This is from KANWALJIT SINGH GILL of Surrey:
In the last couple of weeks our community has been remembering and discussing the big tragic events that happened in 1984. During the forums and the candlelight vigil we learned many things that the general public didn't know before. There are many people who blame the terrorists and justify the Indian army attack on the Golden Temple (Amritsar, Punjab) in 1984. I'd like to share some of the things I learned from the forums and media coverage and ask those people who justify the Indian government’s actions that killed thousands of innocent men, women and children if they have any answers to some of these points.
First, to understand fully that why Indian government led by (then prime minister) Indira Gandhi organized this bad situation in Punjab in early 80's we have to understand what happened earlier that got her angry with the Sikhs and made her want to teach them a lesson.
William Warden, who was Canadian High Commissioner to India in 1984, William testified before Justice John Major at Air India inquiry that in 1975 Indira Gandhi imposed a state of emergency in India and the Sikh Akali party of Punjab launched one of the largest and most effective demonstrations against what she was doing. Finally the emergency was lifted in 1977 and she lost the next elections. When Indira Gandhi was re-elected as PM in 1980, she was particularly angry about the Sikh protests against her dictatorial rule during the two years of emergency and was determined to teach Sikhs a lesson. In Mr. Warden's words it was "pay back time."
The mainstream media covering the Air India trial didn't give much coverage to Mr. Warden's comments. But the points raised by Mr. Warden are confirmed by the comments by the Indian army's Lt. General Sinha that the army had started preparing and practising for attack on the Golden Temple 16 months before the actual attack in 1984. For those who followed Punjab news during those times the situation in Punjab was not that bad that the Indian army had to start preparing for such an attack 16 months earlier. Because the Indian army had started its preparations the Indian government knowingly let things get bad in Punjab so that they could justify their attack on the Golden Temple and justify killing thousands of innocent men, women and children.
According to the Indian government, there were approximately a hundred terrorists in the Golden Temple but they also knew that there were thousands of innocent worshippers in the Golden Temple. Why didn't the Indian government think about the thousands of innocent worshippers? According to Major General Jamwal better alternatives such as cutting off water, power and food supplies to flush out the terrorists to save thousands of innocent lives were not accepted and the Golden Temple was attacked. Jamwal also said that he refused to follow orders to shoot people who were taken into custody, but some other officers must have followed those orders and we know that thousand of innocent men, women and children were killed in those attacks just because Indira Gandhi wanted to teach Sikhs a lesson for opposing her emergency rule.
This same policy of teaching a lesson was followed by her son Rajiv Gandhi when thousands of innocent men, women and children were killed in Delhi after Indira Gandhi's assassination and so far in more than 23 years not even a single person has been sentenced by the Indian justice system. The Indian government generally thinks it has a very smart intelligence bureau that even knows what wrong activities are being performed in foreign countries. But the same smart intelligence bureau has failed to catch a single guilty person involved in those innocent killings.
I hope that people will try to understand from these facts that the attack on the Golden Temple was planned a long time ago and the terrorists were used only as pawns to justify their attack and the government of the time didn't care for thousands of innocent lives that were lost. We all should feel sympathy for the innocent victims and try our best to help in any way the surviving family members of those people. And we should continue to raise our voice for human rights.
I'd like to congratulate and thank our younger generation who organized these forums and the candlelight vigil. Hopefully they will continue to organize such things and make the general public aware of the real things that happened in India.
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