1984

The Anatomy of A War Crime:

The Indian Army in Amritsar

SARBPREET SINGH



This is the THIRD in a new series on sikhchic.com by the author to mark the 30th anniversary of the Indian Army’s desecration of the Golden Temple in Amritsar.









Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high

Where knowledge is free

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments

By narrow domestic walls

Where words come out from the depth of truth

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way

Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit

Where the mind is led forward by thee

Into ever-widening thought and action

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.











These beautiful words are from the pen of Rabindranath Tagore, poet extraordinaire, humanist and nationalist, who advocated for Indian independence and dreamed of India as a proud, free and enlightened nation that would be driven by reason and compassion.



As we approach Tagore’s birth anniversary, more than a hundred years after his famous poem, Chitto Jetha Bhayashunyo, which appears above in translation, was first published, it is difficult to reconcile his soaring idealism with what the ‘largest democracy in the world’ has become.



Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention defines war crimes as:

Wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including ... wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement of a protected person, compelling a protected person to serve in the forces of a hostile power, or wilfully depriving a protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial, ... taking of hostages and extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly.



Civilians or non-combatants in any conflict clearly and unequivocally fall in the category of protected persons.



In modern times, the Hague Tribunal, an ad hoc court that functions under the aegis of the UN, has played a key role in prosecuting war crimes. The statutes of The Hague tribunal that focused on war crimes in the former Yugoslavia provide examples of violations of the laws of war that it was empowered to prosecute:



• Wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity



• Attack, or bombardment, by whatever means, of undefended towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings



• Seizure of, destruction or wilful damage done to institutions dedicated to religion, charity and education, the arts and sciences, historic monuments and works of art and science



• Plunder of public or private property.



The tribunal also defined crimes against humanity committed in armed conflict but directed against a civilian population. Article 5 of its statutes provides examples of such crimes:



• Murder



• Extermination



• Enslavement



• Deportation



• Imprisonment



• Torture



• Rape



• Persecutions on political, racial and religious grounds.

On September 16, 1985, Steven Weisman of the New York Times filed the following report:



New Delhi, India -- September 15, 1985: The Indian Government has banned a report on violence in Punjab state and

arrested two people involved in putting out the report.



The report, published by a group called Citizens for Democracy, charges that the Government has been the major cause of bloodshed in the state, which has been the focus of an often violent agitation by Sikhs for greater autonomy.



Government officials said the report was banned and copies were seized and destroyed last week because of the sensitive situation in the state, where an election is to be held September 25.



But leaders of the opposition to Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi charged that the Government was trying to suppress political dissent. Chandra Shekhar, president of the Janata Party, said Mr. Gandhi was engaged in ''sustained attempts to suppress the civil rights of the people.''



The two people arrested were B. D. Pancholi, a co-author, and O. M. Prakash Gupta, an owner of the press where the 144-page report was printed. A police report charged that four other co-authors, as well as a respected judge who wrote the forward, were also guilty of sedition, but they were not arrested …



The new report, titled 'Oppression in Punjab,' contains a foreword by Judge V. M. Tarkunde, which accuses the Government of ''inhuman barbarities'' against the people of Punjab.



It asserts that 'clearly innocent' people have been arrested and that the police in the state had carried out 'sadistic torture, ruthless killings, fake encounters, calculated ill treatment of women and children, and corruption and graft on a large scale.'





The report, published by the Indian civil rights organization, Citizens for Democracy, is essential reading for anyone who is concerned about human rights and oppression by the State.



Thirty years after Operation Blue Star, it is particularly important for young Sikhs, who have no memory of those turbulent times, to become intimately familiar with the report; not just because it documents a dark episode in modern Sikh history, but because of an important lesson it contains.



When Guru Nanak, five hundred years ago, thundered against the atrocities committed by the Central Asian invader Babar, he laid the foundation of an important tradition in Sikhism: unequivocal opposition to oppression and standing up for the rights of the oppressed.



The Gurus that followed strengthened the tradition; the Ninth Master confronted the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb and sacrificed his life agitating for the religious freedom of oppressed Hindus and Guru Gobind Singh institutionalized the principle by bestowing upon his followers, the Kirpan, the Sword of Mercy and Justice, which was eternally dedicated to the fight against oppression.



