Work­ing with Sik­li­gar Sikhs for the past decade, I re­alised Sikhs have a larger than life im­age of them­selves. Be­neath the ve­neer of bravado lie buried our mis­giv­ings, weak­nesses and brute dif­fer­ences of caste and class. The state of the poor amongst us is not part of our so­cial par­lance, re­li­gious di­a­logue, po­lit­i­cal nar­ra­tive or com­mu­nity plan­ning. Non-ac­cep­tance of poverty amongst Sikhs has led us into a labyrinthine thicket emerg­ing from which re­quires huge in­vest­ments of mind, man­power, money and man­age­ment re­sources. The ed­i­tor of The World Sikh News pre­sents the sit­u­a­tion of the poor Mazhabi Sikhs in Shil­long with this per­spec­tive. He seeks your in­dul­gence to un­der­stand it thor­oughly, not su­per­fi­cially. He ad­vo­cates con­stant mon­i­tor­ing and in­vest­ment to save the sit­u­a­tion for the be­lea­guered com­mu­nity.

In the lands of the North­east, far away from Pun­jab the poor Dalit Sikhs of Shil­long, cat­e­gorised as Sweeper Sikhs, even af­ter more than some 150 years of set­tle­ment there, are still dkhars -for­eign­ers for the ma­jor­ity tribal Kha­sis. They have kept the city clean and tidy and now fac­ing the cri­sis of ma­jori­tar­ian pol­i­tics of the coun­try.

It may be dif­fi­cult for the pre­sent gen­er­a­tion of Sikhs to di­gest the cold hard facts of Sikh caste work­ing as it has un­folded in Shil­long. The prob­lem is not just of the lo­cal Kha­sis who are now in an over­drive due to po­lit­i­cal pa­tron­age, for which they waited too long, but also of the ex­is­ten­tial cri­sis of the poor­est of poor Mazhabi Sikhs or the Dalit Sikhs as they are some­times called vis-à-vis other sec­tions of Sikhs. This story, how­so­ever com­plex and painful has to be nar­rated. It is a 100 year too late.

To un­der­stand their sta­tus and then seek a so­lu­tion for res­i­dents of the Pun­jabi lane, of­fi­cially Sweeper Lane of Shil­long, Pun­jabi Sikhs (a term bor­rowed from Dr Hi­madri Baner­jee, to dis­tin­guish them from those liv­ing for cen­turies in other parts of the In­dian Di­as­pora) will have to shed their larger than life im­age and stop self-ag­gran­dis­e­ment.  On the eve of the 550-year com­mem­o­ra­tion of the birth an­niver­sary of the founder of the Sikh faith -Guru Nanak Sahib, we will have to go back to our roots and ac­cept our fault-lines.

“It may be dif­fi­cult to di­gest the cold hard facts of Sikh caste work­ing as it has un­folded in Shil­long. It is a com­plex, painful story of poor Mazhabi Sikhs vis-à-vis other sec­tions of Sikhs. It is a 100 year too late.  ”

Liv­ing a skele­ton ex­is­tence in tin-roof kutcha houses, the fore­fa­thers of the Mazhabi Sikhs were taken to Shil­long by the British army as sweep­ers as there was no other com­mu­nity will­ing to do the me­nial jobs. The Mazhabis were sta­ple to British needs in­clud­ing to be part of the Im­pe­r­ial forces dur­ing the First and Sec­ond World Wars.  The pre­sent con­fla­gra­tion started with eve-teas­ing and the proud Sikhs, how­so­ever poor or Dalit they be, could not take that ly­ing down. Two young girls who were fetch­ing wa­ter from a com­mu­nity tap were as­saulted and they re­tal­i­ate, enough for the “lo­cals” who saw an op­por­tu­nity to bring to fore their bias, anger and angst. Of course, the dam­age done through gos­sip on so­cial me­dia can­not be dis­counted.

The over­whelm­ing pres­ence of the armed forces and para­mil­i­tary forces in a small area has so far saved the sit­u­a­tion. Of the 50 peo­ple ar­rested so far, 3 are Mazhabi Sikhs as re­ported to the me­dia by DGP Dr S. B. Singh.  

