Even if one wants to give the Khalistan Movement a benefit of doubt, one will find no chance even to do that - all it gifted Punjab was horror and misery all the while proofing Pakistan from similar demands. A look into any Khalistani literature will reveal only lies, hypocrisy and victimhood.
On 7 June 1995, Philip Crane read out a statement by a certain Gurmit Singh Aulakh, who calls himself the President of Council of Khalistan. Crane introduces the statement in a tone that Khalistan is an independent country under occupation of India. It is pertinent to note that though America came out of that attitude, the same philosophy is peddled in certain quarters even today.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to bring to the attention of my colleagues the terrible conditions that the people of Khalistan must endure on a daily basis. June 3-6 marks the 11th anniversary of the Golden Temple Massacre, where the Indian army massacred thousands of Sikhs. The situation has not improved, and the Indian police routinely use torture, murder, and rape to oppress the Sikh people. This religious intolerance and ethnic warfare amounts to genocide and must stop.
We need only look at the former Soviet Union to understand why a society based on ethnic repression cannot work. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the republics were finally able to break free and exist in peaceful democratic states. It has been predicted that India will suffer the same fate and it is our duty to support and encourage the people of the Sikh Nation.
It’s not worth quoting Aulakh. It’s something between a whine and a harangue. But, certain points need to be touched upon.
As you know, the Sikh Nation celebrated its 296th birthday this past Vaisakhi Day. We all know about the oppression the Sikh Nation has suffered under India’s tyrannical occupation of our homeland, Khalistan.
It is interesting to note that Aulakh opens his statement by declaring the start of Khalistan as the start of Khalsa Raj but nowhere does he mention that Raj Khalsa ruled Pakistan mostly and not India, except for Jammu and Kashmir excluding Ladakh-Balawarstan. In fact, a look at the current state of Sikh Gurudwaras in Pakistan is more than enough for one to seethe in anger.
On the other hand, this makes sense because all the Muslim attacks on the Golden Temple by Ahmed Shah Abdali and other rulers in their religious zeal happened before Ranjit Singh created the Raj Khalsa.
As I said, harangue.
At least 120,000 Sikhs have been murdered in India since 1984. Tens of thousands of Sikhs remain in prison. In many rural areas, where the killings are most frequent, whole villages are emptied of their most able bodied young men.
The bloody massacre we commemorate today helped to clarify for the Sikh Nation its true place in Hindustan’s sham “democracy.” The oppression and bloodshed inflicted on the Sikh Nation by the brutal Indian tyrants make it crystal clear that there is no place for Sikhs in India. For ourselves and for out children, we must liberate Khalistan. Only a free and independent Khalistan will insure that the Sikh Nation can live in peace, prosperity, and freedom.
At this point, it begs one to notice what KPS Gill said over the suicide of SSP AS Sandhu.
All men are heroes in a time of peace. But those who are heading the self-righteous witch hunt against the officers and men of Punjab police today should ask themselves where they were hiding for 10 years when terrorists roamed free, unchallenged by any but the Punjab police and their comrades in uniform from other services – and a handful of courageous farmers who would not succumb to terror? For 10 years the judiciary remained in a state of unmitigated paralysis in Punjab. Where was their commitment to justice then? For 10 years, the press published on the terrorists’ diktat- with only a single exception that all of you know of. That is a long vacation for the ‘truth’.
Is it a case of “One Man’s Freedom Fighter is Another Man’s Terrorist”? Sadly, it doesn’t seem to be so, especially for those who oppose their ideology and for those who have grown up daughters who didn’t want their daughters to end up as sex toys. Quotes an India Today Article,
In a number of villages in the state, stories of abduction, molestation, rape and forced marriage by terrorists are finally being heard now that people are becoming less afraid of the ‘boys’, as the terrorists are referred to.
…
In May 1986, Geja and a group of terrorists descended on her house in Talwandi village and threatened her father, Puran Singh, with death if he didn’t show up at the Golden Temple the next morning with his daughter. Puran Singh did as he was told.’ ‘Fear of the gun silenced us,” recollects Bhupinder Kaur. The next morning, she was married to Geja in the presence of other terrorists.
