June 1984 was a turn­ing point in con­tem­po­rary Sikh his­tory. Dur­ing this very emo­tional and an­guished an­niver­sary of the un­prece­dented geno­cide in East Pan­jaab (In­dia), we have seen a re­gur­gi­ta­tion of tired, worn out rab­ble-rous­ing rhetoric from the dom­i­neer­ing pro-Sikh na­tion­hood lead­er­ship. WSN takes lead in pub­lish­ing this first of its kind analy­sis by ac­tivist-ide­o­logue Jagdeesh Singh, who in this sec­ond of a two-part se­ries, pre­sents a deep-felt scathing per­spec­tive on those es­pous­ing Sikh free­dom in home­land Pan­jaab and around the globe. He ques­tions whether we have the in­ter­nal at­ti­tu­di­nal and be­hav­ioural qual­i­ties to run a sov­er­eign, in­de­pen­dent state; let alone the achieve­ment of it?

W hat kind of Sikh state do we want? What kind of ‘Khal­is­tan’ we want? Do we need it? Who will get it? How? When? Through­out the last 34 years, there has been some de­gree of fresh and con­struc­tive view­points to a gen­eral round of gath­er­ings of vir­tu­ally the same peo­ple  in sem­i­nar rooms and open air protest demon­stra­tions – from Am­rit­sar to Lon­don to Toronto to Cal­i­for­nia, to re­it­er­ate the cause of Sikh na­tion­hood – from an in­de­pen­dent ‘Khal­is­tan’ to more recog­ni­tion and rights within a fed­eral In­dia.

The Sikh peo­ple and, more widely and in­clu­sively, the Pan­jaabi peo­ple, have been en­gaged in an on­go­ing, ac­tive to semi-ac­tive cam­paign for an in­de­pen­dent state based on the ter­ri­tory of East Pan­jaab (In­dian side), since June 1984. Im­me­di­ately prior to this turn­ing point in mod­ern Sikh his­tory, the ar­tic­u­la­tion of Sikh na­tional state­hood was done by a hand­ful of Sikh ide­o­logues and vi­sion­ar­ies, with some emerg­ing ac­tivism in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

“Peo­ple’s strug­gles against a mighty state, are never sim­ple and straight­for­ward. They are com­pli­cated and in­volve many di­men­sions and an­gles. ”

Peo­ple’s strug­gles against a mighty state, are never sim­ple and straight­for­ward. They are com­pli­cated and in­volve many di­men­sions and an­gles. Thirty four years on and count­ing, there ap­pears to have been very lit­tle in­tro­spec­tion and self-ex­am­i­na­tion by us as Sikhs, of how and where we are go­ing with this strug­gle for jus­tice, free­dom and, ul­ti­mately, ‘Khal­is­tan’.

With­out mal­ice and bias of any kind what­so­ever, I share my deep sense of in­ad­e­qua­cies of in­tegrity and hon­esty within the gen­eral ranks of those who es­pouse the cause of Sikh free­dom and sov­er­eignty. Con­junc­tively, I, also, take a con­sid­ered look at the se­ri­ous lack of com­pe­tent me­dia and pub­lic rep­re­sen­ta­tion skills amongst the ‘Khal­is­tan’ cir­cles, in­side the UK and in Pan­jaab.

I am par­tic­u­larly dis­en­chanted with a gross and sus­tained in­ep­ti­tude which bor­ders on near-sus­pect front­line ‘lead­er­ship’, which has for far too long now dis­played only in­co­her­ent and un­prin­ci­pled ver­bal out­bursts and er­ratic ges­tur­ing. They have done noth­ing to make the ‘Khal­is­tan’ move­ment, ap­peal­ing to wider Pan­jaabis much less to the wider non-Sikh world.

“Thirty four years on and count­ing, there ap­pears to have been very lit­tle in­tro­spec­tion and self-ex­am­i­na­tion by us as Sikhs, of how and where we are go­ing with this strug­gle for jus­tice, free­dom and, ul­ti­mately, ‘Khal­is­tan’.

The Khal­is­tan move­ment in the UK has been dom­i­nated here and in many other coun­tries by loud, rab­ble-rous­ing cliques. Ap­ply­ing their im­pulses of greed, con­nivance and lack of in­tegrity. The oth­er­wise gen­uine, peo­ples move­ment has been hi­jacked and dom­i­nated by a core mass of loud, in­co­her­ent, bois­ter­ous in­di­vid­u­als and their sur­round­ing mobs.

