The Attack on Political Sikhi

[MUSIC] Welcome to SIGCAST. Brought to you by SIG Research Institute, illuminating every path. [MUSIC] Waigujika Kalsa Waigujiki Fateh. Thank you for joining us today on the SIGCAST. Today we're joined by Senthpier Singh, who is a research associate at the SIG Research Institute and is pursuing his PhD in sociology at York University. In this episode, we'll be embarking on a journey through Senthpier Singh's article, the Attack on Political Sikki, which you can find the whole article on SIGCRAE.org. This article delves into why the 1984 June attack and the November pogroms happened. Although SIGC's make up a small percentage of India's population, they have had a large political presence since even before independence from the British in 1947. This highlights the vast political capacity of the SIGCAST. So today we'll explore how the government's target in 1984 was the destruction of this political capacity. Thank you Senthpierji for joining us today. Thank you so much for having me. Waigujika Kalsa Waigujiki Fateh. It's really nice to be talking to you again, Manin. Yes. Yeah. So yeah, let's just hop right into it. In this article, you take some time to argue that although SIGC's know what happened in 1984, so they know about the events, there's maybe less knowledge about why these incidents occur. So what do you think people assume is the why for why these events occurred? And why don't people know about the, yeah, maybe actual reason? I think history can sometimes get complicated and we can simplify narratives in our mind. I think a lot of people assume that it's something like, you know, India doesn't like SIGC's and that's why we were attacked or in their Gandhi personally had it out for SIGC's and that's why we were attacked. And it's sort of these simplified narratives, which aren't that far off the mark to be honest, but they lose a lot of the real details of the event and fail to put into place all of the social political reasons why events like this happened. You know, since partition 84 is really the most important event in the SIG, in SIG history in the last 100 years. And it's had a tremendous impact on all aspects of SIGC, both within Punjab and the diaspora. And so to understand why this event occurred, what the reasons behind it were, how far back that actually stretches, I think that's really important. And I think it allows six to really put a broader understanding of what's going on in South Asia, what's going on in India and what's going on with SIGC's today. You know, we know with the farmers protests and so on and so forth that there's still a lot of political upheaval in Punjab. And to understand the roots of that, you have to understand the roots of 84. Yeah. Yeah, so yeah, I think we can work from pre-1947 all the way to the contemporary context in our conversation today. So yeah, maybe let's start with what was the backdrop against which the events of 1984 occurred. So what was happening before 1984? Maybe what was, yeah, setting the stage for these events to occur? We could be talking for hours and hours about that. You know, the late 70s and early 80s were a time of a lot of political and social turmoil in Punjab. The green revolution had happened. There was a lot of economic upheaval in Punjab. There was a lot of social issues that were starting to be noticeable for the first time. Issues that are still quite prominent in Punjab today, like alcohol abuse, drug abuse, rapid unemployment, issues like domestic violence, sexual assault. All of these issues really started to come to the fore in the late 70s. At the same time, this is post 1966. So six had gotten a Punjabi Subba, Punjabi State. Six were a majority in the state. But the Punjabi Subba that had been achieved in 1966 was not completely what six had been asking for. There were some real issues with it. And that leads directly into 84. So the main issues were things like access to water rights, which is still an ongoing problem in Punjab, as we well know. And other socio-economic demands. And all of these different demands that the six had was encapsulated in a document called the UNTSPERSIDE resolution, which had been approved by the Shroni Akali, the main six political party in 1978 as a principle by which they would be struggling for in the future. Like that would be their main political campaign would be the implementation of the UNTSPERSIDE resolution. So there's these political demands happening. There's a social up people happening, there's economic up people. And at the same time, there's a lot more violence occurring against six at the time as well. So you have the 1978 Armistar massacre, where 13/6 are killed from the kind of getting the death time that the Nirmitriksal, you have in the wake of the Armistar massacre of 78, another massacre happening in Ghanpur, in 79. And a lot of violence starting to happen where we see for the first time a pattern that would emerge much stronger, unfortunately, in the late 80s and early 90s, which is disappearances and force extrajudicial killings start to happen. At the same time, the Congress party, the Nirmitriksal party, were really desperate to stay in power. And part of her campaign to stay in power was to demonize six. And this demonization of a minority group within the country is an old pattern that we've seen in lots of countries before. It's sort of a tied and tried and true methodology for tyrants to stay in power is to ostracize and scapegoat a certain community. And so there's increasing violence against six, there's increasing discrimination against six, there's social and economic and political