1984

Indian Authorities Manufacture Crisis In Jammu
To Overshadow June 84 Anniversary …
Again.
Right On Cue

SIMRAN KAUR

"jammu shehar naa daeen meri maa …"
O My Mother, Don’t Send me to Jammu …
[Punjabi wedding song]

 
What it means to be a Sikh woman in 2015 has a lot to do with what it meant to be a Sikh woman in 1984.

I have an odd memory from right about that year: as a young girl at a Punjabi wedding, clapping happily to a funny song where a to-be bride pleads with her mother against being married and sent to live with her in-laws in the faraway city of Jammu. (I was too young to balk at arranged marriages then; all I knew is the song had some funny puns).

And I also remember giggling a little the first time I met a Sikh from Jammu, then stopping abruptly on receiving a cold stare from my mother who had first led me in the clap-alongs that made me associate Jammu with funny jibes.

Years later, I would finally visit the city that has been home to a sizable and proud Sikh population for generations, where Guru Hargobind, the Sixth Master, holds particular relevance after his travels there in the early 1600s.

Today, June 5, 2015, Jammu is under strict curfew and internet and cellular services have been suspended.

“In view of the tense situation in Jammu district … you are requested to immediately stop the internet services provided by you, both on landline and mobile network” -- June 5, 2015 letter from District Magistrate Jammu to Airtel, Aircel, BSNL, Vodafone and IDEA providers, circulating on social media.

Jagjeet Singh, the 25-year-old killed by a paramilitary bullet to his head on June 4, 2015, happened to work for IDEA Network.

By eyewitness accounts, he had parked his car to observe the commotion erupted on the night of June 4 when the CRPF paramilitary forces began their action in Jammu at 3-4 am.

Earlier that day, reports from Jammu included scuffles between local Sikh youth and the police. Indian media reported that a police officer removed “objectionable posters,” which included the photo of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwala (the Sikh leader who was neither a proclaimed offender nor in hiding in June 1984, but was propagated as a ‘holed-in terrorist at Darbar Sahib’ by the Indian Government after his murder by Indian troops).

Sikh youth had protested against the police excesses and had even fought back in anger.

On Thursday, June 4, 2015, as some social media started sharing photographs of a sub-Inspector being hit by angered Sikh men, I recoiled. As a woman -- who grew up clapping to songs that took for granted a Punjabi woman’s destiny to leave her parental home and move away, but also who came of age with the unacknowledged (much less punished) state-sponsored violence of the 1980s -- I couldn’t help feeling a familiar heaviness.

Were our men, many hot-headed, often proud of their machismo, going to remain in the limelight as violent, easily provokable? Were several men ganging up on one cop who was seemingly responsible for a non-violent, even if offensive act?  Once again, was June going to be a battle between those feeling pride at angry Sikhs and those feeling fear at what such anger begets us?

Soon, more photos and a larger story began to surface, making the entire episode reminiscent of last year.

In June 2014, large media stories appeared on the anniversary of the attack on Darbar Sahib, reporting "clashes" between a bunch of bearded and turbaned men amongst themselves inside the Darbar Sahib complex -- all these men were aligned with political parties with age-old and manufactured rivalries. Somehow this story of scuffling Sikhs overtook the story of the siege Sikhs had united to remember on its 30th anniversary.

Might Jammu be similar?

The local Jammu population reports the entire incident was orchestrated under the increasingly right-wing political regime, aiming to provoking Sikh youth: the same hoarding had been used every year, commemorating June 1984 (and the deaths of thousands of pilgrims as well as Bhindranwale and his armed men).

On June 4, 2015, the local Sikh population was in fact readying to celebrate their beloved Guru Hargobind’s gurpurab, when this hoarding was reportedly removed, trampled on, and videos of this were circulated by the offenders on social media.

Locals further report that in the arguments and scuffle that followed with local goons and supporting police officers, no policeman was stabbed, but the media reported this and focused on the ‘violent Sikhs’ in another attempt to malign.

After the June 4 scuffle, Deputy Commissioner Simranjit Singh negotiated with the local Sikh population and agreed the hoarding may go back up and the brouhaha end.

Then, in the middle of the night, CRPF entered the scene, removed the same hoarding, and responded to the gathering Sikh protesters with bullets.

By-stander Jagjeet Singh was shot dead in the head.

Sikh social media is abuzz with the killing in Jammu, flashing back to the killings of 1984.

Meanwhile, in Canada, a significant number of Sikhs are vociferously protesting the Vancouver International Bhangra Celebration, that has been designated for June 6, one of the bloodiest days in Sikh history in the twentieth century. And in the United States, some Sikhs are rallying against “India Day 2015" being held in San Francisco on June 6. 

To them, it’s incomprehensible that the first week of June can be about anything but the massacres of June 1984, especially when June 2015 continues with clear evidence of oppression.

Are Sikhs over-reacting?

After killing Jagjeet Singh and wounding several others -- internet-blocking makes news of their well-being difficult to come by currently -- the Indian Army conducted a flag march in Jammu, to display its control. Such flag marches are notorious across Jammu and Kashmir, the state bloodied by anti-Muslim violence since much before Jagjeet Singh was even born.

In Amritsar, the police today took out a flag march through the heart of the the city, set up check-posts, and began surveilling the sarais in Darbar Sahib for any “antisocial elements” (the resthouses where ironically the maximum murders of pilgrims at the hands of the Army had taken place in 1984.)

Two hours ago, claiming wariness due to Jammu, the Punjab government has “sought 20 companies of paramilitary forces from the Centre besides deploying maximum force on the roads to avoid any untoward incident on the anniversary of Operation Bluestar amid fears of spillover of the Jammu violence to the state.”

Who is over-reacting?

To have to hold all beliefs deep within our hearts, with no peaceful outlet, beliefs we have inherited from our mothers and transmitted from our wombs to our children; to have to bow our heads even as we are poked to be reminded we are the survivors of an ethnic cleansing; to have to leave the mind clouded with fear even while we are the children of Nirbhau [fearless Almightly].

Such unacceptable enslavement is what Sikhs in Canada, US, and Jammu are resisting.

In Jammu they have resisted at much higher stakes.

Tonight and forever, my heart sings a very different song for Jammu.



[The author is an activist, accountant, mother, and an avid reader who spends her time between Punjab and Canada.]

June 5, 2015
 

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