Gur­d­waras are rou­tinely mis-gov­erned, with mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of monies, lack of open and trans­par­ent process, breaches of health and safety safe­guards and even im­mi­gra­tion fraud. There is no de­mo­c­ra­tic free speech ei­ther.

There can be no Khal­is­tan, In­de­pen­dent Pan­jaab, un­til com­pre­hen­sive change hap­pens. An­nual demos, ‘Khal­is­tan zind­abad!’, posters, fly­ers, rous­ing speeches; are no sub­sti­tute for this ground-up change. The afore­men­tioned are sim­ply a smoke-screen to bid time, at the most to let the op­po­si­tion know that you are alive and kick­ing.”

From 1984, the ‘Khal­is­tan’ move­ment en­tered into an ac­tive, pop­u­lar stage. Cries of ‘Khal­is­tan Zind­abaad!’ char­ac­terised the biggest, his­tory-mak­ing Sikh gath­er­ing in cen­tral Lon­don on 10th June 1984, in di­rect protest to the ac­tions of the In­dian state in Pan­jaab. In­dia had fever­ishly pressed the UK gov­ern­ment to ban the demon­stra­tion, but de­spite the British Gov­ern­men­t’s ac­tive sup­port to In­dia; there was no le­gal nor prac­ti­cal means to pre­vent this mass gath­er­ing of nearly 100,000 Sikhs from across the UK. ‘Khal­is­tan Zind­abaad’, be­came the new evoca­tive slo­gan, across Pan­jaab, the UK, Canada, USA and Ger­many, where Sikhs lived in size­able num­bers. 

The global Sikh pop­u­la­tion in Canada, USA, Britain and Ger­many, emerged ac­tively to seek jus­tice and fight for Khal­is­tan. In­di­a’s fi­nal so­lu­tion had failed to hold back the Sikhs.  How­ever, the jour­ney from 1984 to now, has been fraught with in­ter­nal fail­ures as well the ex­ter­nal ham­mer­ing that has con­tin­ued from the In­dian state.

What un­folded from this ini­tial ex­cite­ment and pas­sion in 1984, over the com­ing decades; has opened up a lot of un­ad­dressed ques­tions and ur­gent need for de­mo­c­ra­tic re­view about a bungling and sus­pect, mis-lead­er­ship of the Sikhs out­side Pan­jaab and in the home­land.  

This was in­vari­ably a David ver­sus Go­liath sit­u­a­tion, in so many ways. Rus­tic, poorly ed­u­cated, un-skilled in me­dia mat­ters nor in­ter­na­tional af­fairs; the small num­bered Sikhs in Pan­jaab were brave and hardy but not in­tel­lec­tu­ally ready nor phys­i­cally equipped for an in­ter­na­tional level cam­paign to ex­pose the In­dian state.

Added to this, was the in­ter­nal fail­ure of the Sikh masses to nur­ture and pro­duce a healthy stream of spokesper­sons and fig­ures who demon­strated in­tegrity, com­mit­ment and a de­mo­c­ra­tic ap­proach in tak­ing the ‘Khal­is­tan’ strug­gle for­ward. As time passed, many of the self-claimed Khal­is­tan lead­ers soon emerged as ra­bid, in­co­her­ent, rab­ble-rous­ing at­ten­tion seek­ers; with no in­ter­na­tional me­dia ap­peal and def­i­nitely with no ac­tual strat­egy or will to take the Khal­is­tan case for­ward con­struc­tively and per­sua­sively. They lacked both the lan­guage skills and the per­sona, to speak with au­thor­ity and per­sua­sion to a global au­di­ence; cou­pled with a lack of in­tegrity, hon­esty and sin­cere pas­sion to drive the move­ment to new heights. Dis­tinct in­di­vid­ual ex­cep­tions are pre­sent but they do not pre­vail. 

Over the course of the last 34-years, it has be­come abun­dantly self-ev­i­dent, that this breed and stream of ‘Khal­is­tan’ lead­ers, all share the same in­ep­ti­tudes in re­gards to me­dia and pub­lic en­gage­ment skills, and, even more se­ri­ously lack the ac­count­abil­ity, trans­parency and hon­esty in their wheel­ings and deal­ings to the Sikh peo­ple. For many of these bungling, in­ept and se­ri­ously ques­tion­able in­di­vid­u­als, the Khal­is­tan cause was a means to per­sonal fame and for­tune.