upheaval, there's political demands, all these things are leading up into 84. And so it's a really complex series of events. I hope that the article lays it out in a more straightforward way, but that's pretty much what's happening leading up to 84. Yeah, I think yeah, I folks want more context. If they want, yeah, like more of a deep dive, they can access the article, which is called Attack on Political Sticky. You also do a great job in the article of talking about like the character of Indra Gandhi. Yeah, if you could spend some time talking about that, I think that also could be helpful for people who are listening. So Indra Gandhi's an interesting character. She's really lauded in the West. I remember a few years ago, there was a children's book about strong women from history and she had been included in that list until six had protested against this children's book publisher who really had no idea and weren't doing it maliciously, but just thought, oh, wow, this is so inspiring. A female prime minister of a country, that's not known for being very progressive on gender issues. So people have this sort of idea in the West of what Indra Gandhi was, but the reality of Indra Gandhi is very different. And to understand it, the Gandhi, you have to first understand the fact that she was really groomed for power. Her father was a prime minister of India, the founding prime minister of India. Her grandfather was one of the leaders of the Congress Party before independence and partition. And so she was raised in the seat of power and it was assumed that when her father died, she would become prime minister. So it's very much like this succession, not a very democratic system, not a very meritocracy at all. It's just assumed that Indra Gandhi is going to become the leader because she's survived the law of NATO's daughter, right? At the same time, once Indra comes into power, she really changes certain things about what the Congress Party represented and how it behaved. Now, the Congress Party always had an issue with wanting a very strong central government, which had led to a lot of conflict with six, especially because we wanted more rights for individual states and regions to have protection over their language and culture and religion, so on and so forth. But NATO had been really focused on trying to build a secular state and trying to develop a country based on very socialist ideals to some degree. Whereas Gandhi wasn't as economically ideological, but she was more interested in staying in power. And that was her main goal and main focus. And in 1975, she was found guilty of an abuse of power. And she was told to vacate her seat in the House of Commons or what they call the Lok Sabha in India. And to go to jail in fact for having cheated in the last election prior to 1975. And instead of obeying the wishes of the Supreme Court and following the rule of law, in the Gandhi declares a national emergency and suspends a constitution, gets rid of all civil liberties and civil rights and essentially becomes a dictator within the country for the next two and a half years. So that's really the background of the type of person in the Gandhi wish. She was someone who would essentially break the country's democratic tradition, break the countries, you know, it's still only like a 30 year old country at that point, but really destroy all of its political traditions just in a quest to stay in power. And she's someone who would go after her enemies pretty ruthlessly, which she did during the emergency. And the emergency is important to understand because six were one of the groups that or perhaps the only social religious groups that protested against the emergency on mass in huge numbers. And six went to jail in huge numbers to protest emergency. I think 40% of the people arrested during emergency were six. So this incredible outpouring of fighting for democracy and fighting for rights really irked in their Gandhi. And I think there was a sense of a personal nature to her dislike of six because of what happened during emergency. But it also just went really easily with her larger campaign of like, you know, let's demonize six. Let's say that their age is a Pakistan and we can create a situation where the Hindu heartland will vote for me and I will stay in power. And so she was someone who was willing to do that and to go after a minority group to stay in power. So kind of coming back to something you had shared. Now that we have like the political contacts, the social, the economic, with the local, we have the national context for the events leading up to 1984. You had mentioned something called the Anantpur Sahib resolution. Yeah, can you share a little bit more about what this document contained, what it called for, who it was written by and who it was for. Yeah. So the Anantpur Sahib resolution was a stock read by the Shor Meek Ali Dal. And it was written by one of the sort of greatest six scholars of the 20th century and man by the name of Suddhaka Borsing. For those of you who have studied six, the sixth theology and history, you probably read some of something of his in the past. And we use his writings, for example, in Suki 201 in our course at Siddhik. So Suddhaka Borsing wrote the Anantpur Sahib resolution and it's really beautifully written document because it was written by Siddhaka Borsing. And the dimension, it's thought of as this really radical document that was advocating for a separate sixth state and something that sent to Nelson Finer, Valet had fought for. So it must be this incredibly controversial thing. But if you actually look at the document, it's not advocating for