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Canadian
eyewitness recalls bodies ‘everywhere, everywhere, everywhere’
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It has been 25 years, but Inderjit Singh Jagraon talks about his
experiences inside the Golden Temple in Amritsar, India, as if
he just walked out of the complex |
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 It’s been 25
years, but Inderjit Singh Jagraon talks about his experiences in
early June, 1984, inside the
Golden Temple in
Amritsar, India, as if he just walked out of the complex. His voice
quivers as he recounts the horrific scene: dead bodies everywhere,
everywhere, everywhere, he repeats. Men with open bullet wounds and
limbs missing; floors awash in blood and water.
Mr. Jagraon
recalls running from gunfire. The man nextto him was shot and fell
forward on his head. “He died in my hands,” Mr. Jagraon said in an
interview this week. “He did not move. I left him where he was. I
ran away.” Everyone was trying to find a place to hide, like mice.
“We ran from room to room,” he said.
Mr. Jagraon,
who is now married, the father of three daughters and living in
Toronto,
was a 19-year-old student in 1984, in his second year of studies in
civil engineering in his hometown of Jagraon, about two hours away
from the holiest shrine in the Sikh religion.
He was active in
the Sikh Student Federation, a group considered to be a terrorist
organization by the government of
India. The group
was involved mostly in educating people about the Sikh religion,Mr.
Jagraon said. But they did more than that and some members paid a
price. “Anyone asking for their rights and justice [at that time]
was beaten up or killed, and their voice ... quieted,” he said
without celaborating.
On
June 1, 1984, he
heard that government forces had killed a number of people at the
temple. He went with a friend to find out what was happening. No one
stopped them from going in, but once inside the temple complex, he
was unable to leave.
The
Golden Temple is
actually a collection of religious halls, offices and dormitories.
Armed terrorists were in the central temple building. Mr. Jagraon
stayed in a dormitory called Guru Ram Das Sarai. He says he was not
involved in the fighting. “I was a student, a young kid; I was not
trained to do all those things,” he said.
The shooting
and explosions began around
4:30 a.m. on
June 4, his second night at the temple, and continued into the next
day. He recalled a voice on a loudspeaker around
5 p.m.
on June 5, saying whoever wants to come out would be allowed to
leave. He stayed but others went. He saw them being beaten with
steel rods as they stepped out.
The exchange of
fire ended on June 6. Mr. Jagraon was taken into custody that night.
He had fallen asleep and was awaken by a soldier pointing a gun at
his chest. Soldiers lined up hundreds of people. He was left sitting
for hours with dead bodies on the floor nearby. He recalled seeing
people die from their wounds, after asking soldiers for water.
He was
eventually put on a bus and taken to a camp in an isolated location.
He remembers the intense heat. People went crazy for water, he said.
He saw an army tank point its barrel and shoot some of those people.
He estimated around 60 people were killed.
He was held in a
high-security prison until March, 1989, convicted of fighting
against the Indian army. Mr. Jagraon came to
Canada via Kenya
in August, 1991
“Now everything
is okay,” said Mr.Jagraon, who works as a realtor. He continues to
support the goals of the student federation that led to his
troubles. “I am a well-wisher of all those organizations who seek
Sikh rights,”he said, “but I’m not really involved in any of them.”
“When you look
at
Rwanda, the whole world knew what was happening and was shaken right
to the core,” Kirpa Kaur, a member of a group called B.C. Sikh
Youth, said earlier this week. “So few people know about the attacks
of 1984 and they perceive it as a story brought up needlessly.”
She believes
human-rights violations that occurred 25 years ago continue to sting
because those responsible for the actions were never punished. “As
Canadians who have deeply emotional and social connections to the
injustices that happened in Punjab, we would hope that the Canadian
government would support us in fighting injustices, in helping us
Canadian eyewitness recalls bodies ‘everywhere, everywhere,
everywhere’ It has been 25 years, but Inderjit Singh Jagraon talks
about his experiences inside the Golden Temple in Amritsar, India,
as if he just walked out of the complex indict those who clearly
have been found guilty... [by non-governmental organizations],” she
said.
The government
of India
sent the army into the Golden Temple compound in the first week of
June, 1984, after years of deadly skirmishes with militant Sikh
leaders fighting for Sikh rights and Khalistan. Government officials
said their goal was to dislodge terrorists who had turned the
religious hall and adjacent buildings into an armed fortress.
The assault
coincided with a religious pilgrimage that had drawn thousands of
Sikhs to the site on June 3 to pay homage on the martyrdom day of
the fifth guru, Arjan Dev. Most were trapped in the compound after
Indian forces launched continuous artillery bombardments and mortar
fire. Unable to flush the terrorists out he army stepped up its
attack on June 4, sending infantry into the compound.
