Inception and Islamic Religious Persecution
Early Days
In the vibrant landscape of Indian spiritual and philosophical experimentation, Guru Nanak Dev established the tenets of his philosophy along the lines of Bhakti tradition. Sikhism saw a succession of 10 gurus starting with Guru Nanak Dev around 1525 A.D. By 1580s Sikhism established itself an influential following in the rich tapestry of the Indian philosophies. Foundation of the Golden Temple was laid around this time by the 5th Guru, Arjan Dev. This drew the attention of the muslim Mughal emperor (Jahangir) who asked Arjan Dev to convert to Islam to eradicate the Sikhs, which Guru Arjan Dev refused. Arjan Dev was executed in 1606. Starting with Guru Arjan Dev, all but one of the successive 5 Sikh gurus were either jailed or executed by the Mughal Emperors. Guru Teg Bahadur’s public beheading in 1675 by the then Mughal emperor Aurangzeb is the most well known case of religious persecution by the muslims in India. In response to Guru Arjan Dev’s execution, the Sikhs started to form their own militia, which over time became a full-fledged army (Khalsa) of the Sikhs by the time the last (10th) Guru Gobind Singh was initiated in 1700 AD.
Islamic Persecution and Rise of the Khalsa
In the first 150 years of its existence Sikhism as a spiritual movement was thrust into a political situation that transformed the Sikhs into a force that stood against forced conversion of Hindus to Islam, especially in Kashmir. Sikh were also against the discriminatory taxation by the muslim rulers of India. It won’t be unfair to say that Sikhism as a socio-political movement bore the brunt of Mughal (Islamic) brutality and persecution, in response to which it established one of the most effective armies (Khalsa). Sikhs, because of their valor against the Muslims, not only amassed a reputation of military might but also of political organization. This enabled the Sikhs to organize themselves into various small confederations after the decline of Mughals. The Sikhs were now a confederacy that governed the land of five rivers (Punjab) of north-west India, bordering Afghanistan.
Onslaught of Afghan Invasions and British India
The Sikh Holocaust
Late 1700s and early 1800s were a period of significant transitions in India’s colonial history. Mughals had declined by the early 1700s. This power vacuum was filled by the Afghans, which launched several attempts to conquer Delhi. In Punjab and Kashmir the Afghans managed to establish their control, albeit short-lived. The supremacy of Afghans resulted in the heaviest loss of life and liberty of the Sikhs. The Afghan muslim provincial government, based out of Lahore, killed 30,000 Sikhs in 1762. This came to be known as the Sikh Holocaust. Afghans never managed to establish their control over Punjab long-term. The British East India Company had not yet managed to control the Indian subcontinent. The Sikhs confederacy mounted a long period of resistance against the Afghans in Punjab and Kashmir. By late 1700s, out of about 14 local confederacies (chieftains) in Punjab at the time, Ranjit Singh emerged as the one who was most effective at pushing back the Afghans and uniting the area under his empire. By around 1810, Ranjit Singh’s empire known as the Sikh Empire had conquered Kashmir from the Afghans and had a treaty with the East India Company to maintain peace in the East where they bordered areas close to Delhi. With his capital in Lahore, the Sikhs ruled the area for about 50 years, until it was dissolved in 1849 and declared a British province.
Influence of Wahhabi Islam
During the British rule in Punjab, the Sikhs were relegated to puppet princes like the rest of India. Relentless Afghani invasions and an ideological threat from the Sikhs changed the predominantly Sufi Islam in Punjab. By about 1875, Wahhabi Sunni Islam had taken a good hold in Punjab. Hindus and Sikhs were being actively persecuted and proselytized by the Muslims across north India, especially in Punjab. With the rise of the Deobandi and Barelvi Islam and social movements such as the Aligarh Movement, the Muslims started to assert their political identity in exclusivist tones by the turn of the century. All India Muslim League was set up and Muslims were asked to stay away from the All India National Congress, which was seeking independence from the British rule. Muslim League’s main ask was a separate nation (Pakistan) for the Muslims. During the struggle for independence Muslim League asked for political reservation for Muslims in provincial and Imperial legislature. Indian National Congress was opposed to this idea. For most part of the century preceding India’s independence from Great Britain, Sikhs had a strong social bond with the Hindus that not only shared the larger goal of independence but also an ideological and religious chasm with the muslims who were now seen as an intolerant social and political bloc.
