Insightful newsletter of Drishtikone: Issue #170 - Dark November 36 Years Ago
(Photo by Dan Farrell on Unsplash)
“The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it.” ― Thich Nhat Hanh, At Home in the World: Stories and Essential Teachings from a Monk's Life
Betrayal is a big force. One day I felt that my own current polity had betrayed us all. If the current was so full of crap, what about my history. As one started digging into the past, one found haloes of saints tumbling and light of those who had been demonized shining through.
We had been lied to.
The trigger for that realization for me was the narrative of the Indian elite on the evens of this week 36 years back. Those dark and dingy winter days.
Let us show gather our grit and walk through those days.
those four days of November
The start of November always brings memories of those sad days in 1984.
“Hindu-Sikh riots,” said one journalist in his writing sometime in 2004.
And, it made me sit up.
I was there in Delhi in 1984 when the Sikhs were massacred. On the night of October 31st, as the news of targeting Sikhs started after Indira Gandhi’s assassination, our neighbors left their valuables in our home and left for a safe place.
People were calling their friends about how things were.
When the mobs came with madness in their minds, the able-bodied men and boys above 15 years, the writer included, were standing outside the street to stop them from entering. They didn’t. Many did on other streets.
That day no Hindu went to kill a Sikh.
That day Congress and their goons went to kill the Sikhs.
It was not a riot between two groups.
It was a massacre of one community, Sikhs, by a political party, the Indian National Congress.
That was the time in 2004 that I started to think of writing about current events in my own way. My writing was amateur, expression childish, and facts shaky.
All of them were beaten up in the many debates I had with people far more educated and knowledgeable than me. But their knowledge was the product of ideological sabotage. That I knew.
So, I started to think that if what happened in front of my eyes had been so shamelessly distorted, what would have happened to our past and its history?
That was the start of Drishtikone. Most of the writings of the first year were so childish that it was deleted from the blog. It still needs a massive cleaning effort.
the bloody week of November 1984
Groups of people with weapons and arms went from one house to another, from one shop to another. If they found any Sikhs they would pull them out. Men, kids, and women – young and elderly – killing, burning, and massacring all.
It was a very bad time when even distinguished among the Sikhs were not safe. Almost 8000 people died by unofficial figures.
In the aftermath of Indira Gandhi’s assassination, two Sikhs were given Capital Punishment – Beant Singh and Satwant Singh.
Beant Singh was directly involved but Satwant Singh wasn’t. At least there was no conclusive proof except for circumstantial evidence. Despite the objections - and long essays in Indian Express Oped by none other than Arun Shourie, Satwant was also hanged to death.
In all these years, all that has been forgotten.
And that all has been but forgotten is a tribute to the Sikh / Punjabi grit and never say die attitude. After all those incidents, Sikhs again emerged as the most prosperous community in India.
Amarjit Singh Walia writes about his experience in a non-descript Bihari town, Daltonganj, of those few days.
In his first-person accounts from Sikhs across the nation, Jarnail Singh’s book, I Accuse, captures the anguish of a community that is still struggling to forgive and forget—given there has been no justice till this date. Across the nation, more than 8,000 Sikhs were killed, women were raped, burnt alive, homes brought down, children forced to grow up. These have affected the psyche of the people permanently.
People keep talking about what happened in Delhi. But the genocide of Sikhs was widespread and orchestrated nation-wide by Congress goons. Many unscrupulous people, who may have wanted “free looting” did participate in that as well.
A few months after the 1984 massacres, one day a middle-aged woman stood at our door begging. When my mother saw her, she was in a bad state. She was a Sikh. Sikhs never beg. With tears in her eyes, my mother brought her inside, gave her food to eat, and then took her to a senior Sikh gentleman we knew who was closely associated with the Gurudwara nearby. She was finally got a job.
While the common Sikhs were massacred in India after Indira Gandhi’s death, it is also true that in the years before and after her death, Khalistani terrorism was at its peak,
The story of how the Khalistani terror movement was conjured up and executed is a very interesting story. It also shows how clueless India’s intelligence and political elite was about Pakistan’s activities post-1971.
the idea of Khalistani terror
Tarek Fatah shares what Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto said in a small insignificant reporter’s meet in 1973. He said that they are planning to carve out a separate “Bangladesh” within India but on the side of Pakistan. Fatah discusses how the movement started by Pakistan eventually.
