1984: A Sikh family in front of their dwelling after the rampage. A photo grab from Sikh Genocide Project: Third Sikh Holocaust, Part 3
By Gurnam Singh | Opinion |
The World Holocaust Memorial Day, which is commemorated every year on 27th January, is the day for us all to remember the millions of people murdered in the Holocaust, under Nazi Persecution in the first half of the 20th Century, as well as those who have suffered in genocides which followed. “Holocaust” comes from a Greek word meaning “burnt offering.” The term was first used to describe the massacres of Armenians in the 1890s. It was used again in the 1940s to describe the mass destruction of European Jewish communities by the Nazis.
Between 1941 and 1945, an estimated six million Jewish men, women and children were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators. Their attempt to murder all the Jews in Europe, shook the foundations of the world. The Nazis targeted anyone they believed threatened their ideal of a ‘pure Aryan race’, including Roma people, disabled people, gay people, political opponents and others who were deemed to be of inferiors racial stock. This ‘political project was based on ‘scientific racism’ and the ‘science of eugenics’ which basically argued that humanity constituted of different races, with the white European Anglo Saxon race being the most advanced. Eugenics was based both on the view that human mixing had led to defective gene pools and that selective breeding, segregation, sterilization and ‘ethnic cleansing’ was the only solution, with genocide being the final solution.
So, whilst each genocide has its own dynamics, spurious ideas associated with race/ethnicity/nation and religion have always loomed large. Alongside the Nazi Holocaust, to date the UN has officially recognised 4 other genocides: From 1975 to 1979, the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, imposed an extremist programme to reconstruct Cambodia. Millions of people died through starvation, disease and exhaustion, and thousands were executed; In a violent outpouring in 1994, approximately one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were murdered in just 100 days in the Genocide in Rwanda; In July 1995, against the backdrop of an ongoing civil war, Bosnian Serb forces murdered around 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica; And in 2003 a civil war began in the region of Darfur. Arab militia, known as the Janjaweed attacked black African people, destroying entire villages, murdering civilians and displacing many more.
We should definitely never forget these terrible crimes against humanity, but we also need to note that these are not the only genocides in human history. Sadly, betraying the positive view we seek to cultivate for the human race, as a race of beings capable of developing immense intelligence, compassion and love, there is dark side to human nature that has resulted in the destruction of peoples and places.
A longer historical view of genocide reveals arguably even greater horrors than those references above that too place in the Post World War 2 period. Take for example the West African Slave Trade. In his book “The Slave Ship: A Human History,” American historian Marcus Rediker recounts the history of the modern slave ship, from the moment the first captives boarded it on the coast of Africa – 12.4 million souls from the 15th to the 19th century – until the last of them disembarked on the shores of the New World. No fewer than 1.8 million of them died during the journey; their bodies were thrown to the sharks that trailed the ships across the sea. The 10.6 million who made it to the other side became slaves on the plantations of the American South or in the Caribbean.
And if we focus on the larger European Imperial project that began with the Genoise ‘explorer’ Christopher Columbus sailing to the Caribbean in 1492, we saw a period of 400 years of the destruction of civilisations, indigenous peoples the planet over.
Some argue that, though human history is indeed stained will all kinds of oppressions, to avoid losing its meaning, it is important to maintain a precise definition of genocide. In terms of international law, Genocide was first recognised as a in 1946 by the United Nations General Assembly and later codified It was codified as an independent crime in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
The convention offers a detailed definition but the main element is that, genocide refers to acts committed, usually by some form of state sanction, with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: Killing members of the group; Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group.
The convention goes onto to explain that Genocide may be a result in the context of armed conflicts, national or international, or in ‘peaceful situations’, but in all instances it contains two key elements:
- Psychological element – intent to destroy whole or part of a distinct ethnic, national or religious group.
- Physical element – actual, deliberate and systematic destruction of peoples, their lives and livelihoods.
Turning to the Sikh perspective on Genocide, one can come at this from two perspectives. Once can look at it from a theological/philosophical perspective in relation to Sikh teachings on Genocide and from the lived history/experience of Sikhs being the victims of genocide, in our relatively short history of some 550 years. Let me offer some brief insights into these two aspects:
First what is Sikh teaching on Genocide? The term that we use in Panjabi to refer to Genocide is ਨਸਲਕੁਸ਼ੀ or ‘nasalkushi’ meaning the extermination of a ‘race’. Another term that is often used is ਘੱਲੂਘਾਰਾ
Ghalughara, which which means massacre on very high level. I guess one of the key distinctions between the two is that ‘nasalkushi’ may take place over an extended time phase deploying a variety of sophisticated and perhaps covert strategies, ‘ghalughara’ is often done in a short intensive period in the open, often involving some kind of war situation involving asymmetric power; that is where normally the aggressor is greatly more powerful that the victim.
Whether it is racial genocide or military conquest, both result in horrific and inhumane treatment of people based simply on some imaginary conceptions of the other as Dangerous, evil, immoral, property but in all instances less than human. Many holocaust scholars have noted the link between dehumanisation and genocide, both as a justification for it and in the treatment of the victims.
