Criminalizing Dissent and the Repression of Sikh Activism

The reassertion of Indian political hegemony over the region is thus not the result of a political settlement or the resolution of Sikh political demands but the imposition of a violent peace

In light of the Indian state’s recent counter-insurgency operation in Punjab, it is imperative that we understand the nature and structures involved in India’s genocidal repression of Sikh activism in Punjab. The events that have unfolded in recent weeks did not emerge out of a vacuum, but as a result of an ongoing political conflict that has not reached any settlement. Serious attempts at analysis and understanding must resist the impulse to erase this context or misrepresent the conflict as a problem of ‘terrorism’ and ‘extremism’, or conversely as individual human rights issues that can be resolved through the Indian judicial system. This excerpt from a forthcoming publication by the Khalistan Centre outlines this deeper structural context and the resilience of Sikh activism for Khalistan. 

Following the British Transfer of Power to the Indian National Congress (INC) in 1947, the Indian state has continued to use all of the forces at its disposal to maintain the occupation and crush Sikh aspirations for independence through a fluid strategy ranging between assimilation and annihilation. After the counter insurgency genocide between 1984-1995, to quell the armed Sikh liberation movement for a separate state, Khalistan, the Indian state continues to use its judicial and coercive security apparatus to criminalize and repress Sikh political dissent and expression.

In response to a renewed increase in Sikh political consciousness and mobilization in recent years, Indian security forces have been clamping down on activists across the region.

A significant proportion of those arrested are explicitly accused of engaging and promoting public discussions on Sikh sovereignty over social media or other democratic channels. Further, the demographic targeting of Sikh activists continues the genocidal policy which explicitly identifies amritdhari (initiated) Sikhs and those who maintain a dastar (turban) and beard, as national enemies, and therefore disproportionately targeted as legitimized subjects of suspicion, arrest, and/or elimination.

In the early 1990s, the state’s vicious counter- insurgency strategy to eliminate and permanently foreclose Sikh dissent was escalated in a well-documented formulaic process:

• Militarizing the police and overwhelming the region with an armed military presence;

• Enforced disappearances of human rights activists, journalists, and democratic Sikh political leadership;

• Incentivizing the extrajudicial murder of activists and guerrillas with impunity through an elaborate bounty system using unmarked funds; and

• Crushing popular support through illegal detention, enforced disappearances and draconian laws.

In the interests of a military solution to the conflict, the Indian state police force was highly militarized and supplemented with the mass influx of forces administered by Delhi including the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), the Border Security Force (BSF), and the Indo-Tibetan Border Force (ITBF). The size of the state police force exploded over the period, with over 70,000 officers in March 1994 compared to a force smaller than 25,000 in 1975; this made Punjab the most highly concentrated area in the subcontinent with nearly 100 police officers per 100 square kilometres in comparison to a national average of 45 officers across the country.

This massive force would be supplemented by an army presence between 100,000-150,000 soldiers along with an additional 50,000 paramilitary troops. The most perverse twist to this scenario, however, is that the cost of upkeep for this military occupation—designed to militarily repress the self-determination of Punjab—has been estimated to cost the people of Punjab well over 80 billion rupees—for the state police operations alone.

This occupation could not, however, contain Sikh resistance and spurred the armed secessionist insurgency.

The landslide victory of Sikh secessionist candidates in the 1989 parliamentary election, and the resounding boycott of the 1992 state assembly election mark clear democratic mandates for the secession of Punjab from the Indian state. Despite this overwhelming rejection of Indian state institutions, this latter election brought the Beant-led Congress government to power with the force of the military occupation at his back. Beant ascended to power with the popular support of less than 10% of the electorate in an election featuring less than 25% participation—and literally zero participation in many Sikh constituencies. This turnout drastically contrasts from the Punjab average of 68.2% between 1966-1985.5 This illegitimate government facade placed significant resources into the hands of the security forces with a tacit agreement of impunity.

By first picking off human rights activists and outspoken journalists in the region, security forces effectively silenced the means to document violations to maintain transparency against the repressive tactics of illegal detention and enforced disappearances. In the spring of 1992, leading activists of the Punjab Human Rights Organization were arrested and kept incommunicado in illegal custody. Exhibiting a penchant for violence and a blatant disdain for democratic norms and human rights, Chief Minister, Beant, openly declared in the Punjab Assembly that “his government would not release Bains [one of the PHRO leaders arrested] because his organization was engaged in defending terrorists.”

The result of this counter insurgency genocide has been the grave erasure of democratic political space for Sikh political dissent. The enforced peace since the decline of the armed insurgency is maintained not through political settlement, but by maintaining the omnipresence of repressive state violence—and making it felt by potential Sikh dissidents. The continued incarceration of political prisoners beyond their legal sentences, continued fake encounters, torture, and arrests, and the promotion rather than prosecution of mass human rights violators are clear evidence of this.

Restricting the public space of Punjab exclusively to Indian nationalist forces, the state has maintained its coercive judicial-military apparatus to swiftly eliminate any Sikh political opposition through extrajudicial killings, judicial interference, and the lived reality of the omnipresence of state violence. The genocidal violence of the counter- insurgency maintains its lingering presence and is reproduced daily upon those who seek to dissent—forcing them to live under a regime in which violent perpetrators maintain positions of power over survivors.

The reassertion of Indian political hegemony over the region is thus not the result of a political settlement or the resolution of Sikh political demands but the imposition of a violent peace built upon genocide.

In recent years, especially since the February 2017 election of the Amrinder-led Congress government, Indian security forces have ramped up concerted efforts to arrest, intimidate, and harass young Sikh activists. Using the backdrop of a spike in insurgent strikes in Punjab at the time and the resurgence of multiple Sikh guerrilla organizations, state security forces manipulated this context to debilitate grassroots Sikh political activism by criminalizing Sikh dissent as sedition and terrorism. In standard fashion, Indian security forces alleged foreign conspiracies to destabilize the country and swooped in to neutralize activists across the region.

The state’s vicious military operations violently eliminated Sikh political activists, guerrillas, and their families from political discourse with impunity in the early 1990s and continues to enforce its erasure with the omnipresence of state violence. It is crucial that the recent wave of repression in the past several weeks is understood in this context of a political conflict between two political entities rather than misrepresented as a problem of terrorism and extremism, or conversely as individual human rights issues that can be resolved through the Indian judicial system. 

Despite these brutal conditions however, voices of Sikh dissent continue to resist the repression of Indian security forces. With various mass mobilizations in recent years, a new generation of Sikh activists continues to claim its right to political dissent and sovereignty. These developments clearly illustrate the lack of closure to Sikh demands for self- determination and the ongoing nature of this political conflict.

With the emergence of renewed political consciousness and mobilization, it is imperative that the Indian state immediately cease its repression of Sikh political expression and dissent. This is the only way that can guarantee a peaceful and amicable settlement to the complex political issues at hand. If the Indian state continues with repression of dissent and Sikh expression, it calls upon the inevitability of renewed armed struggle for the establishment of Khalistan.

Sikhs, as a sovereign people, continue to resist and build institutions of sovereign self-governance and will continue to do so in multiple arenas outside the terms and conditions that the state tries to impose. As long as the Indian state continues to repress the right to self- determination and restricts the political space necessary to advocate for Khalistan, the panth will resolutely continue its movement to exercise sovereignty by any means necessary.

-ਖਾਲਿਸਤਾਨ ਕੇਂਦਰ | @KhalistanCentre | www.khalistan.org 

The Khalistan Centre is dedicated to supporting and cultivating Gurmat-driven leadership to further the struggle for Khalistan.