a separate second line at all. It's asking for a sick rights within the structure of the Indian government, within the structure of the Indian state. And its demands are pretty pedestrian by the standards of political demands that you might see from a minority group. It's asking for protection for language, protection for religion, protection for culture. It's asking for simple things like setting up a broadcast in radio out of her mother's side, which now that we have video recordings of her mother's side, going out live all over the world, seems like a pretty small ask. But at that time, the Indian government was refusing to let a radio broadcast believe from her mother's side. And then it had larger economic demands, which were really progressive and quite inspirational. So talking about things like providing economic benefits to so-called low-cast people, to women, to minorities. And this isn't just for Punjab, this is for people around India. So to provide free farm equipment to low-cast farmers, to provide interest-free loans to low-cast businessmen and so on and so forth, to economically uplift people in the country and to really help create a more egalitarian society. So it had those economic demands, it had some religious demands. It had some Punjab specific demands as well, like Punjabi water rights and Punjab getting its capital back, which was a big point of contention, because Jandigarh had been made as a capital for Punjab after Lahore had been lost in partition. And then after Punjab was a self-partition in 1966 to make Punjabi Subha, Jandigarh had been taken away from Punjab and created into a national capital. National, I forgot what the term they used, but it's essentially directly controlled by the federal government, not by the Punjab government, and it's a joint capital of Punjab and Haryana. And so this was really a sticking point to six that like our capital had been taken away and it's not under our control. So it had political demands like that, but I really have to emphasize it was nothing too revolutionary. And when people like read the not-percept resolution, you're like, oh, this is what Suntran Elsen was fighting for. This is what six were fighting for leading up to 84, like this is not a radical document. This is like a progressive, economically forward-looking, you know, religiously inclusive document that's really trying to set up a new way for the Indian system to operate. And one that respects much more, the fact that India is not a monoculture, not one religion, one people, one culture, one language, but it's the fact made up of many people's and many cultures and languages and traditions and to respect that part of the South Asian context, yeah. Yeah, I'm really working to like flatten out the Indian identity by making it yeah, fit into this discourse of one, with one nation, one language. Yes, which we see really prominent now with Hindutva, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you can kind of see its roots being formed, not its roots, but you can see some of it, the discourse like even starting then continuing at that point. Yeah, so what stood out to me also was the ideological and epistemological violence that you talk about. And I feel like those are really like academic terms and people get lost in the terminology and what they mean. So maybe we can start with what those two words mean and then how that those violences occurred in our in this particular context. Yeah, so when I'm talking about epistemological or ideological violence, I'm talking about violence, not of the physical nature, but violence against the ideas that Sikhi represents or the traditions that Sikhi represents. And those ideas are things like a negallitarian society, a progressive society, one in which people are included, one in which there aren't distinctions made based on gender or caste, one in which the tradition of media beauty is really captured and put forward this idea that Sikhi are sovereign in all spaces and social political spaces as well as spiritual spaces. So the ideological or epistemological violence that's happening is that the Indian government is trying to undermine these central Sikhi principles. They're trying to attack the central Sikhi principles. So the attack in '84 was a very physical attack, a very brutal attack in which thousands of people were killed, in which thousands of people were assaulted and just horrible things happened. But it's part of a larger campaign to undermine what I call political Sikhi. And even using the term political Sikhi is a little bit of a misnomer and I pointed that in the article because all Sikhi is political, to be honest. And that's really the heart of the issue, is that Sikhi is political, Sikhi is a faith tradition that doesn't see a distinction between the political and the social, between the political and the spiritual. And so an attack on political Sikhi is just simply an attack on Sikhi at its core. The idea that Sikhi should not be involved in political spaces, we should not be politically active, we should not be organizing as a community, we should not be advocating for certain, for our rights in certain ways. And that's really the heart of, I believe, what happened in '84. Six were and remain, actually, today an incredibly potent political force, and a community that is able to organize on a scale that very few communities in India are able to do. In fact, I don't think any other community in India is able to organize at that level that six have been able to, you know, considering that we're less than 2% of the population, our political significance in the Indian context has