Long
Live the Revolution
Balwant Singh Rajoana | Operation Blue Star | Sikh Genocide 1984 | Never Forget 84 | I Pledge Orange
“A revolution is
a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes
place in a relatively short period of time.”
Revolution
has always being a part of Human Culture. It has occurred through human
history and varies widely in terms of methods, duration, and
motivating ideology. Their results include major changes in
culture, economy, and socio-political institutions. And there is
always a special group of people whose motivating ideologies bring these kind
of fundamental changes in various fields of Science, Technology, Politics, Literature,
Art etc. People like Albert Einstein, Bhagat Singh, Nelson Mandela, Mother
Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, Vladmir
Lenin, Sir Isaac Newton, William Shakespeare, Bill Gates, George
Washington and Dalai Lama to name a few were all revolutionaries of their times.
Though these are a group of revolutionary people who brought change for the
good of the people, there is also a selective group of people who brought a
revolutionary change for the bad like Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Benito
Mussolini and Osama Bin Laden to name a few. Each and Every one mentioned
above has made changes in the world in one way or another in their respective
fields. We all known about the various revolutions like French Revolution, American War of Independence, Berlin Revolution, Egypt Youth Revolution, Russian Revolution, Indian Independence Revolution etc which changed the world history.
Berlin Revolution
French Revolution
Russian Revolution
Egypt Youth Revolution
“Great revolutionaries inspire others with
passionate words and set examples with proper deeds, using their life
experience as wisdom to guide others. One doesn’t have to be as well known as
Gandhi, or as celebrated as Martin Luther King, Jr. to have this revolutionary
spirit. In fact, anyone who cultivates the state of mind and confidence
of action that lights the way of truth for others, wherever one may roam, is a
revolutionary. Anyone with the passion to speak openly of the truths they
know, then, act righteously in accordance with those truths is a revolutionary.
And, so it is, that great revolutionaries can be found anywhere in the world,
on any given day. They are the ones in society engaging in behavior that
inspires others to think, to question, and to work toward improving themselves
and the world.”
Following
few paragraphs are based on the life of yet another revolutionary named Balwant
Singh Rajoana and his struggle.
Balwant Singh Rajoana
Balwant
Singh Rajoana, former Punjab police
constable is a convict in the assassination of Beant Singh, the former
Chief Minister of Punjab, India. Born into a traditional Sikh family in Rajoana
Kalan village near Raikot in Ludhiana district of Punjab, he was fond of
reading ghazals, novels and poetry. In early 1986, he joined the Punjab
Police. According to his elder brother Kulwant Singh, Balwant was a pacifist
and was opposed to any kind of violence. The works of Surjit Paatar (Punjabi
language writer and poet of East Punjab, India) and Jaswant Singh Kanwal (novelist, short
story writer and essayist of the Punjabi language) played an important role in
shaping his ideology. So what happened that changed Balwant’s ideology and made
him choose the path of Non-Violence. The Answer lies ahead.
Operation
Blue Star
Operation Blue Star (1–6 June 1984) was an extremely violent Indian military
operation also termed as the attack on the Akal Takhat and
the Golden Temple complex. Golden Temple is the holiest shrine of the
Sikhs located in the city of Amritsar, Punjab in the Northern India. It was ordered
by Indira Gandhi, then Prime Minister of India, to
remove Sikh separatists from the Golden
Temple in Amritsar. During this time the Khalistan separatist
movement (demand for a separate independent state) was active in the state. The
separatists, led by Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, were accused of amassing
weapons in the Sikh temple though
it is a common practice to keep weapons in the Gurdwaras and can seen
everywhere in the world. According to the
Indian Government, Bhindranwale was using the shrine as a refuge and
had piled up weapons for use in hate crimes against non-Sikhs. In order to curb
the rising tension, the Indian Government planned a military operation to wipe
out the Khalistan Activists.
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Operation Blue Star
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Operation Blue Star
Official
reports put the number of deaths among the Indian army at 83 and the number of
civilian deaths at 492, though some independent estimates run as high as 1500.
In addition, the CBI is considered responsible for seizing historical artifacts
and manuscripts in the Sikh Reference Library before burning it down.
Post Operation Blue Star | Sikh GENOCIDE 1984
The
violent military assault led to an uproar amongst Sikhs worldwide and the
increased tension following the action led to assaults on members of the Sikh
community within India. Some Sikh soldiers in the Indian army mutinied, many
Sikhs resigned from armed and civil administrative office and a few returned
awards and honors they had received from the Indian government. Four months
after the operation, on 31 October 1984, Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two
of her Sikh bodyguards in what is viewed as an act of vengeance.
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1984 Anti Sikh Pogroms
The
so called operation against "Terror in Punjab" was over with the
Death of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, but what followed after that was the
biggest massacres of Indian History, the biggest
political disgrace after the Indo-Pak Partition. Few hours after
Indira Gandhi's assassination, the newly made prime minister of India, Rajiv
Gandhi, son of Indira Gandhi, gave a brutal order to kill all the Sikh's in the
country which led to the most talked about Anti-Sikh pogroms of
1984, killing many innocent lives. Thousands of innocent Sikhs (including
women, children’s & elderly) were killed in Anti-Sikh pogroms carried out
in Delhi and other major cities of India. According to several independent
commissions reports conducted by the People's Union for Civil Liberties, the
People's Union for Democratic Rights and the Citizen's Justice Committee, the
pogroms were government sponsored and was carried out under the direct orders
of the Late Indira Gandhi’s son Rajiv Gandhi (who was made the new Indian prime
minister after Indira’s death) and his party members including Sajjan Kumar,
Jagdish Tytler, R. K. Anand, Darshan Sharstri and H.K.L.Bhagat. Within the
Sikh community itself, Operation Blue Star has taken on considerable historical
significance and is often compared to what Sikhs call 'the great massacre', the
1761 slaughter of Sikhs by the Afghan invader Ahmad Shah Abdali.