Rise of the Akali Movement
Sikh Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee
Up until the 1920s, Sikh Gurudwaras (temples) were managed by a Mahant (a priest from the Udasi sect). Udasis are the followers of Guru Nanak’s (founder of Sikh sect) son. They were the key interpreters of the Sikh philosophy and were the custodians of the Sikh Gurudwaras (temples). After the dissolution of the Sikh Empire in the mid 1800s, a lot of Sikhs were zealously proselytized by the Christians missionaries of the East India Company and the Wahhabi Muslims. A resistance to this proselytization was formed by a Sikh body that came to be called the Singh Sabha (The Assembly of Singhs). In its course of evolution over the next few decades, the Sikh identity morphed into a religious identity with its own radical wings. The impact of Sikhs attempting to maintain a separate identify and preserving it from the onslaught of Christians and Muslims also laid the foundation of some Sikhs considering themselves different from Hindus. Mostly a fringe phenomenon, this strain nonetheless existed. By the early 1900s, some Sikhs started to ask for Gurudwaras to be managed by Sikhs alone. This was the start of the Akali movement. The Sikh leadership splintered over time and rival factions to Singh Sabha, such as Khalsa Diwans came into existence. The British started to play into this dynamics with their divide and rule policy promoting one faction over the other, both within and outside of the Sikh sect. On the political front, organizations such as the Central Sikh League, Khalsa Darbar, and the SGPC (Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee) came into existence. In parallel to this religious-political evolution, the British Government started to form governing bodies for Gurudwaras and started to take control of Gurudwaras for their management. The Akali movement (that had earlier forcibly taken away control of Gurudwaras from Mahants) was opposed to the British Rule in general and saw this wrestling of Gurudwara control by the British influenced SGPC as yet another tactic of control by the British. By 1925, British agreed to all Akali demands and passed the Gurudwaras Act of 1925. This act recognized the SGPC as the representative body of the Sikhs. The British accommodated this demand from the Sikhs fearing that Sikhs may throw their entire weight behind Gandhi’s resistance against the British. In the first elections of SGPC Master Tara Singh emerged as one of the leaders and became the face of Sikhs and had the support of Indian National Congress (Gandhi and Nehru).
Sikhs in Independent India and Demand for Khalistan
Sikh and Hindu Exodus from Pakistan and Creation of Punjab
In the final days of India’s independence struggle, as Pakistan was created Sikh and Hindu exodus to India began. Punjab in India became the biggest settlement of the newly arrived Sikhs and Hindus. Master Tara Singh, around that time had asked for and gotten an assurance from Nehru that he’d create a Punjabi speaking state for the Sikhs, which eventually happened in 1966 when India’s Punjab province was broken up into three state along linguistic lines – Himachal Pradesh for Himachali speaking Indians, Haryana for Haryanvi/Hindi speaking Indians and Punjab for Punjabi speaking Indians. The capital city of Punjab, Chandigarh, was shared as the new capital of two provinces – Punjab and the newly formed Haryana. Amongst other things, this upset the Akali Dal.
Anandpur Sahib Resolution
Akalis had a few demand from the government of India in 1973, known as the Anandpur Sahib Resolution. Akalis asked the government of India to accommodate some political and religious demands such as care and upkeep of Gurudwaras, combating atheism and propagation of Sikhism, and mandatory charity, wealth tax and estate duty exemptions for agricultural land. The creators and supporters of Anandpur Sahib Resolution framed their demands as postulates that Guru Nanak (founder of the Sikh path) taught.
Emergence of Khalistan Movement
Since 1973, when the Anandpur Sahib Resolution was framed, no action was taken on it for about a decade. However, the Akali Dal as a political party kept its pressure on the Congress Party government of India, led by Indira Gandhi. In response to Akali Dal’s growing influence in Punjab, the Congress leadership propped up an obscure purist Sikh preacher – Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. In 1980, Akalis lost the general elections in Punjab and Congress Party came into power. Right around that time some fringe radical Sikh groups in the UK, Canada, USA, and France proclaimed an independent Sikh republic called Khalistan, which the government of India didn’t pay much attention to. For Indira Gandhi, Akalis in India were a bigger threat to her political future than some Sikh youth in foreign lands declaring a made-up republic. As this was unfolding, Bindranwale became socially and religious stronger in the Sikh sampradaya – too big to be controlled by the government. Pakistan started providing support to Bhindranwale and his lieutenants around 1980 in retaliation to India’s support of Bangladesh War of Liberation. Pakistan wanted to break Punjab from India just as India had helped East Pakistan (Bangladesh) achieve independence. Bhindranwale saw the Congress government and Indira Gandhi as oppressors, just as the Mughals had been oppressors of the Sikhs up until 200 years ago. This was a turning point in the Sikh psyche in Punjab, where they started to see Hindus as oppressors. This mutated into Sikh communal violence against Hindus, which later morphed into terrorism. By this time, Bhindranwale had made the Golden Temple his shelter and, instigated by Pakistan, his operatives had started to kill high ranking Sikh police officers and Hindu influentials in society. The goal was to get Punjab rid of Hindus and turn it into a Sikh nation of Khalistan. In a short span of time, Akalis also lost control of Bhindranwale and couldn’t get him to negotiate with the government of India.
Operation Blue Star and Indira Gandhi’s Assassination
Indian Army launched Operation Blue Star to flush Bhindranwale and his band of terrorists out of the temple. Close to 500 Sikh militants were killed inside the temple, which was led by Indian Army with support from other paramilitary agencies that secured the rest of the state against a Pakistan supported and armed militancy. Operation Blue Star led to a resentment in the Sikh community against Indira Gandhi. In 1984, two of Indira Gandhi’s Sikh bodyguards assassinated her as an act of revenge. Anti-Sikh riots broke out, mostly in north India. An estimated 3,000 Sikhs lost their lives across India at the hands of rioting mobs. It is widely agreed that the anti-Sikh riots were instigated and led by leaders of the ruling Congress Party, like Sajjan Kumar, Jagdish Tytler, and HKL Bhagat. For two decades after the riots, no action was taken by the ruling Congress Party or it’s allies in power to convict the perpetrators.
In 2005, the then Prime Minister of India Manmohan Singh who is himself a Sikh apologized for the anti-Sikh riots in the lower house (Lok Sabha) of India’s Parliament. Meanwhile, in Canada, California, and a couple of other US states Sikh activists were able to pass resolutions or motions that officially acknowledged the anti-Sikh riots as a “genocide”.
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