Unhealed Wounds

Article originally appeared in The Caravan.

In 1919, soldiers of the British Indian Army sprayed bullets on a large body of Indians who had gathered at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar to peacefully protest the Rowlatt Act, which authorised the Raj to – among other things – arrest anyone suspected to be a ‘terrorist’ (namely, our garden-variety freedom-fighter) without trial. Today, the Jallianwala Bagh Memorial stands as a symbol of State repression in the colonial era. A stone’s throw away stands another monument, the Golden Temple, another symbol of ‘the Sword of State’ that testified that the legacy of authoritarianism carried on after the British left the country.

A year after the Jallianwala Bagh incident, Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer, on whose orders the British police opened fire killing around 2,000 people (according to an inscription at the Memorial), was made to resign. Although one official’s resignation is too meagre to be called justice, the move was a monumental apology compared to the bald establishmentarian impunity that followed the hundreds, if not thousands, of non-Army casualties in the Indian army’s attack, known as Operation Blue Star, in June 1984 on the 16th century Golden Temple complex. The attack aimed at finishing off the militant proponents of Khalistan, a proposed independent Sikh state. Operation Blue Star marked the beginning of a decade-long conflict between armed representatives of the State – both the Central and the state governments – and Khalistani militants, in which thousands of people, mainly Sikh youth, were subjected to torture and rape and disappeared in extrajudicial killings. The almost total impunity of the State was partly bestowed by the draconian Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA, which sought, in essence, to replicate the purpose of the Rowlatt Act) and partly by the State’s role as both perpetrator and defender.

Today, the hustle-bustle of city life in Amritsar, known as the capital of Sikhism, has eclipsed the wounded psyche of a community which time has not healed. But a closer look reveals the stories of those who lost virtually everything to the non-liability of the State.

At the Golden Temple complex, not a single one of the white marble stones on the walls makes any mention of Operation Blue Star, not even in the Akal Takht building, which was the epicentre of the fiercest gunbattle. On most of these stones are etched the names of the martyred Sikh who fought the British; others have the names of generous donors to the temple.

But mention Operation Blue Star to any of the Sikh volunteers here and they whisper, “Bullet marks are still visible on the walls of Akal Takht.” Elsewhere in the city, try to start a conversation on the Punjab Police and while the volume drops, the content does not – there is story upon story of abduction, slaughter and torture. Some people who have seen their family members tortured and killed by the Punjab Police seem to have vowed not to move on until they get justice.

“Sacrifice is in our blood. We will keep fighting for justice,” said Paramjit Kaur Khalra, whose husband, human rights activist Jaswant Singh Khalra, was abducted and killed by the police in 1995 as punishment for exposing the secret, illegal cremations of people killed by the police between 1984 and 1994. Her head and shoulders covered with a shawl, she rarely smiles. Framed pictures of her husband plaster the walls of her living room.