ages:

Mannu saadhi Daatri
Assi Mannu de soye
Jeo jeo mannu vadhda
Assi Doon sawaye hoye!

Translated thus,

“The executioner’s blade is upon us
We are his cannon fodder,
The more he kills
The more we grow and multiply.”