been really outsized. You know, in independence, we've all heard the stats. How many six were involved in independent struggle? How many six were arrested? How many six were executed by the British? It's really incredible, right? And post-independence, post-partition, we see six also organizing huge numbers for Punjabi Suba to get a Punjabi speaking state during emergency against the Gandhi's dictatorial policies. So six really organized in these huge campaigns to get political action achieved, to get political aims achieved. And that really, really disturbs the monolith of central Indian government, this idea that everyone needs to follow the national line. No one should be too critical of the country. Everyone needs to be patriotic. No one should be compromising talking about their own rights too much. All of those sort of big ideas that India is based on, six kept undermining that with our political activism again and again. And that's what the Indian government wanted to destroy. That's what the Indian government wanted to undermine. And that's what I mean by epistemological violence was this idea of political psyche of like let's be involved, let's try to change the world, let's try to be socially and politically active and let's not just try, let's actually do it, let's organize as a community and huge numbers and do it. That's what the Indian government wanted to stop. And so when we talk about a genocide, you know, there's different types of genocides that happen. And the 1984 as represented genocide, but it's not like a genocide where everyone who is even one sixteenth sick was rounded up and put into a concentration camp and executed like what happened to the Roma or European Jewish people in World War II. That's not the type of genocide that six underwent, but six didn't undergo a cultural and political trends and where our traditions were under salt, our values were under salt. And the targeting of leadership and people within the community who were politically active was a way to try to undermine the community's political power and strength. And the eighties were unfortunately very like horrifically successful at that. If you look at Punjab politics even today, there's a whole generation missing in that political milieu because a whole generation of leaders of women and men in Punjab who were politically active were wiped out by the government in the eighties and nineties. And their voices are missing from the Punjab political scene. So it's that's what I mean by this epistemological policy goes hand in hand with the physical violence and both of them work together to try to undermine what I call political secure just sikki in general. Yeah. And I think everything you're talking about here, the political sikki, the sikki on its own which is inherently political, the meaty beauty is also speaking to the sikk sikki that you also reference. Is there anything else maybe that you want to add about the sikk sikki because it is brought up in the article like what is the sikk sikki and how did it come to be as it is? I know that's also a loaded question but maybe for the context that we're talking about we could focus on that. Yeah, for sure. So the sikk sikki really originated as good an onic sikki and it's this idea of meaty beauty and this idea of like you're a person in the world who can have an impact in the world and your goal as a human being is not just spiritual liberation, it's not just for your own needs. It's to really make the society around you into a better place and better means something very literal which is a more equitable egalitarian society where people are not exploited, where people are cared for and protected, where those who have lesser means are assisted and push forward and where political leadership and social leadership is not something that's concentrated in a minority but is instead sort of spread throughout the community in this really radical way and that's what the sikk sikki is. The sikk sikki is this idea of like we are going to change the world and we're going to do it to make the world into a more equitable place to really represent the core principles of what ikkoan kār really stands for and what ikkoan kār really stands for as this idea that the divine is within all things equally and can we make that vision of ikkoan kār into a social reality into a political reality and all of sikk history has sort of been a struggle to try to bring that vision of ikkoan kār into the social realm, into the political realm and that's what came up, that's what butted heads, that's what sort of came up against into conflict with the Indian state because sikk sikki and i talked about this in the article six consider themselves and always will as in the ada bant as a unique community and bant is a hard work to translate and sometimes we translate it as nation and nation works you know but it's not exactly nation, it's not exactly community, it's not exactly people, it's that and more and different and it's a uniquely sick term but what it means is that the sikk let's just say the sikk people that the spunt is always sovereign regardless of the context that it's sovereign even under british colonialism that it's sovereign even when in jitsingh is ruling and that is sovereign when in when we're living under the Indian state and that is something that the Indian government could not abide by, they could not handle the fact that of sikk sikki, sikki, sikki themselves to be a sovereign people, a sovereign state, a sovereign community that is not necessarily whose allegiance is not to the Indian government first and foremost but it's first and foremost