In two years’ time, she had became the mother of two children. Completely cut off from her family, she was moved from hideout to hideout in these two years. In February 1988, Geja was killed in an encounter, after which her life became an endless cycle of police interrogations and even led to a spell in jail.
After her release, Bhupinder Kaur was abducted in April 1990 by another KLF terrorist, Sukhdev Singh, also from Makhowal, and married off, again at gun-point. She was kept in a rented house in Amritsar for a year.
Four months ago, Sukhdev Singh was killed in an encounter. Widowed for the second time in five years and with a baby girl in addition to her other two children, Bhupinder Kaur is now back with her parents in a small mud-plastered house in Gurdaspur district’s Talwandi village close to the Indo-Pakistan border.
…
For the terrorists, the marriages are a convenient cover and protection against police scrutiny. The facade of a normal life also provides them with a certain moral legitimacy in the eyes of the Sikh community…The abductions and forced marriages serve the dual purpose of satisfying the terrorists’ sexual and social needs, but for the victims these marriages are the deepest humiliation they can imagine.
…
Eighteen-year-old Jasbir Kaur is one victim who is different. She is among the few who have decided to fight back. “The only aim in my life now is to take revenge on the wreckers of my honour.”
The “wreckers of her honour” being the dozen-odd BTFK members led by Balwinder Singh who stormed into her house in Fatehgarh Jattan village in January last year and raped her. Apparently, Balwinder Singh had been nursing a grudge against her family for tipping off the police about him three years ago.
She was so mentally devastated by what happened that she began suffering fits of hysteria, which intensified enormously when the terrorists responsible for the attack began to visit her house regularly for sex. Her father, a poor farmer, begged them to stop, but they threatened to wipe out his family.
She dealt with her predicament by taking refuge with the KLF. Unfortunately, even this boomeranged. Forced by its leader Sangat Singh to marry his nephew, Jasbir was kept in a farmhouse in Haryana where she was repeatedly raped by other gang members.
Although she managed to escape once, she was recaptured by Sangat Singh and shunted like a carcass from one hideout to another over a period of four months.
At this point, Aulakh talks about Hazratbal siege without even opening his mouth over what led to the siege, which in fact is nothing different than what happened in Punjab – terrorist attacks to cow the people and a refuge in an extremely sacred place armed to the teeth forcing the government to act.
When Sikhs read about India’s recent destruction of one of Kashmir’s most sacred mosques, we felt a familiar pain remembering how we felt when thousands of our Sikh brethren were slaughtered in the Golden Temple massacre.
In both the cases, we know of cases of genocide level targeting of the minorities, utter lawlessness on the roads and final showdown in a sacred place. It is a misconception that Sikhs are a minority – in India, they may be a minority, but in Punjab where the Khalistani terrorists perpetrated many excesses, they aren’t. For example, in Taran Taran where Khalistanis held the maximum power has 93% Sikh population today.
And it’s the same gameplan in both the areas – religious rhetoric, demonization of minority, a cowed majority and execution of those who didn’t toe the line. A report on Khalistani Terror notes,
A few brave voices did speak up, both within the Golden Temple and from many of the Gurudwaras across the state. Among the most powerful of these voices was the venerable Giani Partap Singh, an old man of eighty by that time, one of the most revered spiritual leaders and a former Jathedar of the Akal Takht, who had openly attacked Bhindranwale for stocking arms and ammunition in the Akal Takht and described his occupation of the shrine as an act of sacrilege. He was shot dead at his home in Tahli Chowk. Other voices were raised; and swiftly silenced. They included Niranjan Singh, the Granthi of Gurudwara Toot Sahib; Granthi Surat Singh of Majauli; and Granthi Jarnail Singh of Valtoha. All those who spoke against Bhindranwale were his enemies; and all his enemies were enemies of the Faith. The Sikh religious leadership heard and understood the message; and they succumbed to their fear.
The violence rose to a crescendo in the months preceding Operation Bluestar; and the Golden Temple was defiled by horrors still unimagined. A great arsenal had been built up within the Akal Takht; for months, trucks engaged for kar seva, supposedly bringing in supplies for the daily langar, had been smuggling in guns and ammunition.
