June evokes intense feelings and emotions for Sikhs inside India and globally, representing the modern Sikh genocide month of June 1984. UK based Sikh activist -Jagdeesh Singh presents this reflection of events of June 1984 and how India and other nations, including the United Nations chose to turn a blind eye. Even today. WSN presents this as part one of a two-part series on how the movement of expression of Sikh anger and the eulogisation and conceptualisation of Sikh freedom has unfolded over the last 34 years.

1984 served as a major springboard for the sparking of a global wave of justice and freedom struggle that Sikhs inside Panjaab and India and across the world have shared.

Today on June 4, the Sikh people in Panjaab and globally, are marking the 34th anniversary of the devastating, genocidal onslaught by the Indian state in June 1984, which took the form of a full-scale, war-like military onslaught on Amritsar and across the entirety of East Panjaab.  Over 80 Gurdwaras across Panjaab were attacked by the Indian army, and the entire Panjaab was sealed off from the world as the brutalities and genocide was meted out over a 30-day period. The centre-piece of this grand military onslaught (‘Operation Bluestar’), was the 150,000 Indian army personnel attack on Harimandir Sahib (Amritsar) – the symbolic centre-point of Panjaab.

The horrific acts of mass disappearances, mass killings and mass cremations of tens of thousands of Panjaabi civilians that followed over the years (evidence uncovered by Jaswant Singh Khalra and others in the years that followed), combined with the destruction with tank-bombardment and high calibre military hardware on Darbar Sahib and the Sikh Reference Library and, simultaneous, mini-attacks on 80 other Gurdwaras across Panjaab. The gruesome detail of this, as revealed by the witness accounts of survivors and undercover journalist, is widely documented in an ever-expansive body of material.

“The 150,000 Indian army troops with tanks, helicopter gunships and other military hardware, went to war on Panjaab.”

The mass slaughter of over 1,000 civilians inside Darbar Sahib alone within the space of 1-7 June 1984, represents one of modern history’s most horrific crimes against humanity; as too does the whole-scale onslaught on the villages and cities of Panjaab during that same period. The gruesome and deliberate mass murder of men, women and children, through orchestrated acts of direct brutality by Indian troops and their commanders warrant global attention. Despite India’s systematic removal of all Indian and non-Indian journalists from Panjaab, daring journalists like Brahma Chellaney managed to remain outside the net. His direct reporting of events in Harimander Sahib as they took place, made UK news headlines.

His reports described Sikh males being forced to sit in a line in the hot sun, with their turbans removed and used to tie their hands, and then each being killed by a shot to the head. This is but a glimpse of what took place. What more remains hidden?

“Ninety-eight four certainly globalised the Sikh agenda; it galvanised global Sikh opinion and created deep feelings of anguish, dissent and resistance against the Indian state.”

But for the accounts given by survivors, much of the volume and intensity of these brutalities would remain concealed. Panjaab was turned into a sealed concentration camp throughout June 1984, to give the Indian establishment and its army the freedom to carry out its military offensive. There was no accountability and independent media monitoring allowed. India was literally going to a war on defenceless Panjaab.

Indeed, in June 1984, the entirety of Panjaab was sealed off, telephone and satellite communications cut off, all media journalists rounded up (Indian and foreign) and taken outside. The 150,000 Indian army troops with tanks, helicopter gunships and other military hardware, went to war on Panjaab; killing, shooting, arresting, detaining and disappearing the people of Panjaab. The International Red Cross was barred from entering as this 30-day one-sided war was conducted. In fact, officially, the International Red Cross has never been able to go to Punjab these 34 years!

“The global, international establishment, Britain, Canada, USA, Germany, knew of what was going on in 1984 and beyond, yet they sat by in a squeamish silence.”

Amnesty International is perhaps the only organisation which is not letting the case die out and is continuing its campaign against the perpetrators of June 1984 and November 1984.

Sadly, global political and media opinion, has assisted the Indian state, in hiding this crime against humanity from world knowledge and scrutiny. Indeed, the UK government, like Israel and Russia, was providing military advice and moral support to the Indian state throughout this gruesome episode. The British involvement has been revealed through the exposure of top secret official communications between the Indian and British government prior to and during June 1984.

Just as profound and indelible, was the heroic resistance put up against the Indian army onslaught over 1-7 June 1984, by the 100 or so Sikh combatants, led by Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale who took up positions within the sovereign Darbar Sahib (Amritsar) to vigorously fend off the Indian attack. Outnumbered, outgunned, out-tanked: this was an enormously powerful and unprecedented resistance from a group of dedicated persons against the armed might of the 5th largest army of the world. The sheer heroism and symbolism of this battle to protect and uphold the sovereignty of Darbar Sahib from the encroaching Indian armed invasion, is unprecedented in modern and past history.