And then he talks about the irony of how the very people and minds who killed thousands of Sikhs in the areas during the partition and driven them out of the places that are now part of Pakistan, are the ones with whom the Khalistani Sikhs have partnered with! We have discussed Operation Bluestar in detail on our blog.
The Khalistan movement or terror activities were planned by Pakistan’s intelligence organization, the ISI, in connivance with the US. B. Raman, who retired as Additional Secretary in the Cabinet Secretariat shared that the Richard Nixon administration had initiated a “covert action plan” along with Pakistan’s General Yahya Khan. (Source)
The Khalistani terrorists have always worked with the Jihadi terrorists to suck up to their Pakistani masters. Not thinking that the establishment which created and perpetuated the regime called Pakistan is no different from that of Babar and Aurangzeb. The same minds which Nanak cried while remembering the atrocities and latter who killed two generations of Sikh Gurus.
In July 1992, a Sikh terrorist Lal Singh was arrested in India. He was working with the Students Islamic Movement of India jihadis in Aligarh to create a terror and espionage network in the country.
He said that in October 1988, he went to Pakistan from Canada on a fake passport. At Lahore’s Gurdwara Dera Saheb, he met Satinder Pal Gill, a member of the Panthic Committee. Gill introduced him to an ISI officer named Waqar at the gurdwara, who in turn introduced him to pro-Khalistan leaders hiding in Pakistan and to Kashmiri separatist leader Amir ul-Azim. (source: rediff)
That has been the tragedy of the Khalistan terrorists. They have thrown the Sikh youth and the community global to the wolves.
In India, Sikhs sided with Congress and outside with ISI. Two forces that have always wanted to finish them.
nota bene
Munawwar Jihadi: Renowned Urdu poet Munawwar Rana has made a controversial statement regarding the terrorist attack in France. Rana has come out in support of the attacker by justifying the killings. Speaking to the media, Munawwar said that the caricatures are made to defame Prophet Muhammad and Islam. Such acts force people to take extreme steps as in the case of France. He further said that he too would have done the same had he been in his place. (Source)
Russia comes bearing gifts: Russia has fulfilled requirements related to India's defense equipment list handed over in the month of June. Sources confirming the development said that the requirement included light guns, projectiles, bombs. A number of contracts were signed during the summer to implement India's requirement. The defense requirement was handed over during Defence Minister Rajnath Singh's June visit to Moscow. The Defence Minister had gone to Russia to participate in Victory day parade-celebration of Soviet victory and surrender of Nazi Germany. (Source)
Bangladeshi Food brand: PRAN’s growing clout in the Northeast can’t be downplayed. In Tripura, it is the largest private-sector employer. Its factory employs about 700 people apart from providing indirect jobs to many more. Mr. Noodles is heartily slurped up in parts of northeast India. Packets of Pran Jhal Muri, Potato Crackers, Dry Cake, and Family Toast — possibly unfamiliar names in the rest of the country — fly off the small shops there. Even in Siliguri, West Bengal, if you ask for a mango juice at a shop, you might be handed a Frooto instead of a Frooti. Do you want a litchi-flavored drink? There is Pran Litchi. These are all products of PRAN — Bangladesh’s largest agribusiness conglomerate, set up four decades ago by a retired army officer, Amjad Khan Chowdhury. (Source)
Macron says won’t tolerate violence: French President Emmanuel Macron said on Saturday he respected Muslims who were shocked by cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad but that was no excuse for violence, as his officials ramped up security after a knife attack in a French church that killed three people this week. An assailant shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is Greatest) beheaded a woman and killed two other people in a church in Nice on Thursday, in France's second deadly knife attack in two weeks with a suspected Islamist motive. (Source)
apne apne Ram - Kumar Vishwas doing it again
What Kumar Vishwas did for poetry, he is doing for Hindu scriptures. He is giving them a voice and an interpretation that will fire the popular imagination of the masses. In this day and age of rather Westernized entertainment which is predicated on sex and violence, to hear someone give a rather intellectual interpretation of Ram Charit Manas and Ramayana is going to help a lot of our young generation folks.
Irrespective of whether it makes complete spiritual sense or not, at least this will start many others who will come out and take up the scriptures and share their interpretations or bhashyas.
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