Again, Aulakh goes for open lies here. In fact, it is attested that the first bullet was fired from inside the temple and not by the Indian Army. If the Temple is surprised, one needs to explain how it was armed to the teeth and held an unimaginable quantity of weapons. In fact, one can argue here that, when they sensed that government is going to crackdown on Khalistan, they deliberately chose the Golden Temple and take it down with them – it’s not their deaths which would invoke passion but the destruction of the holiest place of Sikhism will. That again explains at the very less death count inside the Golden Temple and peaceful surrender of all the other places. One can only estimate how prepared they were when we come to know it took 72 long hours for crack troops of a seasoned army to flush the place of terrorists.
As you all know, today marks the anniversary of that act of wanton desecration. From June 3 through 6, 1984, 15,000 troops of the Indian army launched a surprise military attack on the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the holiest shrine of the Sikh people. Simultaneously, they attacked 38 other Sikh temples throughout Punjab, Khalistan. These attacks, timed on a holy day for the Sikh nation, left 20,000 Sikhs dead. Many innocent, unarmed men, women and children, who had come only to pray on the anniversary of the martyrdom of Guru Arjan Dev Ji, were gunned down in the very temples in which they sought peace and solace.
Lies again!! 493 is the official count including 200 terrorists inside the Temple Complex. One may wonder how they arrived at a scale factor of 40 just for Operation Bluestar. Scale factor two or three makes sense, but 40?
Bodies were piled together and shipped to nearby Gobindgarh fort, where they were drenched in kerosene and burned. The stench of smoldering bodies permeated in the area for two weeks. Sant Bhindranwale and 20,000 other Sikhs lost their lives.
Aulakh says over the desecration,
The damage to the Temple complex was extensive. We cannot forget how the Akal Takht, the throne of timeless God, was severely damaged and the Temple’s library building was destroyed.
In the 400-year history of the Golden Temple, no ruler had done the kind of damage the Indian Government meted out in the 72-hour massacre. The Guru Granth Sahib, the holy book of the Sikh religion, had bullet holes in it. This is Indian religious tolerance.
I want to put a counter question here. Did the Golden Temple hold sanctity it is supposed to hold when Bhindrawale and his men did everything to desecrate it? A long read, but the Report on Khalistani Terror describes Aulakh’s hypocrisy perfectly.
No such compunctions constrained the ‘warriors’ for ‘Khalistan’. To them, the Golden Temple, like so many other Gurudwaras all over Punjab, was just a safe haven from where they could conduct their criminal activities with impunity, since the police would not pursue them there for fear of hurting the religious sentiments of the larger community. And if, after the Atwal murder, the government did contemplate the possibility of entering the Guru Nanak Niwas, a building that lay outside the actual bounds of the Golden Temple, across a public road, Akali Dal leaders thwarted them at the outset, issuing a fervent appeal to Sikhs all over the world to ‘resist entry of the police’ into the hostel complex.
This unholy covenant was not disturbed even by the selective and cold blooded slaughter of Hindus travelling in a Punjab Roadways bus that was hijacked by the militants on its way to Moga in November 1983. If anything, this incident produced a major ‘victory’ for the Akali-terrorist combine, since it provoked the dismissal of the Darbara Singh Government. Punjab was brought under President’s rule, but the chaos, instead of ending, deepened.
But all was not well in the fraternity of convenience within the Golden Temple. Internal politics within the Akali Dal, and the erosion of its authority in the face of Bhindranwale’s growing terror, created a widening rift between some of its leaders and between the extremist groupings. A protective alliance emerged between the dominant Akali factions and the Akhand Kirtani Jatha-Babbar Khalsa. Tensions within the Complex grew, confrontations mounted, scuffles broke out, and the mutilated bodies in the sewers outside the Golden Temple provided an index of the increasing hostility between these various ‘soldiers’ of the ‘Faith’. It mattered little that they were all supposedly fighting for the same objectives, battling against ‘injustice’ and ‘oppression’. This was, in actual fact, an unashamed battle to ‘protect their turf’. Torture and murder, even within the confines of the Temple, were perfectly ‘legitimate’ implements of war. As the ‘disappearance’ of members of the competing forces increased, a very real danger of open combat for control came into being.
