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COMMEMORATING HURT:MEMORIALIZING OPERATION BLUESTARRadhika Chopra a

a Department of Sociology, University of Delhi

Available online: 15 Dec 2010

To cite this article: Radhika Chopra (2010): COMMEMORATING HURT: MEMORIALIZING OPERATIONBLUESTAR, Sikh Format ions, 6:2, 119-152

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Radhika Chopra

COMMEMORATING HURT:

MEMORIALIZING OPERATION

BLUESTAR1

The storming of Sikhism’s most sacred shrine, the Darbar Sahib at Amritsar by the Indianarmy in June 1984 has become a commemorative event in the ritual calendar of the Gurdwara.Memorialized every year in June, Ghallughara Dihara (Day of Genocide) fuses the modernevent with medieval Sikh history. The remembrances of Bluestar and its martyrs are primarilyviewed as an anti-state ritual, evoking the devastation of the Akal Takht as the hurt remem-bered. But over time ritual performances have altered the meaning of memorializing, subtlydiscounting the pre-eminence of particular Khalistani leaders killed in the army action, tele-scoping them within the generalized category of martyrs. Within Darbar Sahib celebrations asense of a restoration of ‘order’ and divine authority embodied in the Akal Takht prevail overthe memory of charismatic leaders who were central to the movement for Khalistan. Ritualenactments among the Sikh Diaspora in London on the other hand, continue to brackettogether claims for asylum with political persecution in the ‘homeland’.

Var Dulle di/ Var Mirza2

(Ballads of Battle)

Sahiba ho . . .Agon Singhan likheya Zain nuh

Sun Shah de tabbehdarAjay karni saleeh salah

Sadde rajdeh nahin haithiyar

Ajey pi pi rakht dushmanan diSaddi raji nah talwar

Tuh naviyaan mangan lor daPahilan pichla karz utar

Tera dhake kila Sarhind daKar pathar tarat sawar

Assi rchiyeh uthe FatehgarhJithe usri si divar

ISSN 1744-8727 (print)/ISSN 1744-8735 (online)/10/020119-34# 2010 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/17448727.2010.530509

Sikh Formations, Vol. 6, No. 2, December 2010, pp. 119–152

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Phir charni dhakk da fateh diAsi takkiye kul sansarJa teri Sah Suleh nuhPuran kare Kartar. . .

(Var3 sung in front of Akal Takht, Golden Temple Complex, Amritsar, on the occasion ofGhallughara Diwas in the weeklong commemorations of ‘Operation Bluestar’. Sung bythe Bhai Surinder Singh Bhangu Jatha on 5 June 2007.)‘The past’, Marx wrote bitterly in The eighteenth brumaire, ‘weighs like a nightmare onthe minds of the living’ (1852/1973, 147).

Not everyone shares Marx’s cynicism. Remembrance of things past4 is a fundamentalresource for actors and social groups living in the present who, toMarx’s disgust, ‘conjureup spirits of the past to help them . . . borrow their names, slogans and costumes’ (1852/1973, 147).5We do not leave our past behind; it’s a palpable presence in our present andwe actively commemorate and remember the past inmonuments andmemorials, in texts,images, songs, stories, rituals, art, space and time and, I would add, in evocations of thespirit of persons. It is in society that people acquire memory (Halbwachs 1992), localizingthe present in the past. The most personal memory is given meaning within social frame-works and is collective not only because its content is shared but because the process ofremembering is shared; it is, in short, ‘shared memory’ (Eves 1996, 3). Tidying upwhat is perhaps elusive, more process than thing, Paul Connerton proposed the classifi-cation of memory into personal, cognitive and habit (Connerton 1989). It is habit, thethird category of memory, that drives social or collective memory ‘for images of thepast and recollected knowledge of the past, I want to argue, are conveyed and sustainedby (more or less ritual) performances’ (Connerton 1989, 3–4). The emphasis onreiterated acts – done and redone – as a ‘store’ of and for memory (Connerton 1989,65) forefronts the performative as a crucial mode of remembrance.

Both Halbwachs and Connerton spoke of social memory as selective – differentgroups, argued Halbwachs, have different collective memories that produce diverseforms of remembering; Connerton put his finger on a central aspect of selectivememory contending that social memory is a dimension of political power and ‘thecontrol of a society’s memory largely conditions the hierarchy of power . . . andhence the organisation of collective memory (bears directly) on legitimating’ (1989,1) ‘. . . images of the past commonly legitimate a present social order’(1989, 3).

Both writers addressed commemorations – physical monuments or rituals –asserting that the past is preserved as a moral universe, sanctified and given meaningin the present, homogenized by deleting disruptive counter memories. Commemorativemonuments convey the illusion of reconciliation to a particular version of an authenticpast, offering a facade of fixed and frozen memory, and most of all signal the successfultransmission of messages of power and the submission to authorized memory. However,scholars suggest that memorials and commemorations as modes of making memorymeaningful are not a fossilization of memory, but a process of meticulous rememberingand active forgetting of the past. Remembering is an inherently generative process,selective, creative and performative, mediated by material culture and ritual perform-ances as well as by the written and spoken word. (Williams 2006, 2). Despite facades ofpermanence, commemorations as sites of creative remembering and strategic forgetting

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are products of contestation. Treating forgetting as either forgetfulness or unintended‘social amnesia’, ‘effectively excludes consideration of forgetting as a willed transform-ation of memory (and) blinds us to situations in which forgetting is linked to socialreconstruction and cultural revaluation, or further yet, in which persons actuallyapproach forgetting as a desirable social goal’ (Battaglia 1992, 14). Acts of rememberingand forgetting create a paradox, for it is as important for people to remember what it isthey must forget as to continue to remember what they need to recall. Producing legiti-mated memory creates the context for strategic forgetting of some elements of inheritedmemory so that memory can be directed toward acceptable or ‘usable pasts’ throughediting in what people need to remember and editing out what they need to rememberto forget.

But the past, as Marx warned, can be a nightmare, its memory producing an intensesense of disquiet. An uneasily remembered past is the subject of this article, drawingencouragement from diverse writings on memory. Uncovering histories of abuse, forexample, feminist scholars critique the strategic deployment of past history as a wayof eliding violence (Cockburn 1998; Enloe 1990). Artists constructing memorials ofthe dark side of a society’s brutal past draw a fine line between remembering personalsacrifice without celebrating violence. The serene aesthetic of the Vietnam Memorialsuggests a moving away from the horrors of violence and peaceful reconciliationswith a past. On the other hand, the monumental memorials of the Nazi regime impelledsome German artists to create ‘counter monuments’ (Young 1993) that offered noclosure or solace, but evoked a deep disquiet and an uneasy remembering. Memorials,then, are both objects that embody emotion and are designed to evoke emotions andfeelings in the viewers and participants. Emotional landscapes evoked and embodiedare critical in any discussion of memorials and memory.

Repositories of collective memory, commemorations are expressive fields of power,sites at which hegemony and resistance are articulated, where officially authorizedcollective memories and counter memories that resist the attempt to obscure contradic-tory experiences exist in uncomfortable synchronicity. The simultaneity of both versionsof a shared past within the same set of ceremonials or commemoration makes memoria-lizing a rich field for understanding relations of hierarchy, national imaginations, the cre-ation of new shared memories and divergent identities. The meanings of memorials shiftover time and space reflecting strategic memory loss and recollection. William Blair’sanalysis of the metamorphoses of the Arlington Cemetery from the epitome of CivilWar discord to a site of reconciliation (Blair 2004) demonstrates the continuousprocess of construction and meaning making to which memorials and commemorationsare subject. Performance constituteswhat is strategically lost in the redoing of a past that isrepresented as wholly remembered; we do need, therefore, to address the fact thatre-enactments themselves are unstable. Re-doing the past is imperfect, incomplete andas I wish to argue, often fragmented across different sites.

Emotional landscapes

The orchestrated military assault on Sri Darbar Sahib, the Golden Temple complex inAmritsar, in the northern state of Panjab, by the Indian Army during ‘Operation Blue-star’ was executed in the first week of June 1984. The assault on the sacred site is most

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frequently spoken of as a deeply traumatic event evoking intense recollections,6 uneasyremembrances and explicit proscriptions on memorializing. In this article I shall not beable to address the politics preceding the attack, except to say that the Indian govern-ment represented the military act as the only possible response to militant violence andas an endeavor to ‘flush out’7 militants who had taken sanctuary within the GoldenTemple Complex and fortified it. Chief among the notorious was Jarnail Singh Bhindran-wale. Head of a Sikh seminary located on the outskirts of Amritsar, Bhindranwale was acharismatic preacher and vociferous advocate for the imagined nation of Khalistan.8

Residents of Amritsar confined to their homes during the course of a 32-hourcurfew imposed on the walled city from 1 June 1984 (The Tribune, 2 June, 1984)heard the staccato gunfire9 and felt the ground shake. When curfew was finallylifted, many ran through the narrow gullies toward the Golden Temple, in a frenzyakin to mourners hearing the news of death. Looking at the damaged dome, womenbroke out into spontaneous siyapa (mourning laments).10 The first viewing of theshell of the Takht is a hurt remembered, and people come back again and again on suc-cessive anniversaries of Operation Bluestar to mourn the death of the Temple.11

Cited most frequently as the source of ‘hurt’ of the Sikh community, the event isone in a series of prior and consequent political episodes,12 but it also stands apart as anexemplar of hurt. As a term in everyday speech, ‘hurt’ signals a sense of deliberateoffense or politically intentioned injury of community sentiment. Punjabis’ use theEnglish word ‘hurt’ to denote the feeling of being seized by pain, as well as tosuggest intentionality embedded in an act – ‘hurt paunchya’ (hurt reached/connected).Sometimes it is replaced by another English word that conveys the sense of embodiedemotion: ‘feel hoya’ is a phrase that continually occurs among Punjabi speakers tosuggest emotional distress.13