allegiance is to guru gratin guru punth and that's where six allegiance always lies and that's really something that the Indian state has not been able to handle, is still not able to handle and that doesn't mean that we're not good citizens and that doesn't mean that we don't take part in the Indian social or political scene in fact six were very involved and six really were proud to be Indian because we had worked so hard to free the country from Britain so we could be citizens of india, we could be proud citizens of india but at the same time we are also part of a distinct community, a distinct punth that is something different than india and our legist will always be there first and then to india second and that's something that indian nationalists really can't understand i think even i think they can't really wrap their head around that idea yeah yeah i feel like this wrapping around wrapping their head around this idea is really helpful to think about for why yeah like the current context is the way that it is i know we've we've talked about a lot of different reasons for the why and as we shared you can yeah check out the article on the website but just to bring us all back onto the same page maybe yeah share a quick summary of what the government schools were in 1984 and yeah which is related to the why 1984 occurred yeah so the government schools was not to wipe out sicki but it was to wipe out the political capacity of sicki so that if something like emergency happened again that there would not be this one community that was fighting back against the dictatorial policies of indagandhi it was to wipe out this idea that there's this one community that's demanding rights all the time and advocating for it political and social rights and organizing in these massive campaigns were like tens of thousands of people are getting arrested. In the thumb of the march, the numbers are like really ridiculous. Within a two-year period, it's something like 300,000 people were arrested, which is just crazy numbers. To imagine a political campaign where that many people were arrested in that short amount of time just demonstrates how united the sick community was, how wide-scale these movements were and how strong the commitment was to the movement amongst the sick population. And you can find these pictures online, really inspirational pictures from Punjabi Subba, for example, or from the 1920s, where you can see mothers with their children in their laps or holding their children in front of a cut that gets waiting to go out and give themselves up for arrest, where you have entire villages marching together in the 1920s to free-grow us from a hunt control. So this political capacity of six, so when we organize, when we come together, we become this unstoppable force that will just roll over the state. That's what they wanted to destroy, and that's why 84 happened. It was to destroy that political capacity of the sick population. And yeah, we'll get to whether they were successful or not next, but that was really the main goal. And everything that happened in '84, the horror of it, the scale of it, I think was for that goal, in my opinion. And it really brings things into context because, you know, why would the any government attack her mother's side on one of the busy stays of the year? I'm good, I just have shahidi. Well, if you really want to break a community spirit, you would attack its heart, and you would do it on a day when there were lots of people there. If you really wanted to break a community, you would target its members across the country in really horrific violence. And this includes sexual violence and physical violence, which is what happened in November of '84, all across the subcontinent. Six were targeted in almost every state of the country. Injus is really horrific violence. And violence that was really not spontaneous at all, but organized. And that's really important that this was an organized campaign, so that the army attack in June of '84 on her mother's side and over a hundred other girders around Punjab was not something that just sort of happened, but it was something that had been planned out for over two years by the Indian government since when the the army of the Morte had first started, the Morte to get the North side resolution implemented, that in their Gandhi had built the replicas of the Haramundersan complex and had been training the Indian army had been training commandos to attack the complex for like over two years before the attack happened. And November '84 also, not spontaneous, very organized, very methodical, you know, using voter lists, business attacks lists, you know, getting gasoline and keeping track of how much gasoline has been used, getting tires, like all this really sort of mundane aspects of this horrific violence that was organized by the Indian state, it's pretty, it's pretty horrific. And you see some of the things happen during the Holocaust, for example, where a lot of what Nazi Germany is involved in is sort of the logistics and how do we kill this many people, right? And that's what happens in November '84, like how do we go about really punishing six as a people on mass? So as to break their spirit and to really put them in their place, and that's what '84 was about, it was like pretty six in their place, and it was, it was sort of like what Israel's doing in Gaza right now, it's punishing an entire people for the actions of a few. It's punishing all six for the politically active six that are involved in the community, which again is a huge amount of six, in fact, but it's that type of organized violence against an