This, however, did not suit Bhindranwale’s temperament. Hit squads, torture and executions were all very well, but he had never shown much nerve for a direct engagement. Unfortunately for him, the sanctuary of Guru Nanak Niwas, though it was sufficient to protect him from the police, could not shield him from the Babbar Khalsa’s wrath. In a surprise move, the Babbar Khalsa had forcibly occupied some of the rooms previously held by his men in the Guru Nanak Niwas; instead of fighting for control, Bhindranwale abandoned the Niwas entirely, fleeing into the safety of the Akal Takht, right in the middle of the Temple Complex. Not even the Babbar Khalsa would dare to scar this, the sacred seat of the Temporal Power of God, with an attack against him. In any event, thousands of devotees who came to pray at the Golden Temple every day constituted a protective barrier between him and his enemies.
The move was not without its difficulties. The Jathedar, or High Priest, of the Akal Takht objected strongly. No Guru or Sikh religious leader had ever been allowed to live in the Akal Takht, he pointed out. Moreover, Bhindranwale’s presence in the upper floors of the building was an act of sacrilege; the Guru Granth Sahib was placed in the main hall on the ground floor, and at night the Bir from the Harmandir Sahib itself, the most sacred copy of the Guru Granth Sahib, was placed in a room in the Akal Takht. No man could be permitted to stand above the Guru Granth Sahib; but Bhindranwale and his men would be living in quarters above these places. These niceties, however, mattered little to Bhindranwale, or to those in the SGPC who had made it possible for him to move into the Akal Takht.
The Akal Takht was thus transformed into his personal ‘Court’. He held his darbars here, or on the roof of the langar across the Parikrama. Surrounded by heavily armed henchmen, he would lie, half sprawled, on a mattress, and expound on his malevolent doctrine of vengeance against all those whom he held responsible for the fictional ‘slavery’ of the Sikhs. And here he would receive petitions and intercede in disputes, dispensing a somewhat unequal ‘justice’. Those who submitted to his will, swore allegiance, acknowledged his ‘suzerainty’ to the exclusion of all other powers, and, of course, paid him their ‘tribute’, received his ‘protection’; their ‘rights’ would be upheld. The opposing party died. Hit lists were drawn up; those who sought the opportunity to ‘serve’ the ‘Sant’ were given a name and a gun. The hit squads flourished.
Despite the campaign of hatred that had been going on for close to five years by this time, however, few purely communal complaints were brought up at these darbars. Land disputes, quarrels over possession of properties, betrayals of trust, and the inevitable family vendettas that are so much a part of the Jat Sikh’s life. Of course, the occasional Sikh complained against his Hindu neighbour; such actions, however, were prompted by a purely secular greed; they had little, if anything, to do with communal passions. The ‘Brahmin’ or the ‘Bania’ were no villains here; the same motives that provoked complaints against fellow Sikhs motivated petitions for vengeance against Hindus.
Murder, of course, was not the only business transacted; though it was the fountainhead of power that created opportunities for diversification into organised extortion and protection rackets. In these operations, as in the murders he sanctioned, Bhindranwale was absolutely secular in his dealings; he accepted money from Hindu and Sikh alike; and his ‘boys’ served collection notices on businessmen, shopkeepers and industrialists from both the communities – those who failed to pay, as usual, faced the only penalty in Bhindranwale’s book – death.
Unsurprisingly, the devout were becoming an increasingly insignificant minority among the men who gathered around Bhindranwale. Criminals on the run, professional guns for hire, smugglers, as well as police and army deserters enjoyed his protection – and did his bidding.
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The violence rose to a crescendo in the months preceding Operation Bluestar; and the Golden Temple was defiled by horrors still unimagined. A great arsenal had been built up within the Akal Takht; for months, trucks engaged for kar seva, supposedly bringing in supplies for the daily langar, had been smuggling in guns and ammunition. The police never attempted to search these vehicles entering the Golden Temple, apparently on ‘instructions from above’. But when one such truck was randomly stopped and checked, a large number of sten guns and ammunition were discovered. The terrorists, it was discovered after Bluestar, had even set up a ‘grenade manufacturing’ facility, and a workshop for the fabrication of sten-guns within the Temple Complex. Meanwhile, the killing rate had risen sharply all over the state, and there were many days when the ‘death count’ rose above a dozen.