‘Hurt’ is signified across different domains of experience. It is personal affront –numerous men interviewed during 2006–2007 recounted stories of being accostedby police and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel because they woreturbans, had long open beards,14 or rode motorbikes.15 Hurt was, and is, projectedas political – the Constitutional inclusion of Sikhs under the category Hindus underArticle 25(b) of the Indian constitution is resented and represented as ‘hurting’ the col-lective self. The sense of submergence of a distinct identity within the larger category ofHindu is represented as a deliberate attempt to obliterate the foundation of a politicalcommunity. A sense of political ‘hurt’ is embedded in the demands of the AnandpurSahib Resolution. Championed by Bhindranwale and other Sikh leaders at variouspoints of time, the Anandpur Sahib Resolution may perhaps be viewed as a consti-tution-in-the-making of a clearly theological state of Khalistan: the Nation of thePure. Mimetically replicating the Indian constitution, the Resolution crucially drewaway from the idea of the secular. Simultaneously, it was a frame of reference forRehat Maryada – its provisions emphasized abstinence, observance of bodily symbolsand cultural rejuvenation, envisioning a baptized community of ‘faithful’ citizens.Only those who were initiates16 could be citizens of Khalistan. The Anandpur SahibResolution seemed to suggest that citizenship was not an abstract identity conferredby the Indian state but rather a matter of language, ritual observance and embodiedspirit converging on a specific territory. From the Indian government’s point of view,the Resolution and the claim to Khalistan were interpreted as an illegitimate politicaldocument of an unlawful nation which nevertheless had profound implications for the

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‘authentic’ nation. The contest between nations was fought within the precincts of theGolden Temple.

That battle of Bluestar produced the monumental hurt – the architectural mutila-tion of the Akal Takht, a premier building of the complex that represented the site ofpolitical authority and autonomy of the Sikh community. The shattered shell of theTakht destroyed by a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, was – and is – representedcontinually as the ‘hurt’ that struck at the heart of sacred community (sangat) andevery individual member within it. Moving from community to territory – the landof the imagined nation of Khalistan it was said, was being drained by a rapaciousCenter, and only the control over its natural resources of water and food couldPunjab/Khalistan regain its sense of worth. The distribution of the Ab – river waters– of Punjab to other states was cited as ‘hurting’ the rights to livelihood and territorialintegrity.17 The decimation of Takht and sapped territory of Punjab were widely spokenof together as a deliberate injury inflicted on Sikh maryada18 or sense of honor (Bourdieu1979). Sliding across a series of sites ‘hurt’ becomes a key trope in remembrance (seefigure 1).

The remembrance of the hurt of Operation Bluestar has a double tenor. The deathof specific people is mourned as part of the rituals of remembrance. However, the dese-cration of the sacred complex as a wellspring of hurt is powerfully stressed. The twosources of hurt are not evoked in the same way or with the same intent. In fact, Iwould argue that among all the violent incidents that engulfed Panjab for almostthree decades (Grover 1999; Gurharpal Singh 2000; Narayanan, 1996; Pettigrew,1995; Puri, Judge and Sekhon 1999), the siege and attack on the Golden TempleComplex and the shelling of its sacred buildings in June 1984 is remembered aspivotal,19 and especially hurtful because of the place of the Golden Temple in Sikhhistory and hagiography. In the sacred geography of Sikhism the Sri Darbar Sahib andthe eponymous Golden Temple are the center of a moral and religious world,20 sothe army action was seen not merely as a military occupation but a desecration, continu-ously cited in commemorations as an irreparable hurt.

The other interwoven event, in fact the explanation offered for the militaryoperation, was the elimination of Jarnail Singh Bindranwale and his militant cohorts.Although central to the entire event, there is a peculiar ambivalence surrounding theremembrance of Bindranwale’s death.21 His death is frequently fused with remem-brances of other deaths,22 many of ordinary people. One prominent death link,however, is between his death and the subsequent assassination of Indira Gandhi onOctober 31 1984 (who, as Prime Minister, ordered the forcible takeover of theTemple Complex). The two deaths have been coupled as the revenge of the Indianstate against militant violence unleashed against the legitimate nation by Bhindranwaleand his followers, and Indira Gandhi’s death by her Sikh bodyguards as a retaliation forviolating and laying waste the sacred shrine and the massacre of Sikh pilgrims.23

Although the two deaths are equally mired in violence, remembrance and representationare wedged between forbidden and authorized memorials of two lives positioned as theantithesis of each other: Bhindranwale the Uggarvadi (terrorist) and a Threat to theNation24 and Indira Gandhi, the putative Mother of modern India.

Performances of commemoration oscillate between allegories of sacrilege on theone hand and tropes of national identity, violence and political personhood on theother. Commemorations are dialogic and address a series of other events, memories

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and recollections. While most scholars pay attention to one memorial (the analysis ofLutyens Stone of Remembrance is an example; Gradidge 1981), we need to recognizethat memorials may additionally be multi-sited. Dispersion creates the possibility ofremembering the event through different tropes articulated at distinct sites eachseeming to bear no relation to the other but in fact each transmitting messages ofwhat can be remembered or needs to be elided. The forgotten is resurrected at its exclu-sive site or breaks through the surface of legitimated memory. To fully understand the

Figure 1 Visitors stare at the destroyed dome and building of the Akal Takht, post Operation Bluestar. Photo-

graph preserved in Akal Takht Library, Amritsar (Photograph: Raghu Rai).

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meaning of remembrance we need to think through a series of connected rituals andartifacts of memory that flesh out the meanings of past event and present identity.Dispersed commemorations suggest the marginalization of some memories by otherhegemonic ones, but there are times when marginality protrudes as a trope in themaking of meaning. Memorials and memories are split and it is this splitting that Ihope to address through this article. Memorializations of Operation Bluestar metaphori-cally jettison the before and after, denoting the singularity of the event and its categori-cal, unsullied remembrance. Reflecting on the series of memorials placed in dialogicrelations of reference, however, it’s clear that remembrance is layered, weaving histori-cal pasts and contemporary politics into a patchwork quilt of memory that fragmentswhat Operation Bluestar is remembered for.

‘Operation Bluestar’ is an event at one site, but memory and rituals of remem-brance move across space and time. Commemorations of the double deaths of Bhindran-wale and Indira Gandhi are fragmented over a string of sites, including newly createdpublic spaces (Indira Gandhi’s home where she was assassinated and her riversidesamadhi or cremation site), familiar sacred places (the Golden Temple) and days ofremembrance (June 6 and October 31),25 the construction of or embargo on physicalmemorials (the double-sited memorial for the slain Prime Minister versus theprohibition on the construction of a Yadgar-e-Shaheedaan, or martyrs memorial forBhindranwale), even cities – the commemorations for Gandhi occur in Delhi, forBhindranwale in Amritsar.26 The invented styles of remembrance signal transformationsin the meanings of memorials and commemorations rituals.

In the next section I examine the double-sited memorials of Indira Gandhi and thenmove to analyze the various expressions of the ghallughara (genocide/carnage) the namegiven to the ritual of remembrance of Operation Bluestar, to decipher memory andforgetting.

Death and the nation

Remembering Indira Gandhi is an uncertain business. The problem of remembrance iscompounded by her problematic legacy of rule that includes the extremely popularvictory in the Bangladesh War and the exceptionally unpopular imposition of Emer-gency. At her memorial sites, however, these highs and lows of her governanceremain unmarked. The second problem is that there are two memorials for IndiraGandhi, one denoting her violent death at the site of her assassination at her home incentral Delhi, the other a Samadhi, the place of her cremation along the banks of theYamuna River aligned with other public monuments to national memory. The splittingof the memorial evokes different elements in collective memory.

The memorial at the house she occupied for 20 years lies at the heart of the heritagezone of the city, the Lutyens Bungalow Zone. Although urban by-laws are strict aboutmodifications in the heritage zone, the house at No. 1, Safdarjung Road has been con-verted into a museum that contains family photos, books she read, as well as ‘official’gifts she received during her Prime Ministerial tenure. This half of the double memorialis anchored in the pathway where she fell (figure 2), her body riven with bullets fired byher two Sikh bodyguards. The blood stains, now fading to brown, are preserved underthe crystal-covered pathway, providing a clear view of her violent death, a memory of

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violence substantiated by the preservation in the museum of the epitome of Hindu fem-inine clothing, her sari, blood-stained and bullet-tattered, chemically treated to retainthe stains of violence.

The intersection of violence with vulnerable femininity evokes outrage against thecollapse of gendered tropes of masculine protection of domestic spaces and persons.At the same time, remembering the person at the site of violation ruptures the hierarchyof ruler and ruled creating an intimate topography of shared sentiment. ‘Some visitors getemotional when they see the spot where Mrs. Gandhi was killed. Some of them bringbouquets and stand quietly for hours. Some just break down looking at the pathway’,the memorial curator, Vijay Puri Goswami, is quoted as saying (Soutik Biswas, BBCNews, October 29, 2004). The floral tributes and the vigil create a symbolic exchangebetween the dead person and the visitor who remembers her through artifacts ofmemory. The first memorial is a popular stop-over on tour routes. ‘This is one ofIndia’s biggest tourist spots. I do good business here,’ says Bishan, who sells IndiraGandhi photos and postcards on the sidewalk outside the memorial (ibid.).

In popular imagination ambivalence inflects violent death, representing it as anoutcome of past transgression or as an inauspicious and dangerous death since the rest-less atma or spirit hovers irresolute over the site of her/his violent death. However, thetrope of sacrifice alters the meaning of violence, transforming dismembered corporealityto a sacred and procreative body, and this is the shift suggested in the way the objectswithin the memorial are laid out. For many tourists the exceptionally emotive memor-ial-within-the-memorial are the printed pages of what are now seen as prophetic utter-ances of Indira Gandhi’s last speech the day before she died ‘I do not care whether I liveor die, and when I die every drop of my blood will invigorate India and strengthen it.’The referential quotation on a printed page evokes the dismembering of the Hindusacred/sacrificial body and the allusion to the symbolic spilling and distribution ofher blood across the territory of the nation made meaningful for visitors conversantwith Vedic Hindu ideology of sacrifice, where the dismembered body and spilt bloodbecomes generative and productive (Das 1983). Viewing the blood on the path andthe stained sari become darshan (perceiving the divine through the lens of devotion)through mimetic replications of bodily attitudes of reverence of a sacred valuedobject and convert the memorial into a shrine. The style of perceiving and ritual com-memoration produces the possibility of reassigning meaning and transforming the

Figure 2 The path where the Prime Minister was shot, Indira Gandhi Memorial Museum.

