SIKH DIASPORA IN NORTH AMERICA AND THE PUNJAB CRISIS
By
Harpreet mangat
Summary
Diasporas may be defined as those migrants who have a common origin and reside outside their ethnic or religious homeland. They are characterised by an attachment and involvement with the homeland. The same may be active or passive. The diasporic population has become an important actor in the international relations today. Because of their presence in other countries, the diasporic population could have positive and negative consequences for the home government. It is positive when the diasporic populations act as a pressure group to influence the foreign policy in favour of their homelands. However, the same population could cause damage to the homeland by lobbying against it. The reason could be ethnic-violence, genocide and civil-war in the homeland or the human rights record of the homeland among many other factors. The Sikh diaspora in North America and in other parts of the world protested against the Indian government after the 1984 attack on their holiest shrine – the Harmandir Sahib. The Indian government on its part also held a section of the Sikh diasporic population responsible for the events in Punjab in the white paper that it issued on the Punjab agitation. diaspora are thus a source of constant interest not only to the concerned governments but also to the academicians. Diasporic communities influence foreign policymaking of both the homeland and hostland. The nation-states can use their diasporas as tools of nation and state building, while the diasporas can act as both nation-building and nation-wrecking depending upon the context, situation and international milieu.
The Sikhs along with the Jews are perhaps the only two religious diasporas in the world. The Sikh migration to North America in its earnest began in the early twentieth century. Though, they had started moving abroad long before that. The exposure to the outside world that the Sikhs received due to their being in army was an important factor in their migration to distant lands. The major causal factor of Sikh migration was the socio-economic situation prevailing in Punjab towards the end of the nineteenth century. The migration was mainly from the central Punjab region which included Jalandhar and Hoshiarpur. The density of population, British land revenue policies, indebtedness, smaller land holdings, disease, famines and other associated reasons were responsible for the migration of the Sikhs abroad.
They had to face rampant and explicit racism and discrimination. The fact that the home government did not help them in the foreign land created a wedge between the Sikhs and the Britishers. The relations between Sikhs and Britishers in Punjab were also changing for the worse. The Sikhs in diaspora realised that their own government perhaps would not have treated them in the similar manner and had they been citizens of a free country, the North American governments would have treated them differently. The Ghadar Movement offered a platform to the diasporic Sikhs to exercise long-distance nationalism for the first time. The Sikhs opened a front against the British government in diaspora. The Komagata Maru incident further fuelled the anger against both the host and home governments.
For the purpose of this research, four provinces in North America were chosen. In all, 15 respondents were interviewed at each place with the help of an unstructured interview schedule. The Sikhs in North America had a constructive and symbiotic relationship with India till the 1980’s. There were intermittent demands for a separate Sikh homeland called Khalistan before the 1980’s and it was based on the fact that the Sikhs were not given a fair deal by the Indian government after independence. However, there was no mass base of the demand. The attack on the Golden temple in June 1984 was to change all that. No event has affected the psyche of the Sikh diaspora, than the Operation Blue Star. The attack stirred the collective conscience of the Sikhs all across the world. With a single action, the Indian government succeeded in doing what years of propaganda on the part of Sikh separatists and fundamentalists could not do. The Sikhs in diaspora were aghast and angry. Protest rallies were taken out in which thousands of Sikhs participated. There were angry calls for Khalistan–the Sikh homeland. There were instances where the clean shaven Sikhs in the diaspora returned to their Khalsa identity after the incident. But for one organisation–Babbar Khalsa International, all other Khalistani organisations in North America were formed after 1984. The assassination of Indira Gandhi and the ensuing riots in New Delhi further aggravated the situation. The human rights situation in Punjab was a big concern to these Sikhs. In 1985, the Air-India crash off the coast of Ireland again changed the dynamics. No longer were the North American government as accommodative as they were before. It also led to the division of the Sikh movement into moderates and fundamentalist. However, it must be remembered that all Sikhs in diaspora do not necessarily belong to groups. These two groups fought for control over gurdwara and langar rahit. These were offshoots of the basic ideological fight over Khalistan. These controversies created sharper polarisations in the community .There has been a talk of the involvement of Indian government in flaring up the divisions among Sikhs by a section of media in North America.
The Sikhs interviewed agreed that 1984 played an important role in construction of their identity and that of India in their minds. Majority of the respondents felt that they would have felt differently about the Indian state and the issue of Khalistan, if the attack on the Golden Temple had not taken place. All the respondents agreed that there were gross human rights violations in Punjab during the time of crisis. The research proves that nation-states can ignore the diasporic population at their own peril. Further, it also shows that a heterogeneous state like India would do well to understand and accommodate the interests of all sections of the society and her diasporic population should be considered an important player, while framing national policies. The government needs to learn invaluable lessons from the attack on the Golden temple. The policies vis-à-vis the religious minorities and their places of worship needs a rethink or rather a first thought, as there is no official policy to deal with a 1984 kind of a situation. Canada, for example has a policy that no government agency like the police or immigration department would enter any religious place under any circumstance. India also needs to deliberate and make a policy for the religious places.
1984 led to large scale alienation of the Sikhs as they could not reconcile with the scenes of destruction at their holiest shrine. For Sikhs in diaspora, it was all the more distressing as they were sitting far off from Punjab and watching the events unfold on TV or newspapers. The photographs of the Bhindrawale, his associates killed during Operation Bluestar and the destroyed Akal Takht can be found on walls of many gurdwaras in North America and adorn the walls of some homes. The Sikh diaspora articulated its identity as a persecuted and endangered community in India, after the event. A majority of the respondents felt that what has happened in Punjab could be repeated as minorities are not safe in India. They cited the Godhara riots as an example to prove that minorities are not safe. Some suggested that the Indian government should devolve some of the centralised powers to the states, so they feel more secure. The fact of the matter is that these Sikhs in diaspora perceive the minorities in India as vulnerable and susceptible to excesses from the majority community. This research aims to study the exclusion of the Sikhs in diaspora from the national discourse during the above-mentioned time and its effect. It would also attempt to throw light on the views of the Sikhs in the diaspora about the Punjab Crisis and its various facets.
