Saka Akal Takht: Trib­ute to the Un­known Saint-Sol­dier of Indo-Sikh bat­tle June 1984

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On the oc­ca­sion of 6 June -Re­mem­brance Day of Saka Akal Takht, WSN ed­i­tor Jag­mo­han Singh, in an Open Let­ter to an Un­known Sikh war­rior, shares his feel­ings for those who died un­sung.  Orig­i­nally writ­ten in 2008, cur­rently elab­o­rated and edited, this ac­count nar­rates the tales of hero­ism of Sikh mar­tyrs and vows to con­test the at­tempts to erase mem­ory.

Dear Ba­hadur Singh: Wa­he­guru Ji Ka Khalsa, Wa­he­guru Ji Ki Fateh! Un­stop­pable tears rolled down my cheeks when I heard and read the news about the at­tack on Dar­bar Sahib in June 1984.  The same was the case with many who could not go to Pun­jab dur­ing those try­ing times. I was in far­away Bom­bay at that time. My only con­tact with Pun­jab was through ra­dio and news­pa­pers.

I ac­tively par­tic­i­pated in the wave of protests that were held in the city.  I dis­tinctly re­mem­ber how the lead­ers of the Sikh com­mu­nity there were en­gaged in smoth­er­ing anger of the youth, in full col­lab­o­ra­tion with the state se­cu­rity agen­cies and po­lit­i­cal lead­ers with whom they had con­stant con­tact.  Later on, in life, I learnt that this was the case in most parts of In­dia and the world. Like me, there were many who were seething with anger.  

Dur­ing the protest demon­stra­tion, every­one was full of ad­mi­ra­tion for all the Sikh fight­ers who bravely fought till their last breath.  Your brav­ery was well re­spected.  Even those who did not openly iden­tify with Sant Jar­nail Singh Bhin­dran­wale, the Ni­hang and Kar Sewa Dals, All In­dia Sikh Stu­dents Fed­er­a­tion and the Bab­bar Khalsa, held you and them in awe for tak­ing on the might of the In­dian state.

Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindrawale

 

Sikh lead­ers en­sconced in the Golden Tem­ple premises, who es­caped un­scathed while you were all dy­ing, did not tell us the truth be­fore they passed away. They re­sorted to lies or handed over the task of re­ply­ing to the gov­ern­men­t’s pro­pa­ganda to in­tel­lec­tu­als who had no courage nor dili­gence nor skill to re­spond ap­pro­pri­ately

I rec­ol­lect your courage and ex­tra­or­di­nary gal­lantry. Just two hun­dred odd peo­ple, with ba­sic ar­moury and am­mu­ni­tion, with very lit­tle or no train­ing in war­fare, held the sec­ond largest armed forces in the world –the In­dian armed forces, at bay for more than 100 hours. Gen­eral Brar boasted that he would fin­ish all of you in two hours. In the end, he had to bite the skin of his teeth and re­luc­tantly ac­knowl­edge the brav­ery of the Sikh fight­ers.

Most of you died in the fight, which was the last bat­tle of In­dira Gandhi, but while do­ing so, you added an in­deli­ble and in­cred­i­ble chap­ter in the an­nals of Sikh his­tory and Indo-Sikh re­la­tion­ship.  The bat­tle of Am­rit­sar was not about “flush­ing out mil­i­tants or ter­ror­ists” as the In­dian state would want us to be­lieve, it was a bat­tle to “bring the Sikhs down on their knees” so that the de­sire to dis­sent-the char­ac­ter­is­tic re­bel­lion of the Sikhs and the yearn­ing for free­dom is crushed for­ever.  Af­ter the last bul­let had been fired, there was a blast on the Sikh Ref­er­ence Li­brary in vi­o­la­tion of all Geneva con­ven­tions. You fought in style and vin­di­cated the mar­tial tra­di­tion of the Sikhs.

To­day, come June and there are a whole twist and turn of events in the Pun­jab -the para-mil­i­tary con­duct­ing flag marches, the po­lice “un­earthing sedi­tion con­spir­a­cies” and “ar­rests of mil­i­tants out to break the peace of Pun­jab”. The build-up of the fear psy­chosis is to be seen to be be­lieved. As if, they are still afraid of you!

Very few pic­tures of fight­ers like you were shown to the world.  Even your bod­ies were not given to your heirs for last rites. The pho­tographs and the video were taken and shown by the then only of­fi­cial tele­vi­sion chan­nel -Do­or­dar­shan is part of the archives (hope­fully it is still there) and we should move to ask the gov­ern­ment to put it into the pub­lic do­main.  I doubt whether one can use the Right to In­for­ma­tion or any other pro­vi­sion of any other law to do that. In­di­a’s pro­pa­ganda ma­chin­ery is so well oiled that it is well-nigh im­pos­si­ble to pen­e­trate it. 