By a con­ser­v­a­tive es­ti­mate, as per Dr Hi­madri Baner­jee there are close to 500 fam­i­lies, with the to­tal num­ber of res­i­dents be­ing more than 2000, with a very minis­cule mi­nor­ity of rel­a­tives com­pris­ing the float­ing pop­u­la­tion. The le­gal strug­gle for the pre­sent land has been in the courts in one form or an­other from 1954.  Gur­jeet Singh, the pres­i­dent of the Gur­d­wara of the Sikhs of the Pun­jab Colony says, “We have doc­u­ments show­ing our rights to this land given by this Hill Au­thor­ity of the lo­cals dat­ing  way back 150 years ago.” Speak­ing to WSN, Gur­jeet Singh said with a heavy heart, “While we are grate­ful to all lead­ers who have vis­ited Shil­long in the last three weeks, much more needs to be done as the re­cently formed high level com­mit­tee has al­ready started a sur­vey of our houses de­spite our op­po­si­tion and de­spite the as­sur­ances given to all Sikh del­e­ga­tions.”

“The Sikhs are not the only Dkhars -for­eign­ers. Hereto­fore Ben­galis and Mar­waris and every­one who is per­ceived as “Bangladeshis” have also borne the brunt. ”

Care to look at the pro­ceed­ings of the last three weeks. Upon hear­ing of the “vi­o­lent in­ci­dents against Sikhs in Shil­long” a del­e­ga­tion of the Delhi Sikh Gur­d­wara Man­age­ment Com­mit­tee went to Shil­long and it was Face­book live, “We have reached “ground zero and every­thing is fine” is what DS­GMC Pres­i­dent Man­jit Singh GK and deputy Man­jin­der Singh Sirsa said. They met Con­rad Sagma -the Chief Min­is­ter of Megha­laya also, pho­tos up­loaded onto the In­ter­net in real time.  Upon re­turn to Delhi, they en­cap­su­lated the prob­lem in a press con­fer­ence, thus, “lo­cal pop­u­la­tion called Kha­sis are try­ing to usurp Sikh prop­erty”. Sub­se­quently, noth­ing has hap­pened. Is some­one keep­ing a tab on the sit­u­a­tion? Has there been an ef­fort to un­der­stand the root cause of the prob­lem and think of so­lu­tions?

Next, the Shi­ro­mani Gur­d­wara Par­band­hak Com­mit­tee del­e­ga­tion led by Gi­ani Harpreet Singh vis­its the be­lea­guered Sikh com­mu­nity, re­turns back to Pun­jab in a few days, does not make their re­port pub­lic, but an­nounces rea­son­able fi­nan­cial aid to the Guru Nanak Dar­bar Gur­d­wara and the af­fected Sikhs.  Small mer­cies are al­ways wel­come. The Hin­dus­tan Times re­ports them as say­ing, “SGPC vice-pres­i­dent Harpal Singh Jal­lah and gen­eral sec­re­tary Bi­jay Singh, said that they were happy that the ru­mours of vi­o­lence to­wards Sikhs dur­ing the clashes were un­founded and they urged the gov­ern­ment to keep the res­i­dents of the sweeper colony in­formed if they are to be moved to an­other neigh­bour­hood.” I have no hes­i­ta­tion in re­peat­ing what Bhai Sahib Ka­pur Singh used to say about such Akali lead­er­ship, “For God’s sake, leave the Sikh com­mu­nity alone and go to hell!”

 “Dr Hi­madri Baner­jee says there are close to 500 fam­i­lies, with the to­tal num­ber of res­i­dents be­ing more than 2000, with a very minis­cule mi­nor­ity of rel­a­tives com­pris­ing the float­ing pop­u­la­tion.
“We have doc­u­ments show­ing our rights to this land where we live given by this Hill Au­thor­ity of the lo­cals dat­ing way back 150 years ago.”