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political personhood of the secular leader toward an expanded representation of a sacredMother Goddess and her dismembered though regenerative body. Post 1984, calendarart depicted Indira Gandhi as a Mother Goddess standing in the center of the map ofIndia in her blood-stained sari.27

The second memorial is at the site of Indira Gandhi’s cremation. The memorial issituated between Rajghat (Mahatma Gandhi’s Samadhi) and Shanti Van (Forest of peace– where Jawarharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, and Indira’s own father, wascremated); Indira Gandhi’s memorial, Shakti Sthal (Shakti is divine feminine power) isin line with a string of memorials of assorted national leaders along the banks of theriver Yamuna, converting the entire space into a memorial milestone. Indira Gandhi’scremation site is marked by a stone monolith (figure 3),28 but scattered through theparkland are large boulders collected from all over India, many from river valleysand riverbeds, a simulacra of a geological park studded with natural artifacts that artfullysymbolize a naturalized unity of the Nation anchored at a bounded space – the sthal.Designed by the Central Design Wing of the Central Public Works Department(CPWD), its gardens maintained by the horticultural department, and ceremoniesmanaged by the Ministry of Urban Affairs, Shakti Sthal commemorates an authorizedofficial memory of a national leader. Yuthika Sharma (2002) convincingly argues thatthe tended gardens at cremation sites are an entirely modern creation since cremationsare traditionally understood to release the atma from any earthly associations. The con-tinued connection of people with the leader through the memorial counters the normalconstruction of cremations. While I endorse Sharma’s argument that the memorial is aunique modern public space, I would suggest that particular Indic tropes persist in themodes of remembrance. Indic understanding of release of the spirit is complementedwith the incorporation of atma into the collective cosmic body of the pitrs or ancestors.The location of Shakti Sthal next to Rajghat, the cremation ground of the Father of theNation as well as the subsequent carving out of a portion of Shakti Sthal for Vir Bhumi,the cremation site of Rajiv Gandhi, Indira Gandhi’s son,29 suggests the assimilation of

Figure 3 Shakti Sthal – the cremation site of Indira Gandhi.

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person to a pedigree of political pitrs, an incorporation that dissolves the specificity ofpersonhood, but in so doing restores order after the chaos of death. The assemblageof natural stones, cremation grounds and political lineages suggested in spatial layoutof the memorial mile creates a public, unified, ungendered body of national pitrs. ‘Offi-cial’ ceremonies that might be said to reinstate the individual person (supportingSharma’s argument) in fact establish continuities with familiar cultural modes of remem-bering connections with past persons at periodic intervals like chaubarsa (fourth deathanniversary) and thithis (anniversary days).

The processes of remembering useable pasts combine with strategic forgetting ofuneasy deaths. The double memorials for Indira move across an imagined landscapeof ritualized remembering and forgetting, with Shakti Sthal evoking peace and ‘rest’through inclusion with putative pitrs, and the Museum suggesting a vulnerable womanslain by those who should have protected her, but also a transformation of the feminine‘in danger’ to a regenerative and compelling Mother, revitalized through the power ofmemory. The opposition between violent end and peaceful resolution are split over thetwo memorials; it is at the domestic site that Operation Bluestar remains the unstated,but not forgotten, text.

Memory and metamorphosis

There is no physical memorial that marks the death of the uggarwadi Bhindranwale.No ‘official’ public memorial has been built in his memory, and walking through thegullies approaching the Temple30 or within the sacred complex no noticeable visualsigns suggest his significance. The refusal of the state to permit the construction of amemorial in Bhindranwale’s memory is compounded by the refusal of many of hisfollowers to acknowledge his death. In government records Bhindranwale is a deadman. But until 2004, 20 years after Operation Bluestar, functionaries at theDamdami Taksal, the seminary of which he was head during his lifetime, refused toconcede his death, insisting that Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale was chardi kala –in an intensely energized state of high spirits.31 No performances of bhog or AntimArdas (last rituals of mourning) were permitted by the cliques within the seminaryor the state.

The absence of a martyr to mourn and the spectacular presence of the damageddome of the Akal Takht clearly visible on the city skyline for many years after 1984inflect the memory of Bluestar with indecision, elision and dissent. Therefore it isnot always easy to ascertain and excavate what is remembered on the June 6 everyyear. Accounts of remembrances vacillate over a range of oppositions: martyrs/desecra-tions, personal loss/collective hurt, unique ceremonials versus familiar rituals. Passingtime and political hierarchies were critical in constituting memory, and commemora-tions became sites of politics and power (Blair 2004, 10). In the immediate aftermathof Operation Bluestar the Indian state’s efforts to ‘clean up’ and ‘clear out’ all signsof military battle were simultaneous with attempts at deleting culpability. In an attenu-ated form of military tourism, newspaper reporters and photo-journalists were invitedby the army to view fortifications that disfigured buildings of the sacred complex andscrutinize the displays of captured weaponry laid out on the parikrama (walkwayaround the sacred pool).32 The graphic message of the sightseeing tour was to reassign

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guilt for the desecration, legitimize army entry into the Gurdwara and seek validationfor a whole series of subsequently enacted prohibitions. The underlying significance ofperformative presentations was to implicate those killed in the army action as thepersons who had turned a sanctuary of religious belief into a fortification of aggression.The army’s efforts at obliteration were synchronized with administrative bans onprocessions and other forms of collective mourning clearly suggesting that those whoviolated sacred spaces (of Temple or Nation) had no place in ritual memory. No cere-monials were officially ‘recognized’; at various different points of time the DistrictMagistrate of Amritsar imposed Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code toprevent assembly and procession33 and until the formation of the Akali governmentno state officials participated in any memorials.34

From the moment the Golden Temple reopened the problem of rememberingOperation Bluestar became a central focus of debate. The two months immediatelyfollowing Bluestar were dominated by the issue of re-building the severely damagedAkal Takht. Some Punjabi intellectuals wanted to retain the wounded shell as a markof collective hurt (Tully and Jacob 1985; Kirpal Singh 1999); the Central governmentmoved swiftly and appointed the Budhha Dal Dera chief Baba Santa Singh Cheyyanvi Korori(the leader of 96 crore followers) to conduct the kar seva (voluntary labor) to restore theappallingly damaged buildings, the bullet-riddled parikrama and remove all signs ofOperation Bluestar from the Takht and the Temple. There was intense opposition tothe co-opted Baba (India Today, August 15, 1984), especially since the complex wasstill under army control and the building work conducted under his supervision wasfunded not by donations from the community but by ‘tainted’ government funds.35

Despite the ridicule to which his portly frame and alleged penchant for opium weresubject (India Today, August 15, 1984), and accusations that he was performing ‘sarkarseva’ (government duty), repair work proceeded under Santa Singh’s ostensiblesupervision.36 Allegations and rumors circulated that the Budhha Dal Baba was acompliant fig leaf and the actual work was outsourced to Skipper Builders, a construc-tion firm which rebuilt the Akal Takht in a record span of one and a half months. Curfewwas re-imposed throughout the period of the reconstruction and ordinary Sikh worship-pers were not allowed to have darshan (ritual viewing) of their most sacred shrine. Thesense of desecration was heightened by allegations of money pay-offs to co-opted Babasand sacrilegious construction companies, deepening the sense of Hurt.

The army vacated the Golden Temple complex on September 28 1984 and it washanded over to the five High Priests of the Golden Temple on September 29 1984.Within a day of its handover to the five priests37 the thanksgiving ceremonies were hijackedby a 300 strong jatha (band) of young men who shouted pro-Bhindranwale slogans andmounted a Khalistan flag on the dome of the newly repaired Akal Takht. The gathered audi-ence greeted these noisy interventions with approval and admiration. The handover of theGolden Temple did not mean army withdrawal from the state. In fact, in the days just priorto and after the handover, 68 youngmen between the ages of 18 and 30 years were roundedup in adjoining Gurdaspur district. The police chief A.P. Pandey, when asked to clarify ifthey were militants, declared that most of them were ‘emotionally charged people whoact impulsively’ (India Today, October 31 1984, 31).

When the rebuilt Temple was finally handed over to the SGPC38 (the body respon-sible for the maintenance of all sacred shrines), Gurcharan Singh Tohra, the President ofthe SGPC decided that the entire building would be pulled down and rebuilt.39 The

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demolition began on January 26, 198640 on another apparent coincidental twinning ofmemorials for recasting nations – India’s Republic Day and the day of martyrdom ofBaba Deep Singh,41 who had been killed while defending the Akal Takht againstAfghan invaders in 1757. The allusion to past destruction, invasion, and martyrdomin defense of political ideals and sacred spaces in the coincidence of dates were notlost on the contemporary audience of believers. From the moment the complex wasopened right up to the present, Operation Bluestar has been memorialized in someform within the precincts of the Golden Temple complex though the tenor and styleof the memorialization has altered dramatically over time.