entire community, that genocidal violence that we can call it, yeah. Yeah, really instilling like a fear into the community. Yeah, like a second guessing that always happens before someone, yeah, attempts to do anything, or has any sort of thought that might not fall in line with, yeah, what the central government thinks is correct. And I know you, we kind of already talked about it, about what the contemporary repercussions are and was the government successful. Yeah, but if you want to elaborate a little bit more, were the goals of 1984, the reasons for 1984 were they accomplished, and then what does that look like now? What are the contemporary repercussions of that? So in the mid-aftermath of '84, they were not successful. In fact, six organized and incredible and did fight back, quite literally against the Indian state. And the callous movement at first was a really wide-scale, popularly supported movement. But the violence that was carried out in the wake of '84 up to the early 90s, was in some way successful, unfortunately, not permanently, of course. But it did serve to do what the Indian government wanted, which was to quiet six, and to make them less publicly active. And throughout the 90s and early 2000s, we can see that that six are not organizing in the way that they used to. They're not politically active like they used to be. They're not coming together to push back against central government policies. And that's not just because of '84, but that's because of the decade of disappearances, decade of sexual violence, decade of torture that followed '84. So all of that violence, all of those horrors that Spendab was subject to that have been documented by human rights activists, people like just once they call it out or in SAF or advocate for love. All that type of violence that happened against six really did. It seemed like it had worked to degree. And six were a seemed like, by the early 2000s, a community that was not going to be involved in wide-scale political protest again. Or at least we didn't see any sort of semblance of that. And then the B.A.B. issue happened. First of all, Drawna happened. I don't know if you remember when the Drawna was first convicted. There was these sort of large-scale protests that happened around Punjab and around the world. This pledge-orange campaign that had happened. And we saw the first hints of like, oh, there's still a lot of political capacity if the six of Punjab, they've been quite for a long time, but it's still there. That spirit is still there. And it's just waiting for an outlet. And then we had the B.A.B. issue happened where Google and Sabi Sardoup were being desecrated. And the community started to organize in huge numbers. And you had the Sabhat Kalsaf 2017 happened then. And you saw a lot of that political capacity coming back. And the finally you had the Qasan Morte where you saw really a return to the type of social and political activism that six used to have in the 60s and 70s and earlier, where the community really got behind the activists who were out on the front lines and really pushed through the change that they were looking for in this very politically conscious, politically intelligent way of using nonviolent protests to get their goals across and get their message across. So the Qasan Morte, I think a lot of us in the diaspora especially were really inspired by it. And people in Punjab were also inspired by it. And I think people around India also got a very different view of what six were about that they had been fed after decades of propaganda, but what six were about, you know. And it really demonstrated that that Net up on that uniqueness of this Qasaf month that six psyche was not erased. It's still there. It might have been suppressed for a while because of this level of horrific violence that had occurred. And we kept discount just how many young women were sexually assaulted by the Punjab police, how many young boys were tortured, how many family members were killed. Like just a amount of violence is really incredible that the community suffered in the 80s and 90s. And that did make people afraid to be politically active. for a while and understandably so and I remember going to Punjab in the 90s and People not wanting to talk about anything political People not wanting to talk about Palestine people not wanting to talk about Sunn Sunn Sunn people not wanting to talk about these issues because If you talk about these issues you would be targeted by the government with horrific violence and That's starting to change now in big numbers and you can see that happening with the Cassandre Marcha where people were like No, we are going to be put the active. We're going to get it And we're going to be involved as a community. We are going to be active as a community and We are going to sort of try to implement this vision of Iqonqar that we're not excited you brought about in the world And I think it's a really exciting time right now in Punjab that We can see like the governments crack down last year on Amrith Bal Singh was part of a larger campaign of going after secactivists in general And her and their saying has spoken about this at large in a few different venues about just the level of Government surveillance that is occurring in Punjab right now just the level of government harassment police harassment that's occurring was sick activists in Punjab right now It's really something else So the government is afraid of that spirit coming back But I think that that spirit is impossible together. It's a inherently what makes us sick and It's something that's been there since the beginning since