Gur­jeet Singh, Pres­i­dent, Gur­d­wara Guru Nanak Dar­bar, Shil­long

The Pun­jab gov­ern­ment sent Cab­i­net min­is­ter Sukhjin­der Singh Rand­hawa, mem­ber Par­lia­ment Ravneet Singh Bittu, Gur­jit Singh Au­jla, MLA Kuldip Singh Vaid and IAS of­fi­cer D S Man­gat. In typ­i­cal Con­gress style they re­ported on re­turn that it was a law and or­der sit­u­a­tion, which is now un­der con­trol and that the Pun­jab gov­ern­ment promises to com­pen­sate the two peo­ple whose houses were par­tially burnt and also one per­son whose hand-cart was burnt. Can you see In­dira Gand­hi’s heal­ing touch some­where!  It must be men­tioned though, that they had the good sense to meet the Au­tonomous Hill Coun­cil leader Hima Myl­liem -the Syiem of Myl­liem. What tran­spired, no one knows. It may be men­tioned here that there are no re­ports to sug­gest that the Con­gress lead­ers from Pun­jab met their Megha­laya coun­ter­parts as so far, they have main­tained a stud­ied si­lence on the dis­turb­ing sit­u­a­tion.

The Na­tional Com­mis­sion for Mi­nori­ties Sikh mem­ber Man­jit Singh Rai was the first per­son to di­rectly de­clare that no at­tempt should be made to dis­lodge the Mazhabi Sikhs from their pre­sent habi­tat.  He has sub­mit­ted his re­port to the Com­mis­sion. Dur­ing a meet­ing with this writer, he stated, “I have made two rec­om­men­da­tions -one that there should be no dis­lo­ca­tion of the poor Sikhs from where they are liv­ing and two that the 10 com­pa­nies of cen­tral forces de­ployed in Shil­long should stay there.”  He also ap­prised me that the Dalit Sikhs of Shil­long is pend­ing with the NCM since 2006. I also learnt that in July 2017, the gov­ern­ment of Megha­laya had as­sured the NCM that there were no plans to dis­lo­cate the Dalit Sikhs of the Sweeper colony in up-mar­ket Shil­long.

 ““I have made two rec­om­men­da­tions -one that there should be no dis­lo­ca­tion of the poor Sikhs from where they are liv­ing and two that the 10 com­pa­nies of cen­tral forces de­ployed in Shil­long should stay there.””

Man­jit Singh Rai, Mem­ber, Na­tional Com­mis­sion for Mi­nori­ties.

So­cial ser­vice body, United Sikhs stuck to its man­date and pro­vided tem­po­rary suc­cour and per­ma­nent fire-fight­ing equip­ment should the need arise. One of its mem­bers, Mo­hin­der­jit Singh, how­ever, sens­ing the sit­u­a­tion af­ter in­ter­act­ing with the pop­u­la­tion right­fully de­clared, that “no re­lo­ca­tion plan would be ac­cept­able.”

So far, this is what has hap­pened.  To un­der­stand the sit­u­a­tion 360 de­grees, let us see what did not hap­pen and why.

Take One: Across the board all re­li­gious and po­lit­i­cal del­e­ga­tions did not go to the roots of the is­sue. Every­thing was Face­book live, bytes, videos and “by and large, every­thing is nor­mal” tone, re­turn­ing quickly back af­ter short vis­its.

 ““No re­lo­ca­tion plan would be ac­cept­able.””

Mo­hin­der­jit Singh, United Sikhs

Take Two: Apart from the es­tab­lished Sikh lead­er­ship, so far, no al­ter­na­tive groups or in­di­vid­u­als at­tempted to go to Shil­long ei­ther to ex­press sol­i­dar­ity or to un­der­stand the gen­e­sis of the is­sue. Pan­thic bod­ies, wom­en’s com­mis­sion, Sikhs from Gauhati, Kolkata, hu­man rights ac­tivists, et al,  where are they? There have been no street protests in Pun­jab and Delhi, Why?