After 1986 not all religious observances were prohibited or came under state injunc-tion; ‘religious programs’ to honor the dead presented as ‘normalizing’ rites of mourn-ing to restore a sense of order after chaos were gradually inaugurated. However, whatmight be constituted as prohibited memory gets inserted within the restorative rituals ofpermitted mourning. To come again and again on June 6 of each year is one way in whichpilgrims interviewed in 2007 designate the day, their repeated pilgrimage a commem-oration of personal loss but also a way they mark their connection to the larger event.Forty-two-year-old Deep Singh, who came as part of the Darawale jatha on June 6 2007from his village Bikhiwind Dara, interleaves his own idiosyncratic memory into the col-lective ceremonials. Deep Singh was a member of a jatha (band) that marched towardAmritsar and the Golden Temple as part of the rasta roko (barricade the roads) and kanakroko (stop grain from leaving the state) agitations begun by the Akali Dal as part of thedharm yudh morcha; on June 1 1984 Deep Singh’s jatha was prevented from reaching itsdestination by security forces and he could not blockade a road, or crowd a jail cell tosignal his protest. He gestures toward the 1984 embargo in all his subsequent visits,arriving as part of formal jathas on June 6 every year to recreate a journey he couldnot make. Sixty-year-old Dalip Singh lost his father-in-law during the assault; hecomes often to the Golden Temple, but also on the occasion of June 6 to remembera personal loss within the rites of collective mourning.

More public and prominent shifts occurred over time, most particularly the namingof the day. In 2004, for example, in a program called Flashbacks for the BBC, Giani Jogin-der Singh Vedanti, the Jathedar of the Akal Takht, said in the interview: ‘My heart crieswhen each year, we gather to honour the martyrdom of the hundreds of children,women and men who were brutally murdered by the Indian Army soldiers. I wasinside the Temple complex right through the mindless massacre . . . late on 5 Juneevening, they entered with their tanks which targeted the Akal Takht’ (Giani JoginderSingh Vedanti, BBC News/South Asia/Flashbacks – Golden Temple/3 June 2004). TheGiani’s remembrance emphasizes honoring of ‘innocents’ killed42 in the ‘mindlessmassacre’ and the memory of army tanks targeting the Akal Takht. The significanceof the day of gathering, mentioned almost as if in passing, is known to all those towhom the Gaini alludes when he talks of ‘we’ who ‘gather’. The audience of listenersfully understand the significance of the day as the designated death anniversary of Bhin-dranwale and his major followers.43 The naming of June 6 as Ghallughar Diwas44 in 1995is a powerful mnemonic, harking back to the carnage of ‘innocent’ women and childrenby the Afghan invader Ahmed Shah Durrani (the ‘Shah’ of the ballad quoted in the intro-duction of this article); the event remembered is the Vadda Ghallughara – the major mas-sacre – in Sikh history45 that aligns the modern event with the medieval carnage tracinga lineage of persecution, mass death and destruction of the Temple complex. On the face

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of it, the solemn ritual performances of ghallughara mime ceremonial observancesenacted within the Golden Temple on virtually every religious occasion, a performanceof ritual normalcy that seems to veil the violence of the modern Ghallughara. But the set-apart nature of ghallughara diwas is signaled by the absence of a specific category of actors– politicians, for example – and the presence of particular others: on June 6, 2004 theday he was interviewed, Giani Joginder Singh Vedanti conferred robes of honor (siropas)on the family members of Bhindranwale and other militants killed during OperationBluestar (The Tribune, Amritsar, June 7, 2004), his grave demeanor a model offormal propriety appropriate to the occasion of mourning, but his act of confermentof siropas militating against any delusion of his solemn stance as a sign of submissionto authorized memory. Somber ceremonials have been understood as acquiescence tolegitimated memory, a willingness to remember only that which is permitted. But indeciphering Decoration Days and southern commemorations of the American CivilWar, Blair and others have argued that outward sober forms of rituals are often prag-matic responses to state regulation and surveillance, but whenever permitted commem-orations of the forbidden very quickly break through barriers of prohibition (Blair 2004).

Rituals as a storehouse of memory enacted within mnemonic spaces combine toshape commemoration. The Golden Temple as a space haunted by diverse memoriesis the theater of rituals that recreate particular events in commemoration. Jathas ofpilgrims formally arrive in the temple complex, their spectacular presence conveyinga sense of unity of the group as well as the singularity of the occasion when Sikhmaryada was lost. What is most remembered is that which was most lost. The attackon the Takht was seen as an attack on Sikhs and their maryada or sense of honor.The loss is continuously recouped through the performative presence of mainly malejathas who arrive on June 6 in regimented groups dressed in kesri pugs (yellowsaffron), the color that came to symbolize politics of protest and effervescent spirit(chardi kala) and white ensembles (the color of mourning), circumambulating thesarovar (the sacred pool) and then paying obeisance at the Harmandir and listening tothe discourses at the Takht, their collective presence representing the unity of themale body. Their formal entry, ritual ensemble and solemn demeanor segregate themfrom ordinary pilgrims and their cohesive presence imparts a depth of significance tothe day and those who gather to restore maryada (figure 4).

At the end of the day, the gathered assembly stands in attitudes of deep reverence tolisten and recite the Antim Ardas, in the forecourt before the Akal Takht and around thesarovar; the recitation of the Ardas is in part a ritual commemoration of former martyrswho are evoked as a collective body of defenders of the faith and the bounded commu-nity (figure 5).

It is exactly this sense of maryada to which Bhindranwale constantly referred in hisdiscourses when he actively toured the state before he fled to take refuge in the GoldenTemple in 1982. His speeches were widely received as a call to defend the maryada of theSikh community from the incisions made by the rule and cultural domination of aBrahmin woman, Indira Gandhi (Jurgensmeyer 2000, 88). The entry and movementof the formally dressed and regimented jathas replicate Bhindranwale’s movementswithin the Complex during his tenure46 there (figure 6). Despite the absence of a phys-ical built memorial, collective performances ‘remember’ the personhood of Bhindran-wale who is referred even now as chardi kala – in a state of intense spiritual energy –and represented in calendar art flying a hawk,47 a sign of chardi kala but also a symbol of

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valor most often depicted in religious art in portrayals of the tenth and last Guru GobindSingh, who created the Khalsa – the bounded political body of Sikhism.

Formal gatherings, solemn discourse, personal memories, the history embeddedin the name of the day and ritual recitations mark ghallughara as a newly insertedevent in the Sikh ritual calendar. Through the course of the full ritual day peoplehang around in the complex for hours moving across and around the different spacesof the temple, a habitus of the past. Under the shade of shamiyanas (canopies) in the fore-court of the Akal Takht groups gather to listen to dhaddi jathas (bands of bards) singingvars, the ballads that hark back to a heroic history. They wander toward the community

FIGURE 5 Antim Ardas in the forecourt of the Akal Takht, June 6, 2007.

Figure 4 Jathas arrive formally on Ghallughara Diwas, June 6, 2007.

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kitchens to eat together in an act of sharing bread; as the crowds swell the langar sevadars(kitchen volunteers) seat pilgrims in the long verandahs that run around the over-crowded halls (figure 7).

Pilgrims perform kar sewa (voluntary labor), many of them collecting steel bucketsto fill with the water to wash the parikrama and cool the marble of the uncovered path(figure 8).

As the June sun rises, some sit in quiet contemplation along the sides of the sarovaragainst marble plaques donated in the memory of family members or comrades lost inbattle (figure 9).

Figure 7 Langar spills out into the long verandahs, June 6, 2007.

Figure 6 Bhindranwale and his followers stride through the parikrama. http://www.sikhtimes.com/index.

html (accessed May 2006).

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Figure 8 Washing the parikrama, June 6, 2007.

Figure 9 Sitting in quiet contemplation within a ritual day.

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Continuous recitations of the Granth Sahib (the sacred scripture) cast an aural canopyover the complex. It is at once a familiar ritual day, replicating many others, seeming toinvest an overt normalcy into the commemoration. It is the contemporaneity of the inser-tion of ghallughara diwas into the Gurudwara ritual calendar and the fact that its obser-vance is still mired in controversy that militates against any assumption of normality.

That ritual insertion is substantiated in the commemorative plaques set at the base ofthe steps leading upto the Akal Takht. Like the other descriptive plaques set before eachshrine or sacred spot within the complex, the plaques at the base of the Akal Takht steps (inthree scripts: Gurmukhi, Devnagri and Roman) outline the significance of the Takht, butin so doing simultaneously lay out events in the life of the Takht and its significance in thepolitics of Sikhism. The fourth paragraph in the English translation of the plaque reads ‘Itsbuilding was pulled down several times in the 18th century by the MUGHAL ARMYandAFGAN raiders. In June 1984, the Indian Army under OPERATION BLUESTARdestroyed and desecrated it. But each time the die-hard Sikhs sacrificed their liveswhile contesting the assailants and rebuild (sic) it with great enthusiasm . . .’. The inscrip-tional style of capital letters and the different color that highlights the words ‘OperationBluestar’ underlines what needs to be remembered as events in the life of the Takht, andthe political community, as targets of violence (figure 10).

Figure 10 Plaque in English, one of three at the base of the steps leading to the Akal Takht.

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Memory is deliberately evoked and coalesced by relics of 1984 preserved within thecomplex. Partially replicating the signs of violence that contour the domestic memorialof Indira Gandhi in Delhi, in the otherwise meticulously maintained Darbar Sahib anuntended burj and chattri (canopied umbrella) riddled with bullet holes on the roof ofthe prasad ghar (where sweet sacred offerings are prepared and distributed) and theTeja Singh Samundri Hall are deliberately retained as traces of past events (figure 11).

The Akal Takht itself presents the appearance of calm continuity; it is the pock-marked walls of the half hidden burj, the poorly restored watchtowers of the Bunga

Figure 11 Untended burj riddled with bullet holes.

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Ramgariah,48 vestigial signs of concealed tunnels created as internal communicationroutes within the fortified tehkahana (underground chambers) that tangentially alludeto the spectacular destruction in the modern history of the Akal Takht.