If we turn to Sikh teachings we can find many philosophical and historical observations that challenge and condemn all forms of discrimination, racism, castism, gender based violence, and all forms imperialism, up to and including genocide. For example Guru Nanak in Guru Granth Sahib chronicles the march of the Persian Mogul imperialist Babur who occupied and colonised the Indian Subcontinent. In Asa Ragg, Guru Granth Sahib p360 Nanak observes:
ਖੁਰਾਸਾਨ ਖਸਮਾਨਾ ਕੀਆ ਹਿੰਦੁਸਤਾਨੁ ਡਰਾਇਆ ॥ ਆਪੈ ਦੋਸੁ ਨ ਦੇਈ ਕਰਤਾ ਜਮੁ ਕਰਿ ਮੁਗਲੁ ਚੜਾਇਆ ॥
Khuraasaan Khasamaanaa Keeaa Hindhusathaan Ddaraaeiaa || Aapai Dhos N Dhaeee Karathaa Jam Kar Mugal Charraaeiaa ||
Having attacked Khuraasaan, Baabar terrified Hindustan. The Creator Himself does not take the blame, but has sent the Mugal as the messenger of death.
ਏਤੀ ਮਾਰ ਪਈ ਕਰਲਾਣੇ ਤੈਂ ਕੀ ਦਰਦੁ ਨ ਆਇਆ ॥੧॥
Eaethee Maar Pee Karalaanae Thain Kee Dharadh N Aaeiaa ||1||
There was so much slaughter that the people screamed. Didn’t You feel compassion, Lord? ||1||
ਕਰਤਾ ਤੂੰ ਸਭਨਾ ਕਾ ਸੋਈ ॥ ਜੇ ਸਕਤਾ ਸਕਤੇ ਕਉ ਮਾਰੇ ਤਾ ਮਨਿ ਰੋਸੁ ਨ ਹੋਈ ॥੧॥ ਰਹਾਉ ॥
Karathaa Thoon Sabhanaa Kaa Soee || Jae Sakathaa Sakathae Ko Maarae Thaa Man Ros N Hoee ||1|| Rehaao ||
O Creator Lord, You are the Master of all. If some powerful man strikes out against another man, then no one feels any grief in their mind. ||1||
ਸਕਤਾ ਸੀਹੁ ਮਾਰੇ ਪੈ ਵਗੈ ਖਸਮੈ ਸਾ ਪੁਰਸਾਈ ॥
Sakathaa Seehu Maarae Pai Vagai Khasamai Saa Purasaaee || [SGGS, 360]
But if a powerful tiger attacks a flock of sheep and kills them, then its master must answer for it. This priceless country has been laid waste and defiled by dogs, and no one pays any attention to the dead. [SGGS, 360, English translation by Dr Sant Singh Khalsa]
If we fast forward to the 10th Guru of the Sikhs, Guru Gobind Singh ji, who fought many battles against marauding Hill Chiefs, as well as losing his whole family at the hands of the Modul Emperor Aurangzeb who deployed terror and genocide as a strategy for maintain his rule, in many of his writings condemns the ideologies and practices of genocide, of which racism, caste and religious bigotry was central.
If we briefly turn to lives experience of Sikhs then I think without bias I can safely say it has been a history of survival, but physical and cultural. If you type the words Sikh Holocaust or Sikh Genocide, in into Google, in both instances you get over 2 million hits.
Sikh Holocaust tends to refer to two specific events in the 18th Century: Sikh holocaust of 1746 or Chhōtā Ghallūghārā where 10,000 Sikhs were massacred, by invading Pashtun people of Afghanistan’s Durrani Empire during the waning years of the Mughal Empire; Sikh holocaust of 1762 or Vaddā Ghallūghārā where some 30,000 Sikhs were massacred, up to one-third or half the Sikh population by Afghani Durrani Forces.
The term Sikh Genocide refers specifically to the events of 1984, sometimes refers to as the 3rd Sikh Holocaust. Though much has been written about this terrible crime, tragically, there has been no or little ‘offical’ recognition of this event. Consistently described by the Indian media and state as ‘dhange’ or ‘communal riots’, is, as Pav Singh in his brilliant expose of this modern day terrible crime against humanity, ‘India’s Guilty Secret’.
As he notes, “1984 sets a terrible precedent of how those with power can and have sought to violently suppress minorities with impunity. The killings of Gujarati Muslims in 2002, and numerous incidents since, have been made that much more possible by the outrageous genocidal massacres of 1984, which have served as a sickening blood stained blueprint for state directed mass killings… [in India] In July 2015 , world leaders came to the Bosnian town of Srebrenica to recognise the genocide, 20 years on, of 8000 Muslims by Bosnian Serb forces. In 1984, thousands had been killed, raped, traumatised and displaced from their homes. The lives of the survivors, their children and of the generations to come have been irrevocably impacted. It is time for India and the world to take a similar stand. To this day more than 99% of the killers remain free and the Congress leaders who instigated the genocide massacre remain mostly unpunished. We look forward to the day that 1984 is acknowledged by the same world community, and India demonstrates the courage to uphold the rights and dignities of his own people above those of its leaders and their henchmen”.
The two critical arguments here. If the Sikh Genocide goes unrecognised and unpunished, it is not only dangerous for Sikhs, but for all Indians who value human life, democracy and justice. Why? Because it provides the state, or rather those who control the instruments of the state, with a tried and trusted method for eliminating any group of people they feel present some kind of obstacle to their policies. Second, if the international community, which includes nations and the UN, are incapable of calling out a genocide when it happens, then tragically humanity will continue to be cursed with many more genocides to come.
Gurnam Singh is an academic activist dedicated to human rights, liberty, equality, social and environmental justice. He is an Associate Professor of Sociology at University of Warwick, UK. He can be contacted at Gurnam.singh.1@warwick.ac.uk
* This is the opinion of the writer and does not necessarily represent the views of Asia Samachar.
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