good and on except you started this path And it's something that was solidified when the cost was revealed by goodable missing side And it's not something that can be erased and you know in the diaspora we used to be like bad Punjab is so useless when I was younger we used to say this we used to be like They don't talk about anything to do with Callisan anymore. They don't talk about anything to do with political activism anymore Punjabi six are just like not a ball, but the truth is that Punjabi six are there when you need them to be and they stand up for the community in the hardest times in the most difficult circumstances That they are there and they will stand up and they will be involved And the Kassan work to demonstrate that in a really powerful way. Yeah Now I think we as People in the diaspora have this level of privilege where we are not In that physical space like we're not in good job. There's no There are repercussions that we face, but they're Less tangible than the ones that people in India face So I think yeah that reluctance to be politically active or vocal like this really helps provide context for that And it really like yeah even It's helpful for other contexts where we feel like our people or like racialized people generally are not doing what we want them to do Yeah, it yeah, maybe pushes us to think about why Someone might not be like acting or behaving in a way that we think is like correct or right There's kind of this huge history and yeah context that we're usually missing Something also that I'm interested in is as we are in the middle of the Indian election as we approach like the American election in November a Canadian election is looming There are these narratives that get formed in the media and then in our homes Yeah, and various different spaces and I think what we talked about in the inund for cyber resolution portion of our chat about what the document actually says versus what government narratives claim that it says those that distinction it becomes hard Because you're sometimes not looking at the primary documents yourself you're kind of just listening to one other folks are saying so yeah as we Kind of get fed these various narratives how can people distinguish between the two and then how can we yeah maybe give platform to The narratives of like the people's actual demands Yeah, that's a really powerful question and I don't have the answer to that You know to be honest, but it is something to really keep in mind the fact that The government narratives are to suit a purpose and especially when you have a country like India Which is how going down this authoritarian route right now the sort of right wing fascist route that a lot of Unfortunately countries are seem to be going around around the world in Hungary, Russia, Turkey and in America as well And maybe Canada unfortunately as well You see this turn to the right this authoritarian turn that's happening around the world And certain narratives are being pushed to certain Ideas are being pushed and the actual demands of the people are not being listened to and what actually matters to people The issues that people actually care about and are impacted by are pushed to the side and You know social media was supposed to be this thing that gave voice to people But we've seen how it's actually become a tool of governments to push their narratives and to cause disarmony and and and confusion within countries in a way that we could maybe not have anticipated at first So I'm not sure exactly what the solution is the Indian election is particularly depressing unfortunately because Amodis and the B.J.P's grip on power seem stronger than ever and the alternatives to right wing Hinduism aren't that great in India either and right wing Hinduism is part of this global nexus of right wing governments that really are anti-press anti-scolarly anti-university anti-minority anti intellectual freedom and really stand counter to what six really believe in and what six have been advocating for for generations I think you see in Punjab in the Punjab context interesting things happen like in the last election none of the political parties did well and a whole new party came out of nowhere and did really well in the election right So people in Punjab are starting to become more politically active. They're starting to want to see change happen in a way that they um that they used to expect and they're starting to push for large-scale social and political change happening again Political parties in India haven't been able to really follow through on that message and the central government is always um Stance counter to six demands unfortunately right In Canada and America I don't I don't really have an answer to that unfortunately. I mean we have um these incredible images coming out of American universities and Canadian universities of young people just so passionate about what's happening in Gaza and wanting so desperately for their government to not support an ongoing genocide And it's really inspiring but it's also a little haunting because you know It's not going to make a difference in terms of what the government's policies are tomorrow And they it will make a difference in 10-15 years. I know that it will and that there will be a change in the narrative as this generation grows older and the older generation passes away That there will be major changes that happen as a younger generation comes into their political Interpolical force but unfortunately the US isn't going to stop supporting Israel tomorrow, you know And neither is Canada. Yeah, regardless of how powerful and amazing these protests