Perhaps one of the most interesting set of spaces within the complex are thegalleries and exhibition rooms of the Akal Takht Museum. Most writings on the AkalTakht Museum talk of the burning of rare manuscripts and objects destroyed or displacedduring the last days of Operation Bluestar. When fires broke out in the temple complex,a great deal of the art, manuscripts and religious objects of the Sikh kingdoms preservedin the museum were burnt. Since 1985, the restoration of the museum has been a specialconcern. I have not been able to establish whether current exhibition spaces of themuseum replicate earlier arrangements, but it is clear that ‘new’ post-1984 objects,paintings and memorials were added in a specially earmarked gallery. Among theassorted exhibition spaces within the museum, one of the most interesting recentspaces is the gallery of martyrs portrayed as defenders of maryada. Down the centerof a long gallery, empty tank and bullet shells used in the ‘fauji hamla’ (the Bluestararmy attack) recovered from the walls and debris of the ruined Akal Takht are displayedin glass cabinets. At one end of that gallery the facing wall is dedicated to a 1987 paintedrendering of the destroyed Takht, with a caption that unequivocally states ‘Sri Akal Takhtfauji hamleh toh baad (6 June 1984)’ [The Akal Takht after the army assault, 6 June 1984](figure 12).

The painting is set at the center of a group of portraits of men involved in the assas-sinations of individuals responsible for the ‘hamla’ (assault) on the Takht. The portraitsof these men are placed on the top left and right corners and on either side of the Takhtpainting; they portray the men who died or were put to death by the Indian state astraitors or assassins, but the captions of the paintings hung in the museum describethe men as Shaheed (martyrs). The realist rendering of these portraits differ in stylefrom the some of the other paintings of martyrs displayed in other galleries who are

Figure 12 Painted rendering of the destruction of the Takht, painted in 1987 and hung in the refurbished rooms

of Akal Takht Museum.

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depicted ‘in action’, as it were, with arrows in their chests or being thrown in the air tobe caught on bayonets. The Bluestar martyrs face out toward the viewers, resemblingfaces in passport photographs, looking directly at the camera/viewer. The photographicreplication suggests not only a realist aesthetic sensibility, but also proposes an identity of‘likeness’ through the direct gaze. Looking a person in the eye – aank milana – is adeeply gendered gesture to establish relations of correspondence between men (thisgesture would never occur between genders) and here establishes a relationship of reci-procal resemblance between contemporary martyrs with their modern viewers. SubegSingh and Satwant Singh are painted in their full army and police uniforms, while otherslike Beant Singh are in full-sleeved formal attire with carefully tied turbans, immediatelyrecognizable to the viewer as a presentation of the public self. Unconditional intimacy,however, is elided by the use of the third-person honorific ‘aap ji’ and ‘Shaheed Bhai’ inthe captions that reach out toward the viewer but simultaneously create a distance ofdeference, evoking attitudes of respect. An identity of sameness is disrupted in the cap-tioning that details the style of death of these men (who, like the viewers, are mentionedas being in the police force, or the army, or born in specific villages) that signifies themas people to be emulated and out of the ordinary. The captions below the portraitspainted in 1997 of both Jinda and Sukha, for example, the two men accused andhung for the assassination of General A.S. Vaidya, chief of Army Staff at the time ofOperation Bluestar, end with the words ‘9 October 1992 . . . phansi di saza ditti, joeihnah neh hasdaiyan-hasdaiyan pravan karke Sikh qaum da nam roshan kitta’ (on 9October 1992 . . . he was sentenced to hang, a punishment of death he embraced laugh-ing, making/causing the name of the Sikh community to shine). It’s interesting that inalmost all the captions of the portraits the year of birth is noted without a day or date;but the exact date of each man’s death is meticulously recorded because this is the day toremember them by.49

The movement of visitors through the interlinked galleries creates a visual lineage ofmedieval to modern martyrs;50 paintings of the medieval Chotta and Vadda Ghallugharas(minor and major massacres), the visualizations of the Punjabi Suba agitations of the1950s and 1960s with their attendant martyrs, literally leading into the gallery of1984. Museums as heterotopias of memories of sacrifice enable the segregation andconversion of individuals from ordinary men to martyrs. Repositories and materialmanifestations of cultural memories preserved and exhibited in the museum indicatewhat is to be actively remembered and what is marginal. Portraits preserve thememory of those made famous by the style of their death, marking them out asextraordinary in death.51

The galleries open into the corridor leading to the exit, a special exhibition space initself. The corridor walls are a memorial inscribed with names of those whose bodieswere discovered within the complex and could be identified or those who were notcremated by the army. The name, father’s name and village of each person, organizedby district, are inscribed in blue on white. For many family members of those whosenames are thus inscribed, the corridor list is a substitution for the cremation theycould not perform in the regular way; the list-in-the-corridor provides a space andoccasion for a periodic commemoration that doubles as personal and collective mourning.

The visual field is not independent of the narrative but forms the ordering landscapeof significant sites and momentous events. The endless lists sign off, as it were, themuseum as memorial. But people who wander through the galleries of exhibits in

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the museum sit in the corridors for a while staring at the names listed flatly before them,mimetically replicating the ritual act of apsos (sorrow, grieving) when mourners arrive toshare in the grieving after a death. The replication of mourning rituals gives the wholeact of sitting in a public corridor the color of collective memorializing on a marked andsignified day (figure 13).

The series of memorials within and outside the museum coupled with the ritualevents observed by the gathered assembly constitute ghallughara diwas as a day of remem-brance of an emotive event that marked a sacred landscape with violence. However,within the material, ritual and aural commemorations there is a remarkable absence– no paintings of Bhindranwale are exhibited in the Museum;52 no rituals areenacted specifically in his name; and nowhere is his name and ‘patta’ (location/address/identity) listed. He is mentioned in the captions detailing the death historyof Amrik Singh (Bhindranwale’s close associate, killed on 6 June) and General ShabegSingh (whose body was found in the forecourt of the Akal Takht on 6 June); theseare oddly tangential references for such a significant figure whom many identify asthe animating spirit of the Khalistan movement. The absence of memorials for Bhindran-wale might signify the telescoping of all martyrs, a fusing reinforced and substantiated bythe organization of space and visual mnemonics of interconnected galleries displayingendless images to suggest an unbroken lineage of martyrdom and a collective history.Nevertheless, the absence of specific memorials for Bhindranwale and the ambiguity sur-rounding his memory needs to be addressed.

The predominant debates around Bhindranwale’s actions from September 1981(when he was arrested for the murder of the head of the Nirankari sect) to his deathsometime on the night of 6–7 June 1984 cast him simultaneously as the leader of ter-rorists (uggarwadi) and the honed warrior (khargku) who represented the spirit andhonour of true Sikhs maryada. In the two years between 1982 and 1984 (while hewas at the Golden Temple) he was often represented as the charismatic Sant who embo-died chardi kala – the blossoming spirit – and piri – the spiritual way – more effectively

Figure 13 Memorial Wall in the corridor at the Exit of the Akal Takht Museum.

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and completely than the legitimate Jathedars of the Akal Takht who ‘ruled’ by commit-tee, and certainly more powerful than many political leaders of the Akali Party.Bhindranwale promoted the willingness to fight and destroy the ‘enemies of religion’as essential qualities of devotion, citing Baba Deep Singh, hero and martyr, who dieddefending the Golden Temple against Afghan invaders in the eighteenth century.53

Reinstating individual charisma and the community, Bhindranwale was seen to epitomizethat recovery of spirit. Before his escape to the Akal Takht, Bhindranwale toured thestate as a mobile preacher; he had the ability to ‘summarize great themes in simplephrases and clear cut images’ (Juergensmeyer 2000, 88). Part of that imagery was avisual body language that conveyed the spirit of chardi kala and wanggar (confrontingthe enemy by showing the self; literally announcing the presence).54

During his tenure in the Temple complex, Bhindranwale received deputations andpetitioners; a group of Sikh farmers from a cluster of villages in Faridkot district, forexample, came to him in deputation to complain of and seek redress for shortage ofwater and inadequate electricity supply, grain prices and the fact that the CRPF was tar-geting true followers of the faith who expressed their allegiance to the Guru and RehatMaryada through correct body observances. Others came to protest about the ban onpillion riding and the prohibition on motorbikes between 8pm and 6am that had beenimposed in various districts (The Tribune, May 11, 1984). So despite the fact that theroots of the Akali movement are entrenched in resistance (the term Akalimeans sacrificebands or in modern parlance suicide squads), it was Bhindranwale who usurped thelegitimate authority of the Akali party as well as of the Jathedar of the Takht,evoking charismatic authority.

In the Indian context the concept of charisma is viewed as the presence of divineenergy – chardi kala of Sikhism or tejas within Hindu thought – in extraordinaryhuman beings, including exceptional religious teachers or preachers. The conceptalso legitimizes fresh commentaries on canonical texts, or new sacred scriptures,expanding the Weberian notion to include the reanimation of cults and images in therange of charismatic agendas (Dalmia, Malinar and Christof 2001). When the tenthSikh Guru Govind Singh closed the line of spiritual succession, he not only preventedfuture rivalries for the status, he also invested the Book with the status of ultimate spiri-tual guide and non-human embodiment of charisma. A canon was declared Guru andbecame the charismatic center of the Sikh community located at the Golden Temple(von Stientencron 2001, 25). The investiture of the book with a personhood is comple-mented by a disavowal of a living guru or divine person, a transfer presented as fullyaccomplished and uncontested. That is the canonical memory. However, the theatricsof memory rituals and their continual reiteration of the centrality and inviolability ofthe canon through repeated disavowals of ‘living’ gurus seem to me to suggest an incom-pleteness of the transfer of charisma to the Book, and the underlying threat that amagnetic preacher of the canon can pose to the non-human text.

