The Langar Hall
April 24 2009

Genocidees Anonymous: Armenians and Sikhs

Posted by Mehmaan (Guest) in Human Rights, world news on 04 24th, 2009
Blogged: Amol Singh

On the night of April 24, 1915, over 200 of Constantinople’s Armenian
intellectual and civic leaders were taken from their homes and boarded
upon trains headed eastward toward the city of Ankara. What followed
over the next few months would be a concerted, systematic Ottoman
project meant to eradicate the Armenian identity. Millions of
Armenians, depicted by the state as dangerous Russian conspirators and
hazardous to the security of the Ottoman Empire, were uprooted from
their homes and marched across the Turkish desert. What transpired
over the course of that summer was the raping, pillaging, and
butchering of over a million people. Though the Ottoman forces might
have failed in the complete liquidation of a people, genocide served
as a near consolation prize.

As April 24th approaches, Armenians around the world will gather as
they have for the past 90+ years and demand that the Turkish state
take responsibility for its actions. This summer, as Sikhs also embark
on projects to mark the events of 1984, it seems hard to escape the
fact that we too, are becoming part of a global collective searching
for some sort of acceptance of the atrocities that have been done to
us. This sharing of spaces by the world’s downtrodden is allowing for
more nuanced perspectives of each atrocity. In this understanding, the
1915 Armenian genocide becomes not a yearlong campaign to annihilate
Armenia, but rather a set of events concurrent with a larger Ottoman
decades- long campaign meant to undermine Armenian existence. In this
sphere, Operation Blue Star becomes not a plan to rid Harimander Sahib
of radicals hijacking the Sikh identity, but rather another incident
in a set of systematic attacks on Sikh sovereignty by the Indian
Center.

In this mold, we are becoming participants in a unique Genocidees
Anonymous of sorts, where the recognition of our tragedies becomes
cast into a set of layered political demands.

As a Sikh friend stated recently, `We’re the Armenians looking for a
genocide, the Palestinians looking for a home, and the Tibetans
looking to practice our faith in the face of an intolerant
government¦’ This is nothing new for the quam. Our history can be
marked by stages where relentless attacks on Sikh autonomy have forced
us to assert and reassert our visions for social justice. The most
remarkable part of these assertions has been the universalization of
our demands for justice. Whether it was Guru Hargobind Ji rejecting
release from Gwalior kila (jail) because freedom did not mean freedom
if it those imprisoned alongside him would still languish while he
left or Bhai Kanhaiya giving water to those mandated to annihilate
anyone like him, a Sikh existence has meant an inherent demand for
engagement with the world.

As an undergraduate at what is considered to be a leading US
university, the interpretation of Sikhi many students including myself
have received through our work with the community, is an attack on
anything that deals with any engagement with the world around us. It
seems implausible to construct a vision of the world where we can
become active practitioners of the Sarbat da Bhalla yearned for in
ardaas, if we continue to view the world with utter and sheer
contempt. Over the past year, Sikhs attempting to engage with their
local communities have been likened to rapists and accused of
prostitution for holding turban tying days by professors considered to
be the voices of Sikh academia. We have been warned of associating
with Goray (white) Sikhs because they are practitioners of a falsified
version of Sikhi. Entire organizations have been critiqued and
undermined for offering `lightweight models of Sikhi’ without the
presentation of any alternative.

Any engagement they have had with the American populace at large has
been deemed conciliatory and thus subversive and dangerous. At first
glance, it seems easy to simply listen and subsequently ignore what we
believe to be a confined understanding of Sikhi. Yet at the point
where the collective investment of the Panth, through the work of
entire curriculums and organizations can become so easily undermined
by a terrified few, then we fear that the greater global challenges
that we as Sikhs feel mandated to engage in are placed in jeopardy.

A part of us still holds true to the conviction that the heroes of
Sikh lore we grew up with would be immune to this disease of
communalism. It seems almost nonsensical for us to think a Sikh
history whereupon Guru Tegh Bahadhur doesn’t faithfully march towards
Chandi Chowk because he is protecting the right of religious
expression, even if it is indirectly for the leaders of a faith who
through caste, have mandated one of the world’s most expansive forms
of subjugation. I fail to believe that the forces of the Dal Khalsa
would not march into Afghanistan if those taken were only Sikh
women. Our history is not littered with heroes who served faithfully
for an insular cause. Rather, we cherish those who looked at these
artificial societal veneers and used pen and sword to shatter them
beyond comprehension. To once again become the embodiment of what our
ancestors were, and to adopt the tragedies of the faceless and
powerless, we must learn to reject those within our panth who wish to
narrowly define what it means to be Sikh. Sikhi, in my humble opinion,
is not meant to be an expression of the insecurities toward the world
of a few, but rather a space so special that it elicits a response
that shakes the world’s oppressors toward justice.