The deadly
exchange of fire with Sikhs armed with machine guns, rifles and
pistols ended on June 6. A government white paper says 493 people,
including religious leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, were killed.
Non-overnmental groups say as many as 10,000 people, mostly innocent
pilgrims, were killed and priceless historic artifacts, including
religious books and historical documents in the library, were
destroyed. Bodies were cremated without notifying relatives and
without autopsies. No official records of cremations were kept. Many
Sikhs perceived the attacks as calculated assaults on their faith,
culture and identity.
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On June 1,
1984, he heard that government forces had killed a number of
people at the temple. He went with a friend to find out what was
happening. No one stopped them from going in, but once inside
the temple complex, he was unable to leave. Till 1989. |
The events
fuelled the secessionist insurgency. Radical fringe groups
championing the Khalistani cause found themselves suddenly in the
mainstream. In
Canada,
less than a week after the assault, thousands of angry people
marched in protest in Toronto, Winnipeg and Vancouver, vowing to
avenge the attack on the
Golden
Temple.
Effigies of Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi were stabbed and
burned. Some carried placards with slogans such as “Death to butcher
Indira” and “Indira Gandhi dead old meat.” An Indian flag was set on
fire on the steps of the Manitoba Legislature.
Ms. Gandhi was
assassinated four months later. In June, 1985, Sikh radicals had
explosives checked onto two flights from
Vancouver. The
explosions on opposite sides of the world caused 331 deaths.
This year in
Canada,
events are considerably quieter. The World Sikh Organization held a
dinner in Ottawa on Thursday for parliamentarians, community leaders
and members of the Sikh community. Public forums are being held
throughout June in several cities on how the events of June, 1984,
shaped the Sikh community. In downtown
Vancouver,
a group of Canadian-born, religious youth are holding a vigil today.
Earlier this week, members of the organizing group spoke to The
Globe and Mail about the changes within their community since 1984.
Following Sikh tradition, the women in the group wished to be
identified by the family name Kaur and most of the men identified
themselves only as Singh.
Some said they
believe many of their generation are unaware of what happened in
1984. “The only reason my history-12 class knew anything about it
was because my teacher asked me about it,” said Paneet Singh, who
was bornsix years after the assault on the temple. His Grade 12
history textbook had only two paragraphs on the events and his
teachers did not elaborate. “It is not as though it is going to be
on a final exam,” he said.
Their parents’
generation was hesitant to talk about 1984 after the Air India
bombing. Those who spoke up were tagged as extremists or terrorists.
Many remained silent and over the years became apathetic, the
members of B.C. Sikh Youth said.
However, the
youth are indifferent to the charge of promoting Khalistan. They say
the accusation is a myth intended to divert attention from the
injustices. “Our main concern at these events is strictly human
rights,” said Jagjit Singh, the main spokesman for the youth group.
Kirpa Kaur, a recent graduate in psychology and social equity, said
some of the youth may be supporters of Khalistan. “But these events
are about fighting injustice and the secessionist movement is]
absolutely irrelevant to what we are doing.”
Prabhroop Kaur,
21, has been going to annual vigils for events in 1984 “ever since I
can remember,” she said. Her parents instilled in her a strong
commitment to justice. “They sat me down and told me what happened.
We were supposed to fight injustice everywhere.... We grew up with
that. We see clearly injustice and we have to do something about
it.”
Gurdit Singh,
25, a college student in human-resource management,identified “an
education gap” between his parents and himself. His father was a
farmer in
Punjab
and his mother was a high-school teacher. “They talk about it, but
they had more raw emotions, more anger built up inside them. They
did not know how to proceed, what to do next.”
Some parents
accepted what the Indian government told them. Paneet Singh said his
mother left
India in 1986
believing that Sikhs brought the assault upon themselves, as the
government of India says. His mother told him the extremists had to
be flushed out of the temple and the government had to restore
order.
But the younger
generation has more tools than their parents to find out what went
on in 1984. “The ease with which we can go and find records, find
third-party accounts, is exponentially bigger than what our parents
would have been able to do, if they had the knowledge base and
skills to do it,” said Perpinder Singh Patrola, a 31-year-old
lawyer. “We have resources that did not exist 15, 20 years ago. We
may feel emotions, but we can move beyond raw emotion and look at
actual facts and figures, and present it - without reducing it to
something that is purely emotional.”
Research has
shown that stories they were told about their history were often not
true, Kirpa Kaur said. “We have to do a lot of work ourselves to
figure out the true story.”
Shining a global
spotlight on what actually happened is a step toward having justice
done, she added. “Living in a country as
Canada, which
claims to support so many human rights-type initiatives, we say it
is time to support us in fighting against injustice.”
(Courtesy
Saturday’s Globe and Mail)
10
June 2009
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