Indira Gandhi Bunaam Bush!

stuka

``Why was the government willing to conduct a siege for weeks during Black Thunder? Why was a siege conducted on Hazratbal? What was the immediacy of Blue Star? None. ``

Lt Gen Brar gives an impression (i forget if i read the interview or heard it) that they were worried about mutiny in the army by sikh units following an attack from pakistan on amritsar to ``rescue`` the temple. So they were given 24 hrs to do the operation by political order or not do it at all. A siege was out of question at that point.

kaura,
i remember peeing in my pants when our bus came under stone-throwing and bullets bet delhi and chandigarh. the driver drove thru a relatively flimsy blockade and all we had were broken glass and a few shallow wounds in the bus. there were militants hanging in chandigarh bus station with long swords and guns. they were less scary. on to kulu, again got scared when the bus conductor (a sikh) approached us trembling smokers at the back.. we thought we would be thrown out of teh bus for smoking. but he merely informed us to contact his relatives in kulu (gave an address) if we want good quality charas.

boy, what were we thinking travelling thru an insurgency.

bongdong:
``From what I understand the main conflict was with the Arya Samaj guys or do you mean the RSS itself? Could you also elaborate on the roots of this conflict (theological or based on economic conflict?)``
The original conflict was with the Arya Samajis during the Panjabi Suba movement. At that time, the arya samajis led the campaign of hindiwallahs and incited hindus to declare their mothertongue to be hindi instead of punjabi, to prevent the formation of a punjabi suba; so much so that the census results were rejected as unreliable.
The recent conflict is with the RSS. These people believe that sikhs are hindus and are out to deny the sikhs the separate idenity that they highly cherish. So, they are using all kinds of tricks -some quite dirty- to achieve their purpose. They have even started a campaign among hindus to revive the old practice of making one of their sons a sikh. I dont think that there are too many takers among hindus for this - too much water has flown under the Punjab rivers since then and the schism between the two communities has widened (but hindu-sikh marriages are still quite common); in any case most punjabis now do not have more than one son and even in the old days they only ``donated`` one of the sons.

kaurasach#151
It was Dayanand Saraswati who founded the arya samaj. Although he wrote insulting remarks about Guru Nanak, his teachings, ironincally, were very similar to that of Nanak himself (no idol worship, no rituals, etc.). His teachings had a great influence upon punjabi hindus, the same people who were also attracted to gurbani. The arya samajis indeed did a lot of good in punjab in the matter of education. To them goes the credit of opening DAV colleges and schools all over the province and they were among the best. They also popularised the education of girls and opened many girls schools as well. Unfortunately, they were also in the vanguard of the hindi-hindu-hindustan brigade.
It may seem surprising to you that until the partition there was no problem between the arya samajis and sikhs and arranged intermarriages between the two were quite common, khatris being the common factor. My mother came from a staunch arya samaji family but had no problem learning gurmukhi and reading guru granth saheb all her life, without ever thinking that she was abandoning her arya samaji roots.

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#148 DM
``You are right about the attempts of the RSS types to dilute the sikh identity, aided by the overwhelming mass culture spread by films and telvision.``

From what I understand the main conflict was with the Arya Samaj guys or do you mean the RSS itself? Could you also elaborate on the roots of this conflict (theological or based on economic conflict?)

#146
``Most of the Hindus and sikhs killed by the millitants harbored or worked with anti sikhs forces.``

Did you live in India in the `80`s?

kaurasach#146:
I think that reality is more grey than black-and-white.
I also visited the Golden Temple shortly beofore Operation Black Thunder. Two opposing processions were marching brandishing swords and guns. The next morning`s newspapers carried a story of the fight between the two factions - incidently both supporters of khalistan.

I saw both sides of this ugliness. During the November riots, my family had a hard time keeping my father -a bearded sikh- safe from the haryanavi goondas. My sister, a regular reader of paath at the local gurudwara in Amritsar, was delivered a letter containing a death threat to her hindu husband, because he was a former police officer. She had to sell her house for a song and move to Delhi because of repeated threats.

You are right about the attempts of the RSS types to dilute the sikh identity, aided by the overwhelming mass culture spread by films and telvision. It is true that there have been steady changes in the Sikh religion and identity since the late 19th century, but not necessarily as you suggest. The most rigorous scholarly work I have read on the subject (leaving aside pseudo-scholars like Patwant Singh) is by Professor Harjot Singh Oberoi of the University of British Columbia. See if you can lay your hands on it. Here is a description of it:

``Oberoi, Harjot The Construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity, and Diversity in the Sikh Tradition. 516 p. 5-1/2 x 8-1/2 1994

LC: 94013624

Cloth NAM $60.00tx 0-226-61592-8 Fall 1994

Paper NAM $20.00tx 0-226-61593-6 Fall 1994

In this major reinterpretation of religion and society in India, Harjot Oberoi challenges earlier accounts of Sikhism, Hinduism and Islam as historically given categories encompassing well-demarcated units of religious identity. Through a searching examination of Sikh historical materials, he shows that early Sikh tradition was not concerned with establishing distinct religious boundaries. Most Sikhs recognized multiple identities grounded in local, regional, religious, and secular loyalties. Consequently, religious identities were highly blurred and several competing definitions of what constituted a Sikh were possible.

In the closing decades of the nineteenth century, however, the Singh Sabha, a powerful new Sikh movement, began to view the multiplicity in Sikh identity with suspicion and hostility. Aided by social and cultural forces unleashed by the British Raj, the Singh Sabha sought to recast Sikh tradition and purge it of diversity. The ethnocentric logic of a new elite dissolved alternative ideals under the highly codified culture of modern Sikhism.

A study of the process by which a pluralistic religious world view is replaced by a monolithic one, this important book calls into question basic assumptions about the efficacy of fundamentalist claims and the construction of all social and religious identities. An essential book for the field of South Asian religions, this work is also an important contribution to cultural anthropology, postcolonial studies, and the history of religion in general``

And who decides whether you were collaborating with the extremists or were working against the faith? Who decides whether you should be killed or allowed to live as a member of a religious community? Who decides as to who keeps the monopoly on the `correct` interpretation of some faith? And who decides whether others are following an impure form of faith?
Remember- the issues confronting the Khalistani purists and the other purists are the same- the approach is same- only the context and history changes.
And which leaders are we talking about? Saddam used to execute those who merely used to even verbally criticize him. Bhindrawale was of the same mould- vulgar and violent!

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Those who have charged others of letting their faith hijacked by the extremists should remember what Bhindrawale was doing when he hijacked the entire community`s holiest of the shrines!!!

Faruk

Operation Black Thunder proved the inadequacy of Operation Blue Star. Besides, why was Blue Star even conducted on a day which is a religious occasion when there were thousands of innocent pilgrims on the premises.

Harish:

I made the point that Blue Star was worse from a religious standpoint. The justification is immaterial. The religious implication is the same as Italian Army shelling the Vatican. I know that an operation was needed. One that needed patience.

Why was the government willing to conduct a siege for weeks during Black Thunder? Why was a siege conducted on Hazratbal? What was the immediacy of Blue Star? None.

Re: stuka #140
“The 1984 riots were at best a betrayal of Sikh people by a political party. Operation Blue Star was an attack on Sikhism by India.”

You have a right to your opinion but I can’t agree with it.

What would you have done on that situation?

Faruk