The Hindu : Bhindranwale's martyrdom

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jun 19, 2003

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Bhindranwale's martyrdom

By Nonica Datta

It is difficult to say whether the SGPC has simply fulfilled the aspirations of the Sikhs... What is, however, clear is that conferring martyrdom on Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale has caused unease among the political parties.

NINETEEN YEARS after the Operation Bluestar, the Akal Takht has finally declared Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale a martyr. The Shiromani Akali Dal, too, has endorsed Bhindranwale's martyrdom. Its president, Prakash Singh Badal, has said that besides Bhindranwale, about 400 Sikhs killed in Operation Bluestar, in 1984, were all martyrs.

The Sikh organisations have heartily welcomed the move. Once for all this has put an end to the controversy whether Bhindranwale is dead or alive. Though every year radical Sikh organisations used to perform religious ceremonies in order to confer `martyrdom' on Bhindranwale on the `ghallughara (holocaust) day' of Operation Bluestar, many, among the Sikhs, were still not sure whether he was actually killed during the military operation. The two-decade-old controversy ended on June 6, with the acceptance of the `siropa' (robe of honour) by Bhindranwale's son, Bhai Isher Singh, from the Jathedar of the Akal Takht and the SGPC chief. Doubtless, the Sikhs have now a modern martyr. Yet, it is difficult to say whether the SGPC has simply fulfilled the aspirations of the Sikh communities. As for the longer term, it is too soon to know what the consequences of his martyrdom will be for the Sikh community and politics. What is, however, clear is that such a verdict has caused unease among the political parties. Both the Congress and BJP have described the step as unfortunate. "How can he be called a martyr," asks the RSS Chief, K.S. Sudarshan, "when he had led the struggle to break this country?" This move has aroused fears of the revival of a separatist movement.

Whatever conclusions we may draw, the fact is that the Sikh outfits have resurrected the most powerful symbol of Sikh history. There is something to be said about the way martyrdom has time and again functioned as a potent symbol of resistance and hope within the Sikh community. A martyr or `shahid' dies in the Sikh tradition, heroically, `testifying to his faith or her faith on the path of God'. The act of martyrdom (shahadat) is a commitment to the faith, which, according to the believers, is invoked against oppression and persecution.

Yet, the concept has developed historically, and has acquired different meanings in the changing historical contexts. Contrary to present-day assertions, the idea of martyrdom does not have a long history in the Sikh tradition. In fact, the notion of a Sikh martyr acquired prominence only in the 19th century. In the 16th and 17th centuries, in the hymns of the Sikh gurus, the word shahid was, in fact, used to signify a Muslim rather than a Sikh martyr. Nowhere did the notion of `bearing witness to one's life', now central to the Sikh tradition, exist. Martyrdom was never an essential feature of the nascent Sikh tradition.

The Khalsa leadership, in the 18th century, discarded the concept of shahid as simply Islamic. But not for long. Louis E. Fenech's work has shown us that the idea of martyrdom acquired salience in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A new understanding of the Sikh martyr was grafted onto the Sikh imagination. In 1921, the influential newspaper Akali implored the Sikhs, `O sons of the martyr!... Today, we must follow the sacred, exemplary achievement of Guru Tegh Bahadur and become martyrs'. The martyr thereafter became a powerful symbol of Sikh identity, and martyrdom came to be firmly located within the Tat Khalsa Sikhism.

Not many Sikh ideologues highlight the changing meanings of martyrdom. Instead, they view it as an eternal component of Sikhs' glorious past. The Akalis selectively used the rhetoric of martyrdom as a political and cultural idiom to mobilise the community in the 20th century. Its potency was witnessed in the 1940s, when many Sikhs volunteered to sacrifice their lives to oppose Muslim League's claim to Pakistan.

After Independence, Sikh nationalists unambiguously inherited the Singh Sabha legacy, and highlighted the importance of the Sikh legacy of self-sacrifice and martyrdom. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, large numbers of Sikhs came to highlight the relevance of martyrdom for the protection of their religion. Crucially, the Sikh leadership used this notion in the context of changing Centre-State relations, and amid the prevailing political discourses of freedom, justice and democracy.

Bhindranwale too drew on the glory of a reified Sikh tradition of martyrdom. And he used its discourse to fuel militancy in Punjab. He persuaded the Sikhs to take up arms against Indira Gandhi's `Hindu government'. Defending the Akal Takht in June 1984, he was amongst the 35 who did not leave the Golden Temple premises. He is said to have likened himself to the historical hero of the Sikhs, Baba Dip Singh, who had lost his head in a battle with the Afghans, but carried it, according to popular beliefs, in his hands to lay it down at the Golden Temple complex. In a speech, Bhindranwale said, `even if I have to give my head, may I never lose my love for the Sikh faith'. Using modern means of communication, he appropriated the symbols of the last Sikh Guru, and compared his opposition to the Indian Government with the Sikhs' heroic fight against the Mughals and the Afghans. This was not all! As a witness to the army attack on the Akal Takht, Bhindranwale did not escape but suffered, in popular perceptions, as a selfless martyr. Indeed, Operation Bluestar gave the movement for Khalistan, as Khushwant Singh says, its first martyr in Bhindranwale. For militant Sikhs, he became a rallying symbol inspiring fresh martyrdoms. The Khalistan movement fed on Bhindranwale's `supreme sacrifice'.

Yet, what needs emphasising is that Bhindranwale's martyrdom derives legitimacy from those influential sections of Sikh society which have for long glorified the Sikh tradition of martyrdom, used it to strengthen their own political agenda, and have flattened out the diversity of the multi-layered Sikh tradition. In contemporary times, religious symbols, like martyrdom, have meaning only in relation to specific ethno-nationalist movements and struggles. Such contested symbols heighten religious violence, and foment divisions within civil society. Surely, the Akal Takht knows too well the passionate commitment of the Sikhs to martyrdom. Yet, the question remains: will this new martyr have any positive and meaningful message for Sikh communities? And if so, what message.

In fact, in times when regional and ethnic identities are ascendant, the language of martyrdom can exercise a baneful effect on society. Indeed, the Basque, Irish, Palestinian, LTTE and Afghanistan cases warn us against the self-destructive, defeatist and violent consequences of political and religious martyrdoms. The function and influence of the exemplary martyr is, to say the least, regressive.

Commemorating Bhindranwale's martyrdom is no way to heal the wounds of Sikhs bruised by Operation Bluestar and the anti-Sikh riots of 1984. Nor would it soothe the pain of both Hindu and Sikh communities scarred by the police and ethno-nationalist violence in North India. One only hopes that Bhindranwale's recognition as a martyr closes the painful chapter of our recent violent past. One also hopes that the Sikh leadership now speaks a different language that gives legitimacy to the Sikhs' cultural sentiment, as well as favours human dignity, tolerance and consensus within a multi-religious and multi-ethnic society. In the end, it is ultimately up to the Sikhs to revere or deny Bhindranwale as a martyr in the annals of history.

(The writer teaches history at Miranda House, University of Delhi).

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