Take Three:  The other “high caste” Sikhs re­sid­ing in Shil­long, Gauhati and other neigh­bour­ing places have failed to is­sue a sin­gle state­ment in favour of the Dalit Sikhs un­der at­tack.  There have been no re­ports of their in­ter­ac­tion with the Mazhabi Sikhs. They have dis­played ut­ter spine­less­ness even at this hour and un­der­played the sit­u­a­tion even af­ter des­per­ate calls from Pun­jab and Delhi. Are they also un­der siege?  This may be largely true but it is only one side of the pic­ture. They and every­body else need to re­mem­ber what Bha­gat Kabir Ji says in Guru Granth Sahib, “Jo pa­dosi ke huha so apne bhi jaan.”

Take Four: A del­e­ga­tion led by Delhi Akali Dal leader Paramjit Singh Sarna also vis­ited Shil­long, met the Mazhabi Sikhs and the Chief Min­is­ter of Megha­laya. He has promised to send Par­charaks to Shil­long.

Flash­back: With­out men­tion­ing the nomen­cla­ture of the caste, suf­fice it is to say that the “higher caste” Sikhs and their Gur­d­waras have been prac­tis­ing apartheid against the poor Mazhabi Sikhs for nearly a cen­tury. The poor Mazhabis too have in­ter­nalised this and they too do not protest.  Does this sound fa­mil­iar for other cities and towns? Look fur­ther within and the stark re­al­i­ties would hit you in the face.

Am­rita Dutta, writ­ing in the In­dian Ex­press, in her im­pec­ca­ble piece, “Im­pos­si­ble Home­land” says that as a Ben­gali, she grew up and in­ter­nalised, al­most like the Dalit Sikhs. In her words, “as chil­dren, we did not keep track of the vi­o­lence, but the men­ace we felt as a sec­ond skin -in the ur­gency to re­turn home from dusk; in the aware­ness that we are not wel­come or al­lowed in cer­tain ar­eas; in the wide val­ley of sus­pi­cion that lay be­tween the Kha­sis and non-trib­als; the long cur­few days that stretched be­fore us af­ter each spurt of vi­o­lence; and the sense of shame at our com­mu­ni­ty’s pow­er­less­ness, its land­less­ness.”

Presently, at least for now, What­sApp and the Face­book has so far saved the sit­u­a­tion for the Dalit Sikhs, oth­er­wise North­east is that part of In­dia from where news does not fil­ter be­yond the bor­ders. The hype, though some­times over­played, cre­ated a sit­u­a­tion for all the del­e­ga­tions to visit. Should the need arise again, we will need God­speed!

The gen­e­sis of the con­flict is that the poor Sikhs are a vic­tim of il­lit­er­acy, al­co­holism on their part, apartheid and seclu­sion by Sikh brethren in Shil­long and in home­land Pun­jab; greed and po­lit­i­cal up­man­ship on the part of the po­lit­i­cal forces in Megha­laya, pres­sure of the lo­cal land mafia, the Khasi Stu­dents Union call to stop in­flux of non-trib­als to save their de­mo­graphic sta­tus and the vul­gar rise of Hin­dutva in a state which has only 2 Bharatiya Janata Party leg­is­la­tors.  With only 2 out of 70 seats in the “coali­tion” gov­ern­ment of Megha­laya, the Bharatiya Janata Party finds it con­ve­nient to arouse lo­cal sen­ti­ments and push a di­vi­sive agenda.

If Sikhs have to be sac­ri­ficed, does it mat­ter to the BJP? It does not. It is made eas­ier by a de­funct Akali lead­er­ship. Led by Sukhbir Singh Badal, Man­jit Singh GK and Gob­ind Singh Lon­gowal, they met Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi, while the cri­sis was still sim­mer­ing. They did not men­tion any­thing about the poor Sikhs of Shil­long, they only did chap­lusi -il­le­git­i­mate praise for “con­ces­sion on GST on Lan­gar.” Yes­ter­day, they went to In­di­a’s Home Min­is­ter ex­press­ing con­cern for Shil­long Sikhs. Don’t you think that this lead­er­ship too de­serves the treat­ment sug­gested by Bhai Sahib Sir­dar Ka­pur Singh!

