Despite several attempts, India has invariably failed to neutralise the Sikhs. Yet, Panjaab invariably remains in a state of siege, lock-down, cruel repression and subjugation by the mighty, oversized, imperialist Indian state, which took over where the British Raj left off in 1947. In this short essay, activist-writer Jagdeesh Singh relates the historical developments of 1947 and how since then, Sikhs continue to lose the hold on their destiny.

THE HISTORIC, INDIGENOUS NATIONAL COUNTRY OF PANJAAB was seized and stolen in 1849 by the invading British imperialist elite, annexed and subsumed into the grandiose red map of oppressive British India, which we still find upon now under the guise of ‘independent India’.

The present, historic 170-year subjugation has changed from white-British imperialism to replacing brown-Indian imperialism. The 1947 British-Indo carve-up, partition and transfer of power, was a smokescreen ‘independence’. It was a demonstrably sham ‘freedom’. Multiple and increasing forms of governmental corruption and maladministration, police repression and torture, mistreatment of civilians, denial of public health, education and housing services and an assortment of brutalities and injustices being the norm of life in ‘secular, democratic’ India.

The same is equally true in the estranged twin state of Pakistan, born at the exact same time from the same British India parent state; and with the exact same pretensions and intrinsic diseases and ailments. Side-by-side, India and Pakistan as the direct offspring of the British colonial Indian empire, have made an utter mess of South Asia, individually, jointly and severally.

Together they have dominated the map of South Asia and refused to allow any third force to emerge. The annexation of Sikkim by India in recent times, the pressures on tiny countries of South Asia, including Nepal. The seize of Kashmir. Together, they are a condominium of oversized power, misuse of power and power for purposes of control and enforcement of power, combined with the systematic denial of the public good, human rights, economic welfare and betterment and self-determination.

Together India and Pakistan have dominated the map of South Asia and refused to allow any third force to emerge. The annexation of Sikkim by India in recent times, the pressures on tiny countries of South Asia, including Nepal. The seize of Kashmir. Together, they are a condominium of oversized power.

Both have notoriously violent, murderous and rampant police forces. Both have substantial armies, spending several times more on arms and soldiers and paramilitary forces than they do on housing, education and health. Both fail to provide clean water to their populations. Pollution and disease are rampant. In India, a child goes missing every 10 minutes, a woman is raped every 20-minutes, and 4 civilians are killed in police custody every day. The picture in Pakistan is not very different.

The current Coronavirus has exposed in both rogue states, the utter failure and absence of adequate hospital facilities, medical care services, safety equipment, and so forth. In India, even space for storing dead corpses of Covid-19 victims has not been available, with the dead being stored in hospital wards alongside those still being cared for.

This is the utter mess, misery and monstrous failure that these two states are. This is akin to many other failed states across the world which have gone through pre-colonial, colonial, post-colonial processes to arrive at their present phase of arbitrarily and undemocratically constructed boundaries and dubious status as independent countries, like Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Congo, Nigeria and Indonesia.

The current Coronavirus has exposed in both rogue states, the utter failure and absence of adequate hospital facilities, medical care services, safety equipment, and so forth. In India, even space for storing dead corpses of Covid-19 victims has not been available.

India had already commenced its war of persecution and oppression on Panjaab and the Sikhs from 1947, upon assuming power from the outgoing British. India wanted the land of five rivers, its resources, its food power, its human resources, but not its distinct Panjaabi-Sikh socio-ethnic culture and identity. It wanted to subsume, break up and fragment Panjaab and strip and exploit its human, monetary and natural resources. Its independent Sikh spirit. Its language. Its history. Its civilization. Brahmanisation and Indianisation!

Small nations were compressed and squeezed out of existence to make room for an overwhelming Hindu supremacist giant. 1947 to 2020, has been an exponential growth of that intrinsic surge for power and supremacy, with territorial and political consolidation of the Hindutva vision.

In 1947, the British transferred power, not to a democratic class of grassroots political representatives; but rather to an exclusive, elitist handful of British educated, trained and groomed individuals, like Jinnah, Nehru, Gandhi and their close circles. The British nurtured, favoured and selected this closed circle for the final decisive stages of handing over charge of South Asia. Panjaab and its indigenous people were sacrificed in this devastating political and territorial clash of interests, to satisfy an overriding and arbitrary religious communal binary of Hindu versus Muslim.

1947 to 2020, has been an exponential growth of that intrinsic surge for power and supremacy, with territorial and political consolidation of the Hindutva vision.

As one of the Sikh leaders, namely Master Tara Singh, said at the time of this genocidal carve-up between the outgoing clique and incoming clique: “Whatever is decided in Dheli will leave my people like no man’s children in no man’s land!” (quoted in ‘Armies of the Raj’, Byron Farewell, 1990, page 352). As H V Hodson (Constitutional Advisor to the Viceroy of India, 1941-2), writes: “India’s grave problem with the Sikhs harks back to the transfer of power.” (The Great Divide, 1997, page xxiii).

Will Panjaab be able to neutralise India and unshackle itself from brown imperialism?