The Khal­is­tan move­ment in the UK has been dom­i­nated here and in many other coun­tries by loud, rab­ble-rous­ing cliques. Ap­ply­ing their im­pulses of greed, con­nivance and lack of in­tegrity. The oth­er­wise gen­uine, peo­ples move­ment has been hi­jacked and dom­i­nated by a core mass of loud, in­co­her­ent, bois­ter­ous in­di­vid­u­als and their sur­round­ing mobs.

This is not dis­sim­i­lar to move­ments around the world, which dis­play the same hu­man flaws.  

In­deed, many of the in­ad­e­quate fea­tures of the sup­posed ‘Khal­is­tan’ lead­er­ship, are flaws which are rife and ram­pant across the en­tire Sikh world and Sikh or­gan­i­sa­tions, gen­er­ally -Gur­d­wara com­mit­tees and non-Gur­d­wara or­gan­i­sa­tions; from Am­rit­sar to the UK to USA to Canada and more. Very sadly, when you stand back and ob­serve, you can see that the en­tire Sikh world is feed­ing from the same dirty pond.

The vis­i­ble, front-line Khal­is­tan move­ment akin to Sikhs and Sikh or­gan­i­sa­tions, dis­plays a  dis­tinct ab­sence of women lead­ers, Dalit fig­ures, young British-born Sikhs. The en­tire Khal­is­tan lead­er­ship, par­tic­u­larly the UK-based lead­er­ship is hoarded and dom­i­nated by fig­ures, whose at­ti­tude and rab­ble-rous­ing be­hav­iour makes in­ter­ac­tion with dis­senters as well as co-free­dom seek­ers from other mi­nor­ity groups and na­tion­al­i­ties al­most im­pos­si­ble. The whole mech­a­nism, method­ol­ogy and means adopted by this sec­tion makes mean­ing­ful in­ter­ac­tion well-nigh im­pos­si­ble.

Fur­ther, de­spite a dev­as­tat­ing sit­u­a­tion on the so­cial, re­li­gious and po­lit­i­cal plain, never have these lead­ers at all lev­els -from the “big lead­ers” to the Gur­d­wara lead­er­ship sought to en­gage crit­i­cal ques­tions of women equal­ity, caste dis­crim­i­na­tion and en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues. How would these is­sues be ad­dressed in a Khal­is­tan state?

For ex­am­ple, Sikh groups in the UK, have vig­or­ously op­posed the en­act­ment of anti-caste leg­is­la­tion in the UK. So it would fol­low, that in their en­vis­aged Khal­is­tan, they would not have anti-caste leg­is­la­tion ei­ther.  This re­veals a lot about the dis­con­nect be­tween Sikh lead­ers and ac­tual Sikh ethics, and the Gu­rus vi­sion of a free so­ci­ety for Pan­jaabis and be­yond. It, also, raises pow­er­ful, search­ing ques­tions, about ex­actly whose side they are on. The In­dian-Hindu es­tab­lish­ment vig­or­ously op­poses the UK anti-caste leg­is­la­tion too; seek­ing to pro­tect and pre­serve the me­dieval In­dian-Hindu way of life.  

The Khal­is­tan lead­ers have made no at­tempt to en­gage non-Sikh Pan­jaabis into an all in­clu­sive Pan­jaabi fo­cussed free­dom move­ment.  In Pun­jab too, the ap­proach is Sikh-cen­tric and not fully in­clu­sive, though re­as­sur­ingly, presently some ground­work is be­ing done to bridge the gap be­tween the Sikhs and the Dal­its at the so­cial and re­li­gious lev­els. It will be in­ter­est­ing to see how this trans­lates at the po­lit­i­cal level.

Un­for­tu­nately, there is sim­ply no de­sire by the pre­sent main­stream Khal­is­tan lead­er­ship to en­gage these crit­i­cal is­sues on which the fu­ture of Pan­jaab de­pends. This gross neg­li­gence is clearly not ac­ci­den­tal. It is quite de­lib­er­ate.

Clearly, this and and the new Khal­is­tan lead­er­ship, if and when it emerges will have to change the id­iom, form a new nar­ra­tive which is in­clu­sive of the women, the Dal­its, the non-Jats, not just Sikhs but friends of Sikhs too.  