are And that is a little depressing, but I think Sometimes activists or people who are involved in these sort of progressive movements It's hard to think about the long-term plan And that's sometimes where we need to think as a sick community as well. It's something that we've struggled with And get a little bit off topic here, but Something like the Nantes-Perside Resolution and I've been wanting to write about the Nantes-Perside Resolution this year If I get a chance I might put out an article on it Because all of the demands of the Nantes-Perside Resolution are still sitting there. None of them were fulfilled You know like 40 years later nothing happened. We didn't get any of those things achieved like All of those social and political and economic demands that the Nantes-Perside Resolution had were never were never They were promised to us again and again by various Central and state governments and they never were put into Interpractice And so what are six demands today? Do we go back 40 years? Do we have a new set of demands? Are the demands totally different because of what happened in '84? Those are some big and important questions And those aren't questions that the community has yet answered We are beginning to talk about it, but we haven't really had these conversations and one of the reasons we haven't had these conversations because of all of them violence, right? We haven't had the opportunity or the space to have these conversations. But I think these conversations are going to start happening now where people are like, what do six want? How do we want to shape India? How do we want to shape Punjab? How do we want Punjab and India to look? And how are we going to make that happen? And I think the beginnings of that happen in the Kassanwar trip will start to hopefully see more of that as time goes on. Yeah, I think you kind of picked up on that, like getting our narrative straight, getting our demands straight, yeah, like moving towards a more cohesive narrative and more cohesive demands 40 years later. And I think, yeah, it has only been 40 years. So I think it seems like the arc is moving that way. Yeah, just to round out our conversation, last time we spoke about different terminologies that have been used to describe various events of 1984. And as I was reading this article, I know it was written before that article. But you use words such as pogroms, such as the battle of Amritzer. Today we've used the term genocide. So for folks, maybe that haven't listened to that podcast and are just interacting with this one or they have listened to that. They're like wondering why we're using these terms. Yeah, I wanted to ask, why did you choose to use those terms? Yeah, for this article. Yeah, I wanted to, I wanted to tackle that use of the terms and returning to the use of the word galukata, more familiarly and more commonly when we talk about 84. But I didn't seem appropriate for the space of this article. So I used the terms that were more common in the community that I felt captured the idea. And even in our galukata discussion, you know, like I said, the fact that a genocide happened is something that legal scholars and human rights actors have proven has happened. So it's not that the word genocide is wrong. It's that it doesn't fully capture what the six experience to 84. It doesn't fully capture all of the nuances of what we experienced. So there's nothing wrong with using terms like genocide or programs or the attack on hermunder side. It's just that to really capture the sick ideals and sick interpretation of those events, I think returning to sick terminology is most powerful. And that's why I advocate using the word galukata. But I don't think it's wrong to not use it or it's something that we have to avoid like religiously or anything. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you so much. This was a delightful conversation. I feel like I'm I have so much that I've taken away that I can reflect on and I can apply to like other things that I'm thinking about. I know we mentioned it a couple times, but we did do another podcast where we talked about the different terminologies that have been used to describe the events of 1984. If people are interested in listening to that, I'll encourage you to either register or watch the recording for Sunspir saying May 2024 online course titled Betrayals and Broken Promises. It delves a little bit deeper into what we talked about today. It's a four week course that provides an overview of sick India relations all the way from the 1930s to the eve of June 1984 attack on the hermunder side complex exploring both the major events and the figures from a sick perspective and with a critical lens. Before I end off, Sunspir, are there anything else that you wanted to add? No, thank you for thank you for having me and for the insightful questions I really appreciate it. And just be on the lookout for more content around 84 that's sick. We're putting up a really making an effort to commemorate the 40th anniversary with a variety of different podcasts and we have more articles coming out. So be on the lookout for all the 84 content that a sick reappeucine that I hope will allow people to relate to 84 in a new way and try to put it into context in terms of sick history of sick tradition and hopefully lead to some positive changes as well in the community. Awesome, thank you so much. Thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in today. With that we'll close out the podcast, Bhagavajika Palsa, Bhagavajika. Bhagavajika, but there. You were listening to Sick Cast by Sick Research Institute, Luminating Every Pad.