There are many peo­ple who have de­scribed the June 1984 events, but the last word is still to be writ­ten. The role of United King­dom, Rus­sia, Is­rael and oth­ers whose opin­ion, po­lit­i­cal guid­ance and lo­gis­ti­cal sup­port was sought and ob­tained for prepa­ra­tion and ex­e­cu­tion of Saka Akal Takht -pro­jected to the world as Op­er­a­tion Blues­tar, has still to be un­earthed. The un­stint­ing man­ner in which Di­as­pora Sikh or­gan­i­sa­tions are pur­su­ing this, I am sure that we will some­day get to know the truth though as we have seen in the case of UK, un­der diplo­matic pres­sure from In­dia, though much else is in pub­lic do­main but the doc­u­men­ta­tion re­lat­ing to the British role in Saka Akal Takht so far re­mains sup­pressed.

Sikh lead­ers en­sconced in the Golden Tem­ple premises, who es­caped un­scathed while you were all dy­ing, did not tell us the truth be­fore they passed away.  Al­most all of them ei­ther re­sorted to lies or handed over the task of re­ply­ing to the gov­ern­men­t’s pro­pa­ganda, in­clud­ing the of­fi­cial White Pa­per, to in­tel­lec­tu­als who had nei­ther the courage nor the dili­gence or skills to re­spond ap­pro­pri­ately. They could not match your courage even in their words.  To­day, there are some lead­ers around but they do not have the courage of con­vic­tion to speak the truth. Eye­wit­ness ac­counts are grad­u­ally emerg­ing, but more needs to be done.

I have three im­ages em­bed­ded in my mind of Saka Akal Takht. One is that of the nearly-de­mol­ished Akal Takht Sahib with gap­ing holes caused by tanks, the other is that of the body of Sant Jar­nail Singh (Pub­lished by Surya mag­a­zine) and the third is that of a Sikh fighter like you, body soaked in blood, pub­lished by Time mag­a­zine.  While talk­ing about pho­tographs and video record­ings, I of­ten won­der whether there ex­ist some satel­lite pic­tures taken by a for­eign power or by NASA of the con­flict. If Google Earth can map re­mote mil­i­tary in se­cluded places around the world in­clud­ing In­dia, surely the pos­si­bil­ity of the ex­is­tence of such ma­te­r­ial can­not be ruled out.

I have yet to come across a vivid de­scrip­tion of the tale of un­known com­bat­ants like you, though some in­ter­est­ing facts have trick­led down the years from eye­wit­ness ac­counts and some em­pir­i­cal re­search.  Sig­nif­i­cantly and not known to many peo­ple, there were two young Hindu men, namely Bhai Hardev Singh (Bholi Pan­dit) and Bhai Dula Singh amongst your ranks who fought the In­dian army. Their par­ents are proud of their sons. There were many who were less than 25 years of age, with their beards sprout­ing out, but who had “mas­tered” the art of de­fence un­der train­ing from Bhai Subeg Singh –a for­mer dec­o­rated sol­dier of the In­dian army.  

Re­liv­ing the times that you spent dur­ing that swel­ter­ing June sum­mer of 1984, fac­ing bul­lets and can­non fire, I can­not hold back my­self but say, “I wish I too was there.”

Not to be left be­hind, the Budha Dal -that is the el­derly too were there. Baba Thara Singh was 60 years old and was a close con­fi­dante of Sant Jar­nail Singh.  Bhai Jan­gir Singh, the el­der brother of Sant Jar­nail Singh was 64 years old. As you know, both were tow­er­ing per­son­al­i­ties and lived up to the com­mit­ment made to the Guru.

It should make Sikh women proud that amongst the valiant war­riors were two young women, Up­kar Kaur and Paramjit Kaur, who too at­tained mar­tyr­dom dur­ing this first Indo-Sikh bat­tle.

Mem­bers of the SGPC are known for their cow­ardice and in­sin­cer­ity to the cause of prop­a­ga­tion of Sikh ideals.  It is a trib­ute to Bhai Su­jan Singh who was an SGPC mem­ber from Sar­bala con­stituency that he lived true to the oath of pro­tect­ing and pre­serv­ing the holi­est of the holy shrines of the Sikh faith.