Cur­rently, from the an­tics, fan­fare, photo-fame and self-glo­ri­fi­ca­tion, I doubt the au­then­tic­ity of the pro-free­dom lead­er­ship. They come up as a closed, in­su­lar mass, with zero solid and spe­cific ef­forts over the last 34 years to learn and move for­ward.

No­tably, in­side Pan­jaab, fol­low­ing the heroic phase of armed-re­sis­tance which swiftly fol­lowed from around 1985 to 1995; with mul­ti­ple young Pan­jaabis ris­ing up and join­ing the ranks of a head-on armed op­po­si­tion, amount­ing to full-scale re­bel­lion to the bru­tal might of the In­dian state; was made up of pretty gen­uine and com­mit­ted in­di­vid­u­als. Un­like the de­vi­ous politi­cians in Pan­jaab pre-1984 and post 1984 who have made Pan­jaab a po­lit­i­cal toy and play­ground for their dirty power grab and “con­tin­u­a­tion of rais­ing the voice” with­out do­ing much more.  

This heroic ‘ju­jha­roo‘ phase, was clearly crushed by the In­dian state through sheer head-on bru­tal ter­ror of the Pan­jaab’s civil­ian pop­u­la­tion, the mur­der of fam­i­lies of these ju­jha­roos –young com­mit­ted fight­ers and rebels, the grue­some tor­ture used on these re­sis­tance fight­ers and the mass an­ni­hi­la­tion of or­di­nary civil­ians through ‘fake en­coun­ters’ -in­ter­na­tion­ally known as en­forced dis­ap­pear­ances.

Both Jar­nail Singh Bhin­dran­wale as the shin­ing fig­ure-head who un­com­pro­mis­ingly chal­lenged and con­fronted the In­dian state and pow­er­fully laid down his life in an enor­mously pro­found act of re­sis­tance in June 1984, man to man with his com­rades; and, in turn, these young ju­jha­roos from 1985 to 1995; have all given their en­tire en­ergy and lives to the good cause of a free, in­de­pen­dent state­hood for Pan­jaab – united, in­clu­sive and equal. 

Trag­i­cally, like with so many global free­dom strug­gles, their ef­forts and those of the many be­fore them (Pan­jaabi Suba Mor­cha in 1960s); were to be­come stalled, mud­dled and de­spoiled by the an­tics and cor­rup­tion of var­i­ous fig­ures like Badal who con­tin­ued to sur­vive through­out these gru­elling years, to re-emerge in po­si­tion of power and self-glory and po­lit­i­cal and fi­nan­cial for­tune mak­ing. 

Dis­hon­esty, cor­rup­tion and lack of prin­ci­ple is wide­spread across the Sikh pop­u­la­tion, both at lead­er­ship level and at the grass­root mass level.  There is a dis­tinct lack of tol­er­ance of di­verse opin­ions and views, with an over­whelm­ing de­sire by a mi­nor­ity of in­di­vid­u­als who seek to dom­i­nate and con­trol Sikh af­fairs; who are ea­ger to cen­sure and con­demn free ex­pres­sion of opin­ions and op­posed to free de­bate. 

The en­tire run­ning of Sikh in­sti­tu­tions from Am­rit­sar to the UK to Canada to the USA is char­ac­terised by mob-like groups, who fight and con­flict for power and seek to use var­i­ous un­der­hand meth­ods to achieve this, from vi­o­lent threats to ma­nip­u­la­tion of doc­u­ments to out­right fal­si­fi­ca­tions. For ex­am­ple, nu­mer­ous gur­d­waras in the UK have been the sub­ject of in­ter­ven­tions and in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the Char­ity Com­mis­sion, the UK watch­dog on char­ity groups. This re­veals the above cul­ture of mis­gov­er­nance, fraud and cor­rup­tion which has be­come a cen­tral, per­va­sive fea­ture of our com­mu­nity. To be clean, hon­est and with some in­tegrity; is sim­ply not func­tional. 

Mean­while, the or­di­nary Sikh-Pan­jaabi mass, is largely in­fected by sim­i­lar char­ac­ter­is­tics and fail­ures, based around male dom­i­nance, ho­n­our dri­ven no­tions of fam­ily and com­mu­nity life, caste dis­crim­i­na­tion and a dis­tinct lack of com­mu­nity democ­racy in lis­ten­ing, shar­ing and al­low­ing di­ver­sity of thought and opin­ions. Abuse and op­pres­sion on fe­males, re­mains a live, pro­fuse is­sue; along­side con­tin­u­ing me­dieval caste dis­crim­i­na­tion.