The ambivalence – indeed, the almost complete absence – surrounding the mem-orialization of Bhindranwale to me seems to rest only partially on the refusal of his fol-lowers to acknowledge his death. Nor is his usurpation of the authority of electedjathedars and wresting political power from the leaders of the Akali Party reasonenough to explain the absence of commemoration. The ousting of elected officialsand party men can really only be the overt text of political science. The unspoken tran-script centers on the anxiety about the depth of his claim to charisma. The unease

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inscribed in speech, image and ritual can be excavated from successive performances thatreiterate the collective over the individual. Repeated demands for an ‘apology’ from theIndian state for the collective hurt incurred by community in the Bluestar Operation andthe constant harking back toward the death of ‘innocents’ as the key figures of remem-brance bypass the significance of individual actors. Visually, the telescoping of individualheroes within a lineage of martyrs combined with familiar sacred rituals submerge andminimize the extraordinary within the customary, creating an alternative text ofmemory in which Bhindranwale is only tangentially located. I would argue that the suc-cessive restorations of the Akal Takht and the intense debates about the process anddoing of the restoration signal not just the centrality of a premier political buildingbut also the inviolability of the sangat, that needed to assemble to exhibit its presenceto itself in the act of restoring the Takht through collective labor. I suggest, even specu-latively, that in the restoration of the Takht the restitution of the authorized collectiveand its legitimate representatives, both non-human and mortal are centered. Performa-tive and visual commemorations that place the destruction of the Takht at their centerreiterate legitimate sources of power and order. They also produce a deliberate forget-ting of the hurt that cannot be enunciated – individual charisma and its power to dis-place a canon.

Globalization and the commemoration of hurt

Where does the curiously omitted memory of Bhindranwale surface, if at all? It’s clearlynot at sites in Amritsar; at Mehta Chowk, the Gurudwara and the surrounding buildingsof Damdami Taksal of which he was head for a brief period during his lifetime, wore adeserted, shuttered look in the days just before and after Ghallughara Diwas. A fewposters flapped forlornly in the gullies around the Golden Temple announcing a‘program’ at Chowk Mehta, but there was little evidence of its performance. KahanSingh Sohan Singh, sellers of religious souvenirs, including hagiographies and religiousliterature in the covered bazaar around the Complex, sell more framed posters and CDsof Gurus, Sants and preachers than the Taksal Pustak Bhandar dedicated to writings,recorded speeches and poster art of Bhindranwale. Posters of Bhagat Singh are liberallyavailable on the pavements of Amritsar, but Bhindranwale calendar art is not immedi-ately obvious (figure 14).

One place where Bhindranwale is resurrected is the Internet. Blogs and websitessuccessfully re-instate his life and hagiography ‘added on’ continuously throughcomment and postings. It is possible to argue that the websites as public space interro-gate the near absence of Bhindranwale in tangible physical space. Internet text is fiercelysupportive of Bhindranwale, and graphic in detailing his life and the style of his death.But another aspect of the Internet as ‘location’ of memory questions the extent anddepth of political intention reflected in Internet publics. Scrolling through the websites,it is clear that many of them are oriented to propagating ‘knowledge’ about ideas andritual observances of Sikhism to the Diaspora. Along with writings on a violent past areimages of the Woolwich Vaisakhi Nagar Kirtan, for example, or the meaning of gatka(martial arts) performances. It is not clear to me that hits on a website are producinga politically energized sangat or promoting ritual literacy, or which of these is theprimary intention.

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Other, more ‘conventional’ commemorations of Ghallughara in city spaces across theglobe establish more clearly (at least to my eyes) the claim to political personhood throughpublicly enacted performances. The ritual of commemoration is re-inscribed in ‘NeverForget’ rallies and processions of the Diaspora. In the Punjabi-dominated neighborhoodof Southall, West London, for example, protests against Operation Bluestar that beganin 1984 in Southall streets55 and the local Havelock Road Gurudwara (Southall Gazette,July 6, 1984, p.7) expanded to huge processions in 2007 that traversed Hyde Park andended at Trafalgar Square.56 The first anniversary of Operation Bluestarcommemorated in the grounds of Hounslow College was named ‘Genocide Week’by friends and relatives of people who died in the Indian Army Action (Southall Gazette,June 14, 1985, p.14), a term that traveled back in translation from Diaspora to Home.

In Diaspora commemorations enunciations of hurt intersect with human rightsdiscourses to create new styles of memorializing. Objects of protest – placards,banners, armbands and gags – drawn from modern art esthetics and appropriationsfrom exhibitions of human rights violations inserted within spectacular displays of ‘tra-ditional’ ritual performances reveal a fine understanding of maximizing internationalmedia attention. The Nagara – the huge drum – and the Panj Piyareh –ritual elect– dressed in turbans and chogas (long shirts) march barefoot leading the processioninto Trafalgar Square; the sangat enters behind them bearing banners with photographsof the disappeared and bloodied corpses, demands for justice and slogan emblazonedT-shirts in ritually appropriate colors of blue, black and saffron. Placards and posterscarried in procession are laid on the steps of India House (the Indian High Commission)after a candle-lit vigil. Reaching outward to an international audience created throughharnessing media and the innovative deployment of modern technology is critical toDiaspora commemorations. In a modernized version of the Balinese cockfight, giantdigital screens display the sangat to itself, while mammoth music systems transmittingsounds of the Nagara drum, recitations of Ardas and ragga (rag and ragge) recitationscast an aural canopy over the ‘Sikhs in the Square’.

Figure 14 Booksellers of hagiographies in the bazaar around the Darbar Sahib complex.

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The theatrics of exhibition and display is a form of witnessing a past. Equally, Iwould argue, the symbolic displays address the estrangement and distance that Diasporasinevitably experience and the need to evoke community through recreated event.However, Diaspora commemorations go beyond bearing witness, and sharing what iswitnessed with the wider world via the visual word. Transnational commemorationsare also purposive in a different way: assertions of trauma express claims for politicalasylum and rights of residence of migrants who insert themselves into collective politicalmemory as the embodiments of state inflicted hurt. High street lawyers in Southall con-tinue to represent Sikh clients seeking asylum in the UK (Interview, KashminderBhogall, Southall Rights, October 2006).57

Within the globally enacted event, Bhindranwale is Zinda –alive – in the Zindabad(forever living) slogans and banners because he is both the exemplar victim of a repres-sive state and a symbol of the sangat of martyrs; migrants cannot release the atma ofcontemporary martyrs into rest because their representational presence articulatesthe political need for asylum in the present.

The Disappeared of human rights discourses are the new martyrs, transformed asrecognized individuals and symbols of a memory migrants must remember never toforget. The restitution of Bhindranwale through exhibitions, banners and speeches inthe rallies and remembrances of the Diaspora is purposive and comes from an imperativeto insert the migrant self within the unfolding histories of homeland as well as a desire toclaim status and citizenship in the new Home. Bhindranwale is a symbol of links estab-lished through shared pain but also a site of pain of Homeland. It is important to recog-nize that Diaspora processions and the artifacts of protest produce Home as an invertedworld so outside the normal as to be almost alien; it is exactly the production of Homeas unfamiliar traumatized space that validates the act of leaving and the need to seeksanctuary elsewhere. The transnational evocation of hurt is a public ritual, dramaticallydisplayed to international and migrant audiences. The imprecision of Never Forgetbanners hint at what this commemoration is ‘for’: the remembered hurt of a specificevent and the continued hurt of leaving home.

Notes

1 I am grateful to ICES, Colombo from whom I received a grant under the Project Glo-balization, national identity and violence: Exploring South Asian masculinities in the new mil-lennium to enable the fieldwork. I am grateful to Rajnish who helped in collection ofmaterial in Amritsar. I am very grateful to Mr. H.K. Dua, Editor-in-Chief of TheTribune, Prabjot Singh, Bureau Chief, The Tribune, Navreet Kang, Chief Secretary, Gov-ernment of Punjab, and many others at the Panjab University for their help and time.

2 Translation of Var quoted in the text of the paper (translation mine).

Ballad of BattleHear Ye . . .Then the Sikhs wrote to Zain KhanListen, you agent of the ShahOur weapons are not satisfiedWe have to still settle accounts

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We’ve drunk the blood of enemiesEven now our swords are restlessBefore you place new demands before usLet’s settle prior debtsWe destroyed your Sirhind FortWith the clash of brick and stoneWe want the revenge of FathegarhOf that ill-famed wallOur feet move toward victoryWhile we keep the world in viewOtherwise your proposal of negotiationWould be accepted by the Kartar (Creator of the World)

Notes

† Singhan: Reference to Sikh Misls at war with the Afghans.† Shah: The reference is to the Afghan ruler Ahmed Shah Abdali (and Zain Khan,

Subedar of Sirhind and commander of Sirhind Fort). The Sikh confederaciescame together to battle Abdali, not always successfully. A bitter battlebetween the Abdali and the Sikh misls is referred to as the Vadda Ghallughara(the major carnage) in which many non-combatant women and childrenwere also killed.

† Divar: The reference is to the wall where Guru Govind Singh’s young sonsZorawar Singh and Fateh Singh were bricked in alive.

3 Vars are heroic ballads; some like Chandi di Var are martial poetry, said to have beensung by Sikh soldiers before going into battle. In the contemporary period, Sikh mili-tants went into ‘combat’ missions with vars recorded on their headsets (Mahmood1997). Poets and bards had an intensely political role in the agitation for Khalistan.At a convention of kavis (poets) and dhaddis (bards) held in early January, 1983,singers endorsed various demands of the Akali Dal and were urged to preach the pol-icies and programs of the Akali Dal among the Sikh masses to create momentum forthe Akali agitation (The Tribune, January 12, 1983).

4 The phrase is one of the translations of the title of Marcel Proust’s seven-volume workon involuntary memory.

5 Knowing his views, Marx perhaps would have been horrified to learn that the placewhere he sat and wrote his major treatise on capitalism in the British Museum isnow a memorial of sorts, gazed upon with reverence by countless academic tourists,partly as a mark of respect for his scholarship but also in the hope that his mentalenergy, although long dead, is not extinguished and might still infuse the space andflow like a magical force into the mind and pen of the contemporary scholar trans-forming their work into a luminous masterpiece.

6 In an opinion poll conducted by a news channel, on the eve of India’s sixtieth anniver-sary of Independence, 44% of the respondents felt that Operation Bluestar and theanti-Sikh riots of 1984 were India’s ‘greatest political blot’ (The Hindu, August 13,2007, p.12).