Dark
Age of Punjab
In
Punjab between 1992 and 1995, at a time when the Khalistan separatist movement
was active in the state and the Indian government was aggressively seeking to
control the movement. It is alleged that, during Beant Singh's tenure,
thousands of Sikhs were killed and their bodies cremated by the police in
extrajudicial executions. Various Independent sources reveal that Beant Singh
was responsible for overseeing the mass genocide of Sikhs and was responsible
for giving police officers such as KPS Gill, SSP Sumedh Saini, SSP Mohammad
Izhar Alam (leader of the infamous Black Cats) and others a free reign to run
operations that deliberately targeted the civilian population of Punjab. This
lead to a period of forced disappearances, fake ‘encounter’ killings, brutal
torture, illegal detention, mass rapes, illegal seizure of property and
widespread intimidation of the Sikh population.
During
the mid 1990’s Punjab was burning with all forms of government sponsored
tortures, and as it is said wisely, “When injustice becomes law, rebellion
becomes duty.” – A group of people took a stand against tyranny. Balwant Singh Rajoana,
who was a police constable at that time, conspired with Dilawar Singh Babbar, a
police officer, to kill Beant Singh. Based on a coin toss, Babbar was chosen to
be the suicide bomber with Rajoana as a backup. The attack was successfully
carried out on 31 August 1995 and, on 25 December 1997, Rajoana confessed his
involvement. Rajoana was sentenced to death by a special CBI court in India.
According
to Balwant Singh Rajoana the motive behind the assassination of Beant Singh was
to stop the mass killing of innocent Sikhs for which Beant Singh was
responsible. He said Beant Singh was also responsible for giving police
officers a free reign to run operations that targeted the civilian population
of Punjab.
Currently,
Bhai Rajoana is in patiala jail is serving the sentence for the execution of
Beant Singh outside the Punjab secretariat in 1995. Rajoana have accepted his
death sentence without asking for any mercy from the Indian Judiciary. In his
will, Rojoana express no desire to live any more. He expressed that he wishes
to have sight of Shri Harmandir Sahib (The Golden Temple), Amritsar, Punjab.
He
writes that, “It is my wish that, my eyes may kindly be given to Hazuri Ragi of
Darbar Sahib and if it is not possible in any case then my eyes can be donated
to any needy person.”
I
certainly wouldn’t be any one to comment about what he did was actually right
or wrong, but I know this that after the Execution of Bean Singh, the killing
of innocent Sikhs in Punjab went down & within a few years Punjab became a
peaceful state and a better place to live.
“Most of us don’t consider ourselves to
be revolutionaries, but we probably already are. If we’re tired of seeing
the earth exploited, its creatures exterminated and its peoples poisoned,
bombed and enslaved, then we certainly are. If we recognize that certain
social structures and cultural paradigms are laying waste to our potential to
live naturally healthy lives with abundant futures, then we are in
revolt. If we feel, believe and know that mankind can do better, that
humans deserve to be fronted by institutions of peace rather than of warfare,
of justice rather than of greed, then we are indeed revolutionaries in this
seemingly wicked time. This revolutionary spirit is critically important today
because it is through the process of revolution that evolution takes
seed. Evolution is the idea that an organism can change its structure and
capacities in order to regain balance and prosper in a changing and perhaps
threatening environment. Which is exactly what mankind must do? We
must evolve, overcoming the inertia of our violent, selfish past, inviting a
new era of trust, compassion and creativity. So, I ask. What does it take
for an individual to move from awareness of these problems to participating in
the solution? What does it take to harness this revolutionary spirit,
channeling it towards our mutually beneficial evolution?
In
case of Punjab, I think Punjab's situations could have being more worse. There
was a need to stop the Genocide of Sikhs which was being carried out for nearly
more than a decade. Balwant Singh Rajoana’s action might have brought an end to
this Dark Age of Punjab, but the question still arises – Wouldn’t there be a
better way to bring a stop to all this. The answers can be many.
Balwant
Singh Rajoana was arrested in 1995 and has never denied involvement in the
assassination plot. He has refused to make any appeals for mercy and has not
recognized the authority of the courts in what has been called a matter of Sikh
National Security and Sovereignty. Balwant Singh Rajoana has openly called for
the death penalty recognizing it as the only form of justice available to him
under the Indian legal system. This may seem strange, but Balwant Singh Rajoana
is inspired by the rich history of the Sikhs and their Gurus who have laid down
their lives in opposition to tyranny.
The
case of Balwant Singh Rajoana once again highlights the lack of justice and the
failing of the legal process in India faced by all Sikh political prisoners and
the victims of state oppression and their surviving family members. Having
taken responsibility for his actions, it has still taken 17 years for the
courts to fix a date for his execution. This failing of the legal processes is
evident in nearly all cases involving Sikh political prisoners. Though
Balwant’s execution date which was suppose to be on 31st March 2012 has been
postponed, the question still arises – Wouldn’t 17 Years in Jail plus a Death
penalty a way too much punishment for a human. Isn’t it a Human Right
violation? The answer is yet to be found.
Protest against the execution of Balwant Singh Rajoana in different places of the world
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Thanks,
With Inputs from Wikipedia, SikhiWiki & Waking Times
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