Dr Hi­madri Baner­jee, the au­thor of The Other Sikhs, who has ex­plored the In­dian Sikh Di­as­pora mi­lieu for the last five decades told the World Sikh News over the phone: “Do not for­get that thou­sands of Sikhs, res­i­dent for a cen­tury and more in neigh­bour­ing Ma­nipur and neigh­bour­ing coun­try Myan­mar left home and hearth from 1998 to 2006 with­out a mur­mur of protest or con­cern by the main­stream Sikh com­mu­nity.”  

The Sikhs in Myan­mar and Ma­nipur too did not protest and per­haps it is this that the Khasi Stu­dents Union, formed in 1978 was per­haps bank­ing upon. I will not be wrong if I say that the brave Mazhabi Sikhs will re­sist to the last. The Khasi Stu­dents Union con­sti­tu­tion says that the union has “to tackle the men­ace of in­flux which threat­ens to al­ter the de­mo­graphic struc­ture of the state thereby re­duc­ing the Khasi peo­ple to a mi­nor­ity within their own land.” Some­body needs to in­form and ne­go­ti­ate with the Khasi Stu­dents Union that these few hun­dred Sikhs, ek­ing out a liv­ing through hard work, liv­ing on the edge on small chunk of land given to them by the then “Hill lead­er­ship” a cen­tury and a half back, which through pas­sage of time has be­come prime com­mer­cial prop­erty, do not hold a threat to any­one. Cer­tainly, they are not a re­cent in­flux from any­where. They have lived there for four gen­er­a­tions, which qual­i­fies them to be “lo­cals.” If the Kha­sis see them as as­sets the way the British­ers saw them, they will open a new chap­ter in in­clu­sive liv­ing. North­east peo­ple and states must ex­per­i­ment with this rather than with the di­vi­sive agenda of non-in­clu­sion start­ing with the As­samese “anti-for­eign­ers” ag­i­ta­tion. I have vis­ited the houses of Sikh mem­bers of the ULFA who laid down their lives as lo­cal As­samese peo­ple did. The Mazhabi Sikhs should be seen as as­sets by the Kha­sis and other abo­rig­i­nals of the re­gion.

Those read­ers un-ini­ti­ated in the ways of work­ing of the North­east in In­dia need to take a deeper look.  North­east is a dif­fer­ent cup of tea. It will not be wrong to say that most non-trib­als, man­age a smooth liv­ing pay­ing “pro­tec­tion money” and on the ba­sis of “po­lit­i­cal un­der­stand­ing”. The North­east was an­nexed to In­dia much af­ter 1947, the peo­ple are of Mon­goloid ori­gin and not Aryans, the peo­ple have faced the ter­ror of the In­dian army over the decades. Irom Chanu Sharmi­la’s 17-year strug­gle for with­drawal of the Armed Forces Spe­cial Pow­ers Act from Ma­nipur and Na­ga­land is a clas­sic case of the ex­tent of hu­man rights vi­o­la­tion in the re­gion. 

The Sikhs are not the only Dkhars -for­eign­ers. Hereto­fore Ben­galis and Mar­waris and every­one who is per­ceived as “Bangladeshis” have also borne the brunt. Am­rita Dutta is cat­e­goric on this, “This time, the dkhar is the Mazhabi Sikh com­mu­nity, which was brought by the British to work as scav­engers and sweep­ers. While the vi­o­lence is on leash, the shock­ing, un­con­sti­tu­tional de­mand to evict them from the heart of the city re­mains on the agenda of the pow­er­ful and vi­o­lent Khasi Stu­dents’ Union.”

As a hu­man rights ac­tivist, I re­spect the na­tion­al­ism and eth­nic­ity of the Kha­sis. I have been a strong votary and sup­porter of pro­tec­tion of hu­man rights of all peo­ples of the North­east. The pre­sent ag­gres­sive and di­vi­sive pos­ture with the ac­tive in­volve­ment and fer­vour of the Bharatiya Janata Party lead­ing to at­tacks on non-lo­cals is a cause for con­cern.