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7 The term ‘flush out’ is deployed in a multitude of civic and policing contexts; citydrains and sewers are flushed out to rid them of dirt and vermin (Corbin 1986). Crim-inal gangs are ‘flushed out’ from disorderly neighborhoods. The twinning of regulationand purification were critical tropes used in military narratives of Operation Bluestarand the subsequent, more sweeping Operation Woodrose that cleared villages of mili-tants. Television newscasters have seamlessly adopted the term – most recently, newsreports announced that radicals in the Lal Masjid in Islamabad, Pakistan, had been‘flushed out’ (CNN; CNN-IBN July 10, 2007; Hindustan Times, July 11, 2007,p.1). Hindustan Times in fact headlined the army siege and assault on the mosque‘Pak’s Bluestar’ (ibid.).

8 The imagined demography of Khalistan effectively excluded non-believers as well aspatit, or non-observing, Sikhs who did not conform to the code of Rehat Maryada(Sikh way of life enunciated in religious documents and pamphlets). The AnandpurSahib Resolution which might be viewed as a constitution in the making of this ima-gined nation, demanded the right over river waters of Punjab; the right to regulate themovement of food grain outside the state (the ‘kanak roko’ [stopping grain export] agi-tations were an outcome of this demand); the right to carry religiously prescribedweapons like the kirpan (dagger); and so on. The Resolution challenged the IndianConstitution’s categorization of Sikhs ‘as Hindu’ (and therefore among otherthings, not entitled to the special privileges of reservation). The emotive languageof disavowal drew simultaneously on scriptural tropes and political disaffection ofdissent.

9 On June 1, 1984 some of the heaviest exchanges of fire between security forces andmen inside the Golden Temple resulted in 11 deaths. Six bodies were handed over tothe authorities by the SGPC (Shiromani Gurdwara Prabadhak Committee, the bodythat manages gurdwaras and the activities within them) officials. Amrik Singh, ofthe All India Sikh Student Federation, a close associate of Bhindranwale, reportedto the press that 26 bullet holes from military firing had damaged the Templecomplex on June 1 (The Tribune, June 2, 1984). Another report stated ‘As a resultof the firing the situation has become explosive in the city . . . there is a generalfeeling of scare [sic] among the residents and people are in a state of shock’ (TheTribune, June 2, 1984).

10 Interview, Lakkha Singh Phadda, of West Drayton, interviewed in September 2006 atSouthall Day Center, Southhall, UK. Phadda works in a catering unit at Gatwick,but had been in Amritsar during that fateful week in June 1984. After that experienceand the deep outrage it evoked in him, he began to grow his beard and wear a fulldastar (turban), even though it created a problem for him at his job at GatwickAirport.

11 Interview, June 6, at the Golden Temple, with Deep Singh, 62 years, resident ofVillage Bhikwind Dara, Khemkaran, Panjab (interview conducted by Rajnish,Research Assistant). In 1984, Diaspora Sikhs of Southall were urged not to celebrateDiwali. Gurcharan Singh the Cultural and Welfare Secretary of the Southall Gurud-wara explained that it was customary for Indians not to celebrate festivals in thefirst year after a death (Southall Gazette, October 26, 1984, p.1), reinforcing thelink between personal and architectural loss.

12 Subsequent events include Operation Black Thunder One and Black Thunder Two (in1986 and 1988, respectively), when the Golden Temple was again besieged andentered this time jointly by the Army and Police forces. These operations havebeen less well documented. (But see Sarab Jit Singh, 2002.)

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13 When not using the word in English, Punjabis use the word ‘thes’ or ‘dhakka’, alsoconveying a sense of bodily injury. The term ‘hurt’ does not exist in law, but‘hurting the sentiment of community’ is a phrase frequently deployed to arguecases of loss or injury that are not necessarily physical. By profaning sacred space,the occupation of the Golden Temple complex was, and is, viewed as a deliberate‘hurt’ inflicted on the sentiments and standing of the Sikhs.

14 Sikhs usually keep their beards groomed and tied. The tying of the beard in specificstyles connotes difference within the community. For example, traders are said totie netting to keep their facial hair in place. Others tie special pieces of cloth overthe beard, either tucking the cloth under the turban, or tied in a knot over a truncatedturban. Matching turbans, beard cloths and neckties are styles adopted by the urbane.

15 Motorbikes, a sign of male prowess and wealth among the Punjabi peasantry, wereviewed with suspicion by the constabulary as swift get-away vehicles during theentire period of militancy. At various points of time bans on adult males ridingpillion were imposed (The Tribune, May 7, 1984). This suspicion was perhaps heigh-tened by the fact that the Punjab police were ill-equipped and feared for their safety.Almost 40% of the constabulary applied for leave during this period (The Tribune, May14, 1984).

16 Initiation rituals of amrit chakkna (drinking the nectar) are a vital ritual in the creationof community and incorporating new members. Publicly enacted amrit chakknainitiations were performed throughout the early to mid 1980s as a form of renewalof faith and commitment to the emerging political community of Khalistan. Beforehe fled to take sanctuary in the Golden Temple, Bhindranwale toured the state andconducted initiation ceremonies; subsequently his father Jasbir Singh Rode alsotoured villages of Punjab, actively encouraging people to reenact the amrit ritual asa form of a personal pledge to defend the faith.

17 The forerunner to the Khalistan movement, the Punjabi Suba movement of the 1960salso stressed the right of control over territory and water. The claim to territory hasbeen interleaved with the demands for a substantive federal political structure.

18 Marayada is a contextual term; it variously connotes honor, way of life, ritual and tra-ditions. Rehat maryada is the code of conduct incumbent on all Sikhs. However, asUberoi has pointed out, it is the bodily observances of men that symbolically consti-tute the collective body of community (Uberoi 1996). The hurt to maryada therefore isunderstood as debasement of mards – men – who sustain and embody maryada.

19 Operation Bluestar was not the only time the temple complex was entered and takenover by the state in the course of the period referred to as the ‘militancy period’.Its memory, however, is marked because of the simultaneous concurrence ofevents; it was the Gurpurab – Day of Remembrance – of Guru Arjan Dev and thou-sands of Sikh pilgrims had gathered in the Temple precincts to celebrate. Many killedin the army action on those two days included such pilgrims. The temple and its sacredbuildings also suffered major damage.

20 For Sikhs, pilgrimages to the Golden Temple on designated days of the ritual calendaror to mark personal life cycle events or for no special reason at all other than becausesomeone ‘felt’ like it, is a performance of membership of the sangat (religious collec-tive). Visits are part of personal and collective memory, recounted and re-performed toproduce a sense of community. Religious souvenirs – paintings, charts, books of reli-gious discourses – purchased from the surrounding bazaar shops layer memory withartifact. Bathing in the sacred pool around which the complex is structured, making

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offerings to the Book housed in the Harmandir (the symbolic center of the sacredcomplex), singing, listening to scriptural recitations and eating at the langar, the com-munity kitchen of the complex, are all part of creating a sense of sangat, the gatheredcommunity of believers. Most of all the sense of community is created by the care of thecomplex through voluntary ritualized labor – kar seva – through which the monumentsare maintained and quotidian tasks performed. Anything from regular sweeping,washing, cooking, to building and repair work in the Temple is done through KarSeva. Building contractors give of their labor and expertise in a spirit of worship.Throughout the performance of seva (care of a superior being or site) some, althoughnot all, workmen wear ritual clothing of blue turbans and chogas or long shirts denotingthe practical as ceremonial, distinguished from the mundane.

21 Two other prominent proponents of Khalistan were also killed during the Operation.Amrik Singh headed the militant All India Sikh Student Federation, while Shabeg Singhwas a decorated Army general who resigned his commission in 1976. Shahbeg Singhwas primarily responsible the fortification of the Temple complex and planning thearmed resistance. Houses in the narrow gullies surrounding the complex functionedas outposts connected by wireless; soldiers of the Indian army were killed or woundedfirst by the sniper fire from these outposts, a situation reminiscent of the experience ofthe colonial British army entering the narrow gullies of Lucknow during the hot Maydays of the Mutiny of 1857 (Oldenberg 1984).

22 The exact day and time of Bhindranwale’s death is unclear; he is said to have diedeither sometime on the night of June 5–6 or the night of June 6–7. However,June 6 is designated as the death anniversary of his closest followers (whose portraitsare displayed in the Sikh Museum). The anniversary of Bhindranwale’s death desig-nated as June 6 has become an occasion for many to mourn those killed in the violenceand is literally a death anniversary by extension of other deaths. In Amritsar, peoplewho lost family members participate in the Ghallughara Diwas at the Golden Temple inJune of every year. In London placards with the photos of missing and dead kin aredisplayed in ‘Never Forget’ rallies that mark public commemorations of OperationBluestar.

23 The politics of aftermath is punctuated by assassinations that moved across national andglobal space from the assassination of Indira Gandhi in Delhi (1984), to Pune in westernIndia of General Vaidya, in charge of Operation Bluestar (1986), to Bucharest and theassassination attempt on Julio Ribeiro (1991), the Chief of Police in Panjab whose‘bullet for bullet’ policy created a new dimension of rule of the modern Indian state.

24 Uggarwadi was the official term used freely in government statements and in theEnglish-language media, state television and radio broadcasts. The official termstands in opposition to the more popular term Kharku, or freedom fighter. Bothterms refer to masculine bodily styles – ugar or ferocious, kharag – honed; its ety-mological roots drawn from the weaponry – kharag – an iron scimitar.

25 There is a peculiar imprecision in the commemorations. October 31 is the anniversaryof the assassination of Indira Gandhi who was gunned down at her residence, but mostofficial ceremonials of remembrance are conducted at Shakti Sthal where she was cre-mated on November 4, 1984. The exact date of Bhindranwale death is unclear (untilvery recently some of his supporters in the seminary refused to acknowledge that hehad died at all, declaring that he is chardi kala – in rising spirit). However, it is specu-lated that he was killed sometime on the night of June 4–5 when the ‘storming’ of theTemple complex began, or the night of June 5–6, when some of the heaviest shelling of

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the Temple complex occurred. Surprisingly Ghallughara Diwas, Genocide Day, is mostfully memorialized on June 6, which may or may not be Bhindranwale’s death anniver-sary. Imprecision argues against memorials as inextricably tied to both place and date apoint made by Lowenthal (1979, 121) in his discussions of WWI memorials.