“The sheer heroism and symbolism of this battle to protect and uphold the sovereignty of Darbar Sahib from the encroaching Indian armed invasion, is unprecedented in modern and past history.”

For a group of 100 to take on a force 150,000 regular soldiers, with tanks and helicopter gunships with the full authority and backing of a mega-sized state; in an intense battle over 7-days. There is no equal to it anywhere, across modern world-history. The political and religious symbolism of this is enormous; with no equivalent in the events of any other state or nation around the world. We cannot but be inspired by it and add it as another golden chapter in our intense and vibrant history.  

June 1984 was the start of a two-phased genocide on the Sikh population inside the Indian state over the year of 1984. The second part took place in November 1984 in Delhi -the Indian capital, no less, and other major cities, in the form of a 4-day state organised public murder spree of Sikh men, women and children. Both these double-genocides, were equally brutal, state organised, and designed to give the increasingly emboldened and buoyant Sikhs a fatal sledge-hammer blow.

The chilling, biting details of 1984 – June and November, represent a very obvious modern-day genocide and crime against humanity. Tragically and paradoxically, whereas the killing of 20 or so civilians in a Syrian hospital by Russian military bombardment or the killing of 20 Palestinian protesters by Israeli troops, immediately hits global news headlines and is immediately treated as a crime against humanity by the UN Human Rights Commission; the far more colossal events of June 1984, have been ignored. Human rights atrocities in Panjaab and by the Indian state, clearly do not qualify for international action, do they?

In November 1984, immediately after the assassination of the Indian Prime Minister Mrs Indira Gandhi, on the morning of 31st October 1984, in response to the devastation of June 1984; the Indian leadership unleashed a further bout of genocide – within 5-months. Whilst, global heads of states ceremoniously gathered for the funeral of the Indian PM on one side of Dheli, Sikhs were being burned by organised mobs with tyres and kerosene oil all over the other side of Dheli. The Indian police and government were actively facilitating this act of mass murder on the public streets of the Indian capital. There was deliberate inaction by the Dheli police, the Indian government and law and order authority. Even the Dheli hospitals were unwilling to assist half-burnt Sikhs who sought medical assistance and protection.

“Whereas the killing of 20 or so civilians in a Syrian hospital by Russian military bombardment or the killing of 20 Palestinian protesters by Israeli troops, immediately hits global news headlines and is immediately treated as a crime against humanity by the UN Human Rights Commission; the far more colossal events of June 1984, have been hitherto ignored.”

Just as in June 1984 inside Panjaab, the Indian state had gone to war a second time on Sikhs residing in Dheli and other major cities.  

The global, international establishment, Britain, Canada, USA, Germany, knew of what was going on, but sat by in a squeamish silence; not wishing to offend their close trading and military partner India. Nobody has challenged India in 1984 and nor thereafter, on its multiple and grievous human rights atrocities of that year. In the eyes of fellow states, India is immune.

Added to this, there has been an enduring cruel international media silence over 1984 and the drip-drip genocide and repression which has continued thereafter in Panjaab and beyond – Kashmir, Manipur, Gujarat, etc. In the grossly one-sided misrepresentation in the media and international discourse; the poorly equipped, unskilled and rustic Sikhs always ended up as being the ‘terrorists’ and the ‘world’s largest democracy’ India always ended up as the defender of ‘law and order’. This was the heavily slanted media and political global narrative, hand-in-hand. World governments lapped up this convenient, distorted media narrative. India is too big, too important – commercially and militarily to be annoyed with questions about its human rights.  

June 1984 and beyond, definitely brought to the fore of the Sikh mind, the already rotten, antagonised relationship between the engulfing, overbearing Indian state and the 20 million Sikh population homed in their historic, indigenous territory of Panjaab (a former independent sovereign state, no less than a 100 years ago). Arguably, the two-pronged 1984 genocide, was the Indian establishment’s attempt at a final solution to the enduring and surging Sikh problem since the outset of the Indian state in 1947.

“The UK government, like Israel and Russia, was providing military advice and moral support to the Indian state throughout this gruesome episode.”

The restless, avid Sikhs were perceived by the hostile Indian establishment, to have caused continuous tension, argument and agitation against the centralising, unifying, singularising Indian state. The Sikhs assertion of being a nation in their right, their claims for full autonomy (short of independence) within a confederal Indian union of self-determining autonomous states (with freedom to secede), and their refusal to conform to a ‘Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan’ single mega-India: had invariably caused much aggravation to the Indian ruling mind-set.

Ninety-eight four certainly globalised the Sikh agenda, to the extent that it galvanised global Sikh opinion and created deep feelings of anguish, dissent and resistance against the Indian state.

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‘Khalistan Zindabaad’, became the new evocative slogan, across Panjaab, the UK, Canada, USA and Germany, where Sikhs lived in sizeable numbers. How the slogan has progressed over the years and decades is another story in the next part of this series.