The Kha­sis and Garos must see Sikhs as brethren who are ever-will­ing to be part of any in­clu­sive so­ci­ety. The Dalit Sikhs, who left home, hearth and dis­crim­i­na­tion back in their own home­land, can­not be a dan­ger to any­one, least of all to a so­ci­ety of which they have in­ex­tri­ca­bly be­come a part. Refugees from Pak­istan, Mazhabis from Pun­jab and now Dkhars from Shil­long, where will they go?

The trib­als must spare thought about the so­cial fab­ric of the Dalit Sikhs. The motto of the Khasi Stu­dents Union is ‘Mait Shaphrang Khlur Ka Ri’ mean­ing ‘Strive For­ward Chil­dren of the Soil’. The Dalit Sikhs are also “sons of soil” as are the Kha­sis. Even Sikhs in Pun­jab have de­mo­graphic con­cerns due to in­flux of “other pop­u­la­tions” up­set­ting the so­cial and po­lit­i­cal ap­ple­cart, but the sit­u­a­tion has never taken an ugly or vi­o­lent turn even un­der the worst try­ing cir­cum­stances and be­lieve me, as Sikhs go, it never will.  The Sikh peo­ple stand com­mit­ted to Sar­bat da Bhala -wel­fare for all and any­one both­er­ing to give an ear can hear it from the Gur­d­wara speak­ers in the Pun­jabi lane, every morn­ing and evening at the end of the prayer meet­ings.  

An­thro­pol­o­gists may ask with­out clear-cut an­swers, “Do the Kha­sis have the proof that they are the first set­tlers of the city? Dr Hi­madri Baner­jee, putting the whole story in per­spec­tive says, “The en­tire re­gion is marked by hun­dreds of fluid bound­aries known for un­re­stricted move­ment of nu­mer­ous eth­nic groups from Myan­mar to In­dia (NE ) and vice versa. The whole of NE In­dia is in­hab­ited by hun­dreds of eth­nic groups and for it – one should read San­joy Haz­arika, San­jib Bariah and Subir Bhowmick. The whole area is in­hab­ited by hun­dreds of  fluid com­mu­ni­ties. That is why Na­gas fight among them­selves, They do not have one lan­guage. Kukis and Meit­eis fight. In Megha­laya, the Kha­sis have their ri­val eth­nic com­mu­ni­ties.”

The fledg­ling Con­rad Sangma gov­ern­ment of Na­tional Peo­ples Party has been giv­ing out mixed sig­nals so far to the Sikhs. Notwith­stand­ing party af­fil­i­a­tion, P. A. Sangma, the il­lus­tri­ous fa­ther of the in­cum­bent Chief Min­is­ter of Megha­laya main­tained healthy re­la­tions with the Sikh com­mu­nity in Delhi and with leg­is­la­tors and par­lia­men­tar­i­ans from the Pun­jab, which his son must em­u­late in de­gree and kind.  

With their backs to the wall, the poor Sikh res­i­dents of Pun­jabi lane have no choice but to pray to God. Yet, they need to con­sis­tently and as a mat­ter of right, seek the con­stant in­ter­ven­tion, in­volve­ment, as­sis­tance and in­dul­gence for re­ten­tion and re­con­struct­ing of their lands for res­i­dence, re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and com­mer­cial upgra­da­tion from the larger Pun­jabi Sikh com­mu­nity, the In­dian and the global Sikh Di­as­pora, which has hith­erto com­pletely ig­nored them. 

Who will bell the cat and when is of ex­treme essence? Is­n’t it? WSN ad­vo­cates con­stant mon­i­tor­ing, sig­nif­i­cant mon­e­tary in­vest­ment to up­grade the liv­ing stan­dards of the poor Sikhs and open­ing of di­a­logue and ne­go­ti­a­tion chan­nels with the Khasi and Garo peo­ples and the Megha­laya gov­ern­ment. WSN promises to be ever-vig­i­lant to bring the sta­tus of the Sikhs in Shil­long in the times to come till the con­flict is ap­pro­pri­ately re­solved.