The fight against oppression was universal.



It was profoundly more than an attempt at self-preservation. The identity of the victims did not matter.



The report, Oppression In Punjab, is particularly valuable because it epitomizes this fundamental Sikh value – a concern for others.



The authors were Amiya Rao, Arubindo Ghose, Sunil Bhattacharya, Tejinder Ahuja and N.D.Pancholi: mostly non-Sikhs, who put their lives and liberty in great peril by fearlessly reporting what had actually happened to the Sikhs in Operation Blue Star and exposing the lies of the Indian Government.



Guru Nanak and Guru Gobind Singh would have been proud of these men! They understood the ethos of the Kirpan better than most Sikhs do today!



Thirty years after Operation Blue Star, as we reflect upon the events that shook us to the core, it is tremendously important for all Sikhs to reflect upon the courage of these men. But for their actions, and those of a handful of other fearless reporters, the war crimes committed in Amritsar in June 1984 would have been smothered by the Goebbelsian propaganda machine of the Indian Government, which hastily published its infamous ‘White Paper’ in the aftermath of Operation Blue Star in a shameless attempt to whitewash the tragedy that it was.



Painful as it is, with the benefit of thirty years of hindsight, it is abundantly clear, from the Citizens For Democracy report, which was exclusively based on eyewitness interviews conducted immediately after the events of June, that war crimes were committed.



Some of the most harrowing testimony is from a young woman identified only as a ‘girl student’ in the report to protect her identity; in this excerpt, the young woman recounts what happened in the aftermath of the attack:



On June 6 [1984] at o'clock in the evening, they announced a relaxation in the curfew for one hour. Meanwhile, we went through some devious lanes and managed to take shelter in a house which was some distance from the Golden Temple. The Army people announced that everyone should come out. So we came out.



There were about 27-28 persons with us, 5 of them ladies, some elderly men, the rest young boys. The Army made all of us stand in queue. There were 13 boys out of which three I claimed to be my brothers. I did not know them from before. I merely wanted to save them.



I don't know why, perhaps because they thought the three boys were part of our family but the Army released these three boys. They went away.



Out of the remaining male youths, they picked out four and took off their turbans with which they tied their hands behind their backs. Then the Army men beat these four Sikh boys with the butts of their rifles till they fell on the ground and started bleeding. They kept telling the boys all along, "you are terrorists. You were coming from inside. You were taking part in the action. You will be shot."



These boys were shot dead right in front of me. Their age was between 18 and 20 years. I did not know who they were -- circumstances had brought us together by chance. Whenever I recollect that scene, I seem to lose my bearings.



Then they (the Army people) surrounded me and started questioning me. I told my grandmother not to speak a word to them as they were speaking only with bullets. I asked them whether they had come to protect us or to finish us. I said my grandfather was a colonel in the Army ... The Army man ... in charge then asked his colleagues to leave me and my family members. He told me to go away quickly. And so we were saved.





This is only one of numerous reports about unarmed civilians being shot by the Indian Army. The document provides instance after instance of such abuse, based on eyewitness interviews.



Other credible sources have corroborated these stories, making it abundantly clear that war crimes, as defined by the Geneva Convention and the Hague Tribunal, were clearly committed.



The report clearly documents the destruction of the Sikh Reference Library which contained irreplaceable ancient manuscripts and artifacts, well after the operation as over.



There are reports of rampant looting of property by Indian Army soldiers, a fact angrily denied by General K.S.Brar, who directed the operation in a recent television interview.



The reality of Operation Bluestar is out there; it is not hidden; it is readily accessible to anyone who has the courage to seek it out.



The time has come for India, ‘the largest democracy in the world’, a proud nation that aspires to be one of the future leaders of the world, to confront this shameful chapter in her history and bring those responsible for war crimes to account while some of the perpetrators are still alive.



This alone can in some measure revive the lofty vision that Rabindranath Tagore set forth for his then yet to be born nation.





https://twitter.com/sarbpreetsingh



May 12, 2014



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