From the WSN Archives: On the oc­ca­sion of the 24^th an­niver­sary of Saka Akal Takht, rev­o­lu­tion­ary poet and po­lit­i­cal ac­tivist, Gajin­der Singh goes down mem­ory lane rem­i­nisc­ing events and thoughts that touched his life in his long so­journ away from home­land Pun­jab.

Iam in ex­ile. For the last 27 years. Liv­ing in ex­ile is a unique jour­ney.  Very few peo­ple hur­dling through the pas­sage of life are en­dowed with the priv­i­lege of liv­ing through this kind of ex­is­tence.  In the month of June , when we all bow to the mar­tyr­dom of Sikhs who laid down their lives in the 1984 Ghal­lughara, I wish to share with my fel­low Sikhs the ex­pe­ri­ence of liv­ing in ex­ile.

Step­ping into the foot­steps of adult­hood, I penned down a few lines, which set the dif­fi­cult pas­sage I was to fol­low.  The lines were,

I have a thought, a dream

I am de­ter­mined to have my own house

I am con­vinced that I have to lay down my life.

In a sense, my ex­ile started on that day in De­cem­ber 1971, when dur­ing the course of a pub­lic meet­ing of the then Prime Min­is­ter Mrs. In­dira Gandhi at Dera Bassi, near Chandi­garh, I openly threw leaflets on the dais and pub­licly de­clared my in­ten­tions flow­ing from the lines that I had penned.  Soon af­ter, giv­ing birth to the his­toric move­ment of Dal Khalsa along with col­leagues who thought alike, fur­ther strength­ened the cam­paign to live a life of os­tracism.

“When does one be ready for such a state to die for a cause?  My quick re­sponse: When one goes into ex­ile.”

When the events of June 1984 un­folded, I was within the four walls of a prison.  As news trick­led down through BBC ra­dio, I was shat­tered. I could not do more than vi­su­al­ize the im­agery of a de­stroyed Akal Takht, the dev­il­ish rulers of the Delhi Dur­bar and the blood-soaked bod­ies of Sikh mar­tyrs.  The poet in me could not but say that the fledg­ling Delhi Takht had chal­lenged the Takht of the Almighty.  I also imag­ined the bloody days ahead.

I join the en­tire Sikh na­tion in re­it­er­at­ing that the re­mem­brance of June 1984 is an oc­ca­sion to reaf­firm our com­mit­ment to the cause for which our brethren laid down their lives.  It is also an op­por­tu­nity to re­call the bru­tal­ity of the In­dian state.

To­day, when I pay trib­ute to all those who bravely fought and at­tained mar­tyr­dom, I ask my­self the ques­tion, When does one be ready for such a state to die for a cause?  My quick re­sponse is, when one goes into ex­ile. To go into ex­ile is a state of mind.  The num­ber of peo­ple who un­dergo phys­i­cal ex­ile may be small, but there is no dearth of peo­ple, ei­ther in my na­tion or in any na­tion, for whom, liv­ing in ex­ile is ac­tu­ally a way of life.

When I was very young, my fa­ther se­cured my Sikhi and my mother in­stilled the spirit and essence of Sikhi.  My key in­spi­ra­tion was Sir­dar Ka­pur Singh. In a sense, I went into ex­ile the day my mother ed­u­cated me about the con­cept of sikhi khan­neo tikhi- the path of Sikhi is ra­zor-thin and the im­por­tance and sig­nif­i­cance of my own home. While I was still study­ing in Chandi­garh, I went in search of my own home. I went into ex­ile.  Since then, I have lived life thus.  For the last two decades and more, I have had vir­tu­ally no con­tact with my fam­ily, wife and daugh­ter.

Though the num­bers may be small, there are peo­ple -men and women, young and old in our com­mu­nity who are liv­ing in ex­ile. They phys­i­cally dwell where they are, but their heart and mind is some­where else.  Ex­i­gen­cies of life force us to bid our time in search of my own home.  The pres­sures of life make us spend a lot of our time, re­sources and en­er­gies into di­rec­tions we ac­tu­ally do not want to spend. We are wait­ing. Still, we are dream­ers, liv­ing with hope and more hope.

Do you think you are alone in this voy­age? Am I alone? Was I alone? Some­times these ques­tions bother us.  Per­se­cu­tion is a world­wide phe­nom­e­non. It is the priv­i­lege of the few who lis­ten to the voice of their con­science to fight per­se­cu­tion. From Pales­tine to Kash­mir, from Ti­bet to Sri Lanka, from Na­ga­land and Ma­nipur to Burma, the search for my own home goes on. So, are we alone? Well, there is only one Dalai Lama in this world.  There is only one Aang San Sui Kyi in Burma, one Syed Ali Shah Gi­lani in Kash­mir, one Prabakha­ran in Tamil Ee­lam and we had only one Sant Jar­nail Singh Bhin­dran­wale in Pun­jab.  They are all con­science-keep­ers of their re­spec­tive na­tions. We are all co-trav­ellers.  We all have one des­ti­na­tion. I am not alone. You are not alone.

“The jour­ney of go­ing into ex­ile and the path from ex­ile to free­dom for any in­di­vid­ual or na­tion has to be a long, painful and ar­du­ous one. It has been so for the Sikhs in the past and even to­day it is so.”

The jour­ney of go­ing into ex­ile and the path from ex­ile to free­dom for any in­di­vid­ual or na­tion has to be a long, painful and ar­du­ous one. It has been so for the Sikhs in the past and even to­day it is so.

Times and tech­nolo­gies have changed. The geo-po­lit­i­cal re­al­i­ties of the In­dian sub-con­ti­nent have also changed.  A sub­stan­tial por­tion of the Sikh na­tion’s de­mands to the In­dian state have be­come in­fruc­tu­ous as tech­nol­ogy has over­taken events. Sub­stan­tial bar­ri­ers have bro­ken down.  Still, it is not time to re­lin­quish our search as a ma­jor­ity of our own peo­ple may think and want.  Years of gov­er­nance un­der colo­nial­ism may have numbed us but the fa­cade can­not be as­sumed to be re­al­ity.  Truth will strike the Sikh na­tion when they be­come mas­ters of their own des­tiny un­der a dis­pen­sa­tion which un­like the pre­sent one is free and fair.  It is time that a meet­ing of minds takes place of all those who are liv­ing in ex­ile.

Have the times re­ally changed? In 1981, Afghanistan was un­der So­viet rule and now it is un­der US dom­i­na­tion. So­viet Rus­sia is only Rus­sia to­day and there is a huge in­crease in the UN mem­ber­ship. Like men, na­tions too have their fate. It is a fact of his­tory that there are na­tions who have been strug­gling for cen­turies with­out re­sult and oth­ers, whose names peo­ple do not know, are in­de­pen­dent.

Dur­ing the course of the pre­sent phase of life, many a friend has posed this to me, “Don’t you feel like go­ing home”? My re­ply has been, “which home, the one which has ren­dered me state­less and home­less and forced me into liv­ing in ex­ile?