The City Li­brary of Nor­wich in the state of Con­necti­cut , USA, in­stalled the por­trait of Sikh mar­tyr-hero of the Indo-Sikh Bat­tle of June 1984 -Sant Jar­nail Singh Bhin­dran­wale, in the pres­ence of res­i­dent Sikhs, the Mayor of the city and the Gov­er­nor of the state. 

ON June 7, 1984, the In­dian army stormed the Sikh Ref­er­ence Li­brary. On June 1, 2019, Sikh res­i­dents of Nor­wich in Con­necti­cut, put up the por­trait of Sant Jar­nail Singh Bhin­dran­wale in the Nor­wich City Li­brary in a Geno­cide Re­mem­brance meet at­tended by Sikhs and city of­fi­cials in­clud­ing the Mayor of the city and the Gov­er­nor of the state. His­tory had come full cir­cle. In­dia wanted Sikhs to for­get Sant Jar­nail Singh Bhin­dran­wale and June 1984, Sikhs re­bounded back by com­mem­o­rat­ing the mem­ory of the he­roes of the Indo-Sikh bat­tle of June 1984.

Adorn­ing the prime wall of the li­brary, next to the Nor­wich city map, the por­trait of Sant Bhin­dran­wale, with an ac­com­pa­ny­ing plaque, was un­veiled af­ter a Sikh prayer cer­e­mony in the pres­ence of Gov­er­nor Ned La­m­ont, Joe Court­ney Chris Mur­phy, Sen­a­tor Richard Blu­men­thal, Pe­ter Ny­s­trom, Kevin Ryan Cather­ine, Ann Os­ten and Kevin Lembo.

Sig­nif­i­cantly, the Gov­er­nor de­clared that 1 June will be ob­served as Sikh Memo­r­ial Day and also touched the is­sue of Sikh sov­er­eignty.

On 7 June 1984, when the In­dian army had pur­port­edly taken over the con­trol of the Dar­bar Sahib com­plex, the armed forces went on to ful­fil their duty of com­mit­ting cul­tural geno­cide of the Sikh by de­stroy­ing, van­dal­is­ing and set­ting on fire the arts and arte­facts, his­tor­i­cal and re­li­gious doc­u­ments and man­u­scripts of the Sikh Ref­er­ence Li­brary within the Dar­bar Sahib com­plex.

Since then, for 35 years, through me­dia cam­paigns, through diplo­matic de­marches, In­dia has been at­tempt­ing to erase the mem­o­ries of the events of June 1984. The might of the state has done every­thing -from dis­in­for­ma­tion to mis­in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing the Sikh mar­tyrs and their leader and ide­o­logue Sant Jar­nail Singh Bhin­dran­wale, who lived up to his word and in true Sikh tra­di­tion, laid down his life pro­tect­ing and up­hold­ing the ho­n­our and dig­nity of the Sikhs.

The Sikhs of the City of Nor­wich, es­pe­cially Swaran­jit Singh Khalsa of Sikh Se­wak So­ci­ety In­ter­na­tional, USA have been con­sis­tently pur­su­ing this pro­ject for the last five years.

Speak­ing to me­dia, Swaran­jit Singh Khalsa said, “We will con­tinue to en­sure that Sikhs do not for­get 1984. We will also en­sure that the dig­nity and ho­n­our of the Sikhs in the USA are pro­tected and we stay com­mit­ted to this.”