26 In the absence of a physical memorial to anchor collective memory, the commemora-tion of Ghallughara Diwas (Day of Genocide) has also become a transnational ritual, andwith its movement across space, meanings have shifted.

27 In 2006, newspapers reported that a Congress worker wanted to build a templenamed ‘Indira Dham’ in Jaipur district, where the late leader would be worshippedlike a goddess (Times of India, June 12, 2006).

28 The natural stone monolith streaked with red veins of minerals resembles a flamecreating a visual analogy of the eternal flame at martyrs’ memorials and the flamesthat arise from small oil lamps intrinsic to many rituals.

29 A few rooms in the Safdarjung Road Memorial are dedicated to Rajiv Gandhi whosucceeded his mother as Prime Minister, and who was himself assassinated in TamilNadu. Rajiv Gandhi and his family lived with his mother at her residence.

30 This absence is peculiar given that Jallianwala Bagh, the site of the massacre ofunarmed pilgrims by Brigadier General Dyer on Baisakhi, 1919, is down the roadfrom the Golden Temple and posters of other martyrs like Bhagat Singh are soldon the pavements in the surrounding bazaar.

31 However, on June 2, 2005, the Damdami Taksal decided to honor Mr. Apar Singh Bajwa,a retired Superintendent of Police, who had identified the body and then witnessed thecremation of Bhindranwale in 1984 (The Tribune, Amritsar, June 2, 2005). Mr. Bajwahad been the main investigator of the Sikh–Nirankari clash in 1978, in which Bhindran-wale was the main accused, and in the course of the investigation Bajwa ‘had met SantBhindranwala and leaders of the Taksal hundreds of times . . . as part of his officialduty’ (The Tribune, Chandigarh, May 20, 2001). In an interview with The Tribune repor-ters, Mr. Bajwa said he was called upon to recognize the body, which he said was injuredon the right side of the face and had bled profusely in the abdomen. Bajwa said the Armyofficers agreed to cremate the bodies of Sant Bhindranwale, General Shabeg Singh, BabaThara Singh and Bhai Amrik Singh according to Sikh rites at his personal request while therest of the bodies (more than 800) were cremated en masse. Mr Bajwa said the Armyallowed him to cover the body of Sant Bhindranwale with a sheet and pour ghee on it.

32 Media footage, however, was not confined to an army-orchestrated fantasy; picturesand stories of putrefying debris of bodies and buildings left behind by the army alsocirculated in news reports.

33 On the fifteenth anniversary of Operation Bluestar in 1999, there was a clash betweenthe workers of the district Akali Dal and others with plain-clothes police who pre-vented the former from marching toward the Golden Temple. Newspapers reportedthat ‘turbans flew . . . [and] . . . police in mufti was busy in bundling hardliners into thepolice vehicles’ (The Tribune, June 7, 1999).

34 In 2004 Parkash Singh Badal, President, Shiromani Akali Dal, participated in Ghallugh-ara Divas (Genocide Day) for the first time after Operation Bluestar (The Tribune,Amritsar, June 6, 2004).

35 Rumours that Santa Singh was paid Rupees 1 lac a day by the government flewthrough the city (Tully and Jacob 1985).

36 Baba Santa Singh was eventually declared tankhahia (excommunicated) for breach –kurahit – of Rahit, the code of conduct of the Sikh community.

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37 Post Operation Bluestar, with Bhindranwale and other leaders dead and major Akaliparty leaders jailed, the five High Priests of the major gurdwaras or Sikh shrinesbecame the center of negotiations and conduct of affairs of the community.

38 Shiromani Gurdwara Prabadhak Committee, the body that manages gurdwaras andthe activities within them. Despite their centrality in the management of gurdwarasaffairs the Temple complex was not handed over to the SGPC by the army on Septem-ber 29, 1984, partly because the president of SGPC Tohra was in jail and the SGPCwas treated as a highly suspect organization for having given sanctuary within theComplex to Bhindranwale.

39 Tohra’s decision was disputed as one not endorsed by the sangat or the Panth (GianiKirpal Singh 1999) and therefore not representative of community opinion.

40 The re-built Akal Takht was opened for ritual prayers on Baisakhi, April 13, 1997.41 A shrine to Baba Deep Singh is built in one corner of the parikarma and forms part of

the shrines of the complex.42 The citation of innocent lives lost was a continuous tenor in Sikh critiques of Indira

Gandhi’s policies. ‘If the government itself is indulging in the killing of innocents,how can it avoid retaliation?’ declared Kirpal Singh, Jathedar of the Akal Takht in1984, refusing to acquiesce to Indira Gandhi’s demand that the Jathedars issue anedict for Sikhs withdraw support to militants (India Today, October 31, 1984,p.18). Kirpal Singh’s assertion was coincidentally published by a leading weekly theday Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her bodyguards.

43 Not all accounts are consistent about the actual date of Bhindranwale’s death; most putit down to the night of June 5–6, 1984, when the heaviest shelling and exchange of fireoccurred. The captions under the portraits of Amrik Singh and Subeg Singh [sic] in theAkal Takht Museum, however, designate June 6, 1984, interestingly leaving the date oftheir birth unspecified. There is no portrait of Bhindranwale hung at the museum.

44 Ghallughara Diwas was first observed officially by the SGPC in 1995 when GurcharanSingh Tohra was SGPC President. Until that time, small functions had been held indispersed Gurdwaras which emphasized the remembrance of disconnected pasts.

45 Vadda Ghallughara occurred in Village of Kup, near Malerkotia, on February 5, 1762.46 Bhindranwale and his followers lived and held court mainly in the Guru Nanak Nivas,

one of the main buildings in the Temple Complex.47 Most recently, violent controversy surrounded the Baba of another Dera, Baba Ram

Rahim Gurmeet Singh of Dera Sacha Sauda, who was shown with a kalgi (egret featheradorning a turban; a sign of royalty and superiority) and a hawk in an advertisementthat mimetically replicated the depictions of Guru Govind Singh, whom no person canhope to emulate let alone impersonate. The popular depiction of the Guru is from atwentieth-century painting by Sir Sobha Singh.

48 Bungas were mansions built by misl chiefs to house themselves and their retinues whenthey visited the Darbar Sahib (Patwant Singh 1999); the Bungas also served as defensivebastions in times ofwar, andwere thus deployed through the period of the 1984 conflicts.

49 Amrik Singh (aap ji Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale [mukhi Damdami Takhsal vale] de vaddeputtr san. Bhai Sahib Bluestar Action dauran bharti fauj diyan topan ateh tankan da mukabalakarde hoye Sri Akal Takht Sahib vicheh Shaheed hoye) and Subeg [sic] Singh (Sri Darbar Sahib Jiupar bharti fauji hamel da dutt ke mukabal kitta. Hari tainka da mukabala karde hoye Sri akalTakht de samneh Saheed pa gaye) killed in the Operation are referred to as Shaheed Bhai,and while the year of birth of both men is noted to indicate the beginning of the life spanof this shaheed or martyr (1954 and 1923, respectively), the day and year of death of

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both are indicated clearly – June 6, 1984; Shaheed S. Beant Singh Ji (1949–October31, 1984) and Shaeed S Satwant Singh Ji assassins of Indira Gandhi are slightly differ-ently indicated. The caption under the portrait of Satwant Singh executed later inthe case, reads ‘phansin the latka ke kattal kitte gaya. Us vakat aap di umar 22 sal si, aapji pulice vich naukri kardeh san’ (he was made to hang and killed. At the time, his [therespectful plural pronoun aap is used] age was 22 years, and he had a job in the police).

50 Fenech (2001) also writes about the juxtaposition of recent ‘martyrs’ from the Punjabconflict placed alongside depictions of historical martyrs from the annals of Sikhhistory in Gurdwaras of the Diaspora.

51 Ajeet Singh Khera (a former associate of Jagjit Singh Chauhan who declared the inde-pendent state of Khalistan in Bayswater, London) ironically said in an interview ‘We’velearnt how to die but not to live.’ Interview with Ajeet Singh Khera, September, 2006,Southall, UK.

52 On November 29, 2007, the SGPC installed a portrait of Bhindranwale in the CentralSikh Museum at the Golden Temple amidst intense controversy. The gesture was readas an attempt to forestall the attempts by radical Sikh orgainzations to install a portraitdepicting Bhindranwale armed with weaponry. A newspaper report noted that the lowkey ceremony was a way of keeping radical organizations at bay (The Tribune, Friday,November 30, 2007, p.1).

53 Baba Deep Singh was also the founding head of the Damdami Taksal, of whichBindranwale was the head.

54 Wanggar – announcement; a person who calls the prayer.55 In an uncanny mimesis, 1984 street events in Southall replicated sorrow and celebra-

tions enacted in Delhi streets. Post Bluestar, Hindus at the Margaret Road templeoffered sweets to passersby and wrote letters to the local newspapers in largenumbers. On hearing the news of the assassination of Indira Gandhi, young Sikhmen burst firecrackers and Southall sweet shops stayed open all night (SouthallGazette, July 30, 1984, p.8; and November 2, 1984, p.1), reflecting the deep fissuresthat the Punjab events had driven between the communities of Diaspora.

56 In 1984, a week after the meetings in Southall, hundreds of coaches bringing Sikh pro-testers from all over Britain jammed Hyde Park. An estimated 50,000 Sikhs marched inprocession. Bhindranwale was proclaimed a martyr by the protest marchers who carrieda painting of him at the head of the procession (Southall Gazette, June 15, 1984, p.5).

57 In June 2007, the UK High Commissioner to India, Sir Michael Arthur, revealed thatat least 10 or 12 applications for political asylum from Punjab were sent back everyyear (The Tribune, June 14, 2007) now that Country Reports of the Home Officehave declared that India as a safe and ‘friendly’ country.

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