Nearly two decades back, dur­ing the course of a po­lit­i­cal con­fer­ence, I met a mid­dle-aged Jaswant Singh at Fate­hgarh Sahib.  In­tro­duc­ing him­self, he told me that like me, he too had lived in Bom­bay.  He fur­ther said that when Damdami Tak­sal chief, Sant Jar­nail Singh had vis­ited Bom­bay, his fam­ily had “gifted” their ten-year-old son to the Jatha of Damdami Tak­sal.  That Sur­jit Singh was 18 years old when he at­tained mar­tyr­dom fight­ing in the precincts of Dar­bar Sahib. When­ever I have asked Jaswant Singh about this, he has never re­gret­ted his de­ci­sion. I find it dif­fi­cult to fathom, “how does one gift a son?” Per­haps, the an­swer lies in Sikh his­tory books re­plete with the saga of moth­ers ‘gift­ing’ their sons to fight to up­hold Sikh iden­tity and spirit.

It would not be fair to com­part­men­talise or com­pare mar­tyr­dom of one with the other.  The tale of each one of you is a leg­end still to be fully told. Dur­ing the last decade, some Pun­jabi mag­a­zines have chron­i­cled sto­ries of young mar­tyrs and they de­serve com­pli­ments for do­ing so.  

While I salute you for your deed and role, I am con­scious of the life led by your fam­ily mem­bers.  While some have had recog­ni­tion from the Sikh na­tion, there are many whose con­tri­bu­tion has been left by the way­side, not de­lib­er­ately but be­cause of neg­li­gence and an in­con­sid­er­ate sense of his­tory.  

Like every year, this year too, a small seg­ment of the Sikh na­tion would re­count and retell the tales of your hero­ism –in Pun­jab and else­where. To every Sikh, a mar­tyr is a hero be­yond doubt. The es­tab­lished lead­ers of the com­mu­nity have done every­thing pos­si­ble to as­sas­si­nate mem­ory –from empty promises of putting up a memo­r­ial to white-wash­ing all tell-tale signs of the mas­sacre from Har­man­dar Sahib. The Akali po­lit­i­cal lead­ers, mem­bers of the SGPC, the SGPC bu­reau­cracy and the re­li­gious lead­er­ship are guilty of this crime, car­ried out un­der covert di­rec­tions of the In­dian state. To­day, how­ever, the Saka Akal Takht memo­r­ial, built af­ter sus­tained pres­sure from rev­o­lu­tion­ary Sikh po­lit­i­cal par­ties, stands tall, next to the Akal Takht is an­other cen­tre of wor­ship and when full build a mod­ern day mu­seum of the re­mark­able con­tri­bu­tion of all mar­tyrs like you.

Many con­tinue to as­sault Sikh mem­ory, suc­ceed they will not. No book on the life of In­dira Gandhi can be com­plete with­out ref­er­ence to June 1984 and Sant Jar­nail Singh Bhin­dran­wale. No his­tory book of our times can be con­sid­ered com­pre­hen­sive with­out men­tion of the events of June 1984 and what went be­fore that and what hap­pened af­ter. 

What­ever In­dian colum­nists and lead­ers may say about a clo­sure to the events of 1984,  there can­not be an easy one. We may for­give but for­get we can­not. We may get jus­tice but for­get we can­not. We may get our own coun­try for which the fight­ers, in­sur­gents and lay Sikhs like you fought for, even then for­get we can­not. No Sikh leader may not yet have the Twit­ter or Face­book reach of Prime Min­is­ter Modi, but col­lec­tively so­cial me­dia en­sures that our mem­ory of pain, anger, angst, yearn­ing for jus­tice re­mains eter­nally alive.

The In­dian es­tab­lish­ment lives in the il­lu­sion that it can crush all as­pi­ra­tions of Sikhs and sub­due them by their ver­sion of con­tem­po­rary his­tory. This too, they can­not. The com­mend­able role of grow­ing num­bers of Sikh po­lit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tives in coun­tries like Canada, US, UK, Aus­tralia and New Zealand, who through their par­lia­men­tary in­ter­ven­tions keep these sa­cred mem­o­ries alive and make the Sikh case part of their par­lia­men­tary records makes In­dia highly un­com­fort­able. Surely, In­dia can­not get that re­moved or erased, can it?

Re­liv­ing the times that you spent dur­ing that swel­ter­ing June sum­mer of 1984, fac­ing bul­lets and can­non fire, I can­not hold back my­self but say, “I wish I too was there.” 

May you en­joy the priv­i­lege and gra­cious ho­n­our of “be­ing with the Guru”.

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