Gur­d­waras are rou­tinely mis-gov­erned, with mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of monies, lack of open and trans­par­ent process, breaches of health and safety safe­guards and even im­mi­gra­tion fraud. There is no de­mo­c­ra­tic free speech ei­ther. 

Al­to­gether, this re­veals a com­mu­nity in in­ter­nal cri­sis. It re­veals a peo­ple un­equipped for the re­spon­si­bil­ity of self-gov­er­nance, state­hood and the main­te­nance and de­vel­op­ment of such a state-so­ci­ety. Un­der these above con­di­tions Pan­jaab and its peo­ple, its land, its lan­guage, its cul­ture and de­vel­op­ment, would be un­der no bet­ter a sit­u­a­tion than what it al­ready is with the cur­rent In­dian con­trol and con­di­tions. Nei­ther of these are ac­cept­able. 

This war­rants a se­ri­ous and deep look at our­selves, and a re­ju­ve­na­tion and em­bed­ding of these crit­i­cal hu­man val­ues demon­strated by the Ten Gu­rus – whose ethics and vi­sion we have en­tirely be­trayed and dis­con­nected from.

There can be no Khal­is­tan, In­de­pen­dent Pan­jaab, un­til this deep, com­pre­hen­sive change hap­pens. An­nual demos, ‘Khal­is­tan zind­abad!’, posters, fly­ers, rous­ing speeches; are no sub­sti­tute for this ground-up change. The afore­men­tioned are sim­ply a smoke-screen to bid time, at the most to let the op­po­si­tion know that you are alive and kick­ing.   

We have a lot of change to make within. From that change, will au­to­mat­i­cally flower state­hood. The ‘Khal­is­tan Zind­abad’ el­e­ments have played their role more. It is time to move on.

It is time to put be­hind us the cor­rup­tion, du­plic­ity and chi­canery which are char­ac­ter­is­tics of In­dian po­lit­i­cal ethos. We need to re­place this with char­ac­ter­is­tics of trust, tol­er­ance, open-mind­ed­ness, re­spect for dis­sent and most of all con­tin­u­ous learn­ing. The col­lec­tive Pan­jaabi peo­ple need to fo­cus heav­ily as a pri­or­ity on : 

-re­mov­ing caste dis­crim­i­na­tion;
-re­mov­ing op­pres­sion of women;
-re­ju­ve­na­tion of re­li­gio-po­lit­i­cal ethos in Pan­jaab and else­where through ground­work;
-ed­u­cat­ing the com­mu­nity to reach higher lev­els of so­cial and po­lit­i­cal ex­cel­lence;
-pro­mot­ing in­ter­nal democ­racy through open, chal­leng­ing opin­ions; and
mak­ing their Gur­d­waras and or­gan­i­sa­tions in­clu­sive of British born Sikhs, women and dal­its.

Clearly, there is a lot of work to do.

The Gu­rus rep­re­sented the most sem­i­nal and pow­er­ful force in Pan­jaabi his­tory and de­vel­op­ment. They brought to the af­flicted and bro­ken Pan­jaabis, a lib­er­at­ing vi­sion and lifestyle in­te­grated with in­dige­nous Pan­jaabi life;  de­signed to lift the in­di­vid­ual and col­lec­tive Pan­jaabi into an equal, de­mo­c­ra­tic and pos­i­tive com­mu­nity. And, to be an ex­am­ple to other com­mu­ni­ties and na­tions. Pow­er­ful ex­am­ples of that change were seen in the so­cial and eco­nomic equal­i­sa­tion rep­re­sented in the lan­gar sys­tem, in the shar­ing of am­rit, in the call for Sar­bat da Bhala, in the col­lec­tive strug­gle against op­pres­sive state power and the es­tab­lish­ment of a free, in­de­pen­dent Pan­jaab state for all Pan­jaabis.

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The self-rule pe­riod of Baba Banda Singh Ba­hadur, Baba Jassa Singh Ahluwalia and Ma­haraja Ran­jit Singh were glit­ter­ing ex­am­ples of the in­clu­sive ap­proach of Sikhism im­ple­mented dur­ing their times.

Let us take in­spi­ra­tion from the same sem­i­nal move­ment and re-in­vig­o­rate our peo­ple and na­tion.