Aulakh goes on, not even uttering a single word against Pakistan, as usual.
The Sikh nation can never forget the brutal massacre and desecration that took place during those dark days. We cannot forget, and the memory reminds us that we must take back our homeland from the tyrannical Indian regime. We must liberate Khalistan from the grip of oppression, and we should do so very soon. It is our destiny. Raj Karega Khlasa! Khalistan will be free.
It is interesting to observe that not one word is uttered on the Kashmiri Pandit Exodus. And it’s a different thing altogether that Aulakh is pulling numbers from out of his hat. If a scale factor of 40 is any measure, it will not be a tough task for the authorities and fact checkers to pick the name of every person who died.
Sikhs are not the only victims. Indian “democracy” has murdered over 150,000 Christians in Nagaland since 1947, over 43,000 Muslims in Kashmir since 1988, and tens of thousands of Assamese, Manipuris, and other tribal people. According to the State Department’s 1994 report on human rights, between 1991 and 1993 the Indian regime paid over 41,000 cash bounties to police officers for killing Sikhs. Many people simply “disappear.” It is the great unknown holocaust.
One would be flummoxed at this logic. If I go to Pakistan and say, Lahore should be made the capital city of Khalistan(it’s a different matter that Gujranwala, the headquarters of Sukarchakia Misl and Lahore, the capital city of Raj Khalsa are the foremost candidates to be the capital city of Khalistan), will the government give me a Nishan-e-Pakistan or will it arrest me under the charges of sedition?
I am sure that you know what happened to Simranjit Singh Mann. On December 26, Sardar Mann made a speech calling for a peaceful, democratic, nonviolent movement to liberate Khalistan. He asked the 50,000 Sikhs in his audience to raise their hands if they agreed with him. All 50,000 did so. For this blatant act of free speech, Mann was arrested under the so-called “Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act” (TADA).
According to the government of India, all Sikhs are terrorists.
This flies on the face of logic. The Chief Minister of Punjab murdered by the Khalistanis, Beant Singh is a Sikh, India’s President in 1984, Zail Singh is a Sikh and the head of Punjab police, KPS Gill who broke the back of Khalistani terrorism is a Sikh. Or is it just Bhindrawale’s logic all over again – who is not with me is against me?
He was not bothered with the subtle points of theology; he had his list of do’s and don’ts clearly set out in bold letters. He took those passages from the sacred texts which suited his purpose and ignored or glossed over others that did not. He well understood that hate was a stronger passion than love: his list of hates was even more clearly and boldly spelt out.
And then, he betrays the philosophy of any fight against India, the one to which Pakistan and China still cling to –
India is not one nation. It is a conglomeration of many nations thrown together for administrative purposes by the British. It is the last vestige of colonialism. With 18 official languages, India is doomed to disintegrate just as the former Soviet Union did. Freedom for Khalistan and all the nations living under Indian occupation is inevitable.
Now comes his vision for Khalistan. How can one be such childish? And how can people fall for such grandiose?
An independent Khalistan will help make South Asia nuclear- free. Punjab, Khalistan, produces 73 percent of India’s wheat reserves and 48 percent of its rice reserves. As a country where it takes three days’ pay to buy a box of cereal, India will have to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty because it needs food. Once India disarms, Pakistan will have no reason not to do so as well. Khalistan will sign the NPT and a 100- year friendship treaty with the United States.
This reminds one of what Aulakh said on a different occasion where he washed off his hands, not just on Khalistani terror, but batted for other’s acts of terror as well.
Two years later we are still waiting for the Indian government to acknowledge its complicity in other such atrocities, such as the military attack on the Golden Temple, Sikhism?s most sacred shrine and the center and seat of Sikhism, which we commemorate this week, as well as the attack on an Air India airliner that killed 329 innocent people, the Gujarat massacre, the murders of priests and rapes of nuns, among many other incidents.
There is also evidence suggesting Indian government involvement in the bombing of the parliament building in New Delhi a few years ago. Among other things, no officials were killed. The only victims were low-caste people.
A few words on Aulakh himself, which explains the hollowness on the claims of Khalistan movement. He left India in 1965 for good to UK and later on, he moved to USA. The questions for his kind are two –
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