|
|
TOP STORY
|
COMMUNITY TRIES TO GRIEVE UNITEDLY FOR AIR INDIA BOMBING VICTIMS |
By INDIRA PRAHST, Instructor of Race and Ethnic Relations, Department of Sociology, Langara College, Vancouver
|
This week marked the 23rd anniversary of the bombing of Air India Flight 182 where people across Canada remembered the 329 victims of this ghastly Canadian tragedy. Close to 150 gathered for a memorial service organized by families of the victims and community leaders at the Air India memorial wall in Vancouver’s Stanley Park.
This year, the event was more uplifting. Renee Saklikar, niece of the Jethras who died in the tragedy, told me: “I thought the event was deeply moving and the word I would use is ‘authentic.’ This was about the community coming together. I was comforted and there were families I never saw before touching the names of the victims on the memorial wall. It was a beautiful day similar to the day our loved ones boarded the plane.”
Along with the victim’s families, a wide spectrum of the community attended: MLAs Dave Hayer and Adrian Dix, representatives of the Punjabi Market Association in Vancouver and a raft of representatives from leading Sikh and Hindu temples, including Vancouver’s Ross Street Sikh Temple and Surrey’s Dasmesh Darbar and Guru Nanak Sikh Temple. There were prayers and touching speeches.
Guru Nanak Sikh Temple President Balwant Singh Gill, addressing the audience, said: “This act of violence gives a bad image to Sikhs. … It is a sad day today thinking about the pain the families have gone through for 23 years.”
THINK ABOUT CHILDREN
Major Sidhu, whose sister Sukhwinder Uppal and her two young children perished in the tragedy, said: “If you want to know the pain of someone, then ask someone who has experienced pain. May those responsible be punished and punished properly. … Please lobby for peace. Think about the children.”
The children at the memorial were trying to understand this tragedy in their own way. How do children make sense of the death of innocent children? I was speechless when my six-year-old son happened to walk into my TV room just as I was watching the scene where the body of a little boy was being lifted onto a boat from the water in an Air India Flight 182 documentary and asked me, “Why did that boy die?”
That scene vividly captured the brutality of the bomb plot resulting in the murder of 85 children. This image froze in my son’s mind and his way of expressing his sadness was to bring candles to the memorial wall and light them for each child who perished. He was joined by other children from the victims’ families to remember all the passengers who died. One youth, a relative of victim Mandip Singh Grewal, told me: “We feel sad about it, but we feel happy how we all are together to see how others feel about the victims.”
For some it came as a surprise to see for the first time, representatives of the Dasmesh Darbar Gurdwara in attendance. I approached Ranjit Singh Khalsa and asked him how they felt attending the memorial. He said: “We have prayed for the victims for many years, this year we are doing it openly. We are not in favour of such a brutal act and condemn it.”
PARMAR’S PICTURE
Indeed, many people prayed for the victims of air India last week, but it was not without controversy which was sparked by a three-day memorial service for the victims’ families at Dasmesh Darbar, where Air India bombing suspect Talwinder Parmar’s photo hangs with the title of martyr in the langar hall.
Although the victims’ families did not attend, the temple was packed on Sunday, with adults and children praying for the victims. In his brief speech, Dasmesh Darbar General Secretary Gian Singh Gill said the Canadian government should engage in an inquiry so the perpetrators of Air India can be convicted and that they are praying for the victims. After the prayers, I met with Gill and asked him why they were holding a prayer after so many years. He said: “We have a new executive and in my term I wanted to do a prayer for them. When can I do it? Not when my term is over.“ Gill spoke about the committee discussing holding a prayer last year because “we do prayers for other victims, (so) why not do it for these people killed in the Air India bombing; they were totally innocent.”
The contention surrounding this prayer service lies in the different meanings attached to Talwinder Parmar. For some, he is the mastermind of the Air India plot; for others, he is a martyr and innocent.
I asked Gill why the temple could not remove his picture during this prayer in light of what he means to the victims’ families. He said: “Still today, I don’t feel that it’s true (that Parmar was the mastermind behind Air India).” Pointing out that Indian police arrested Parmar and tortured and interrogated him for a month before killing him, Gill said: “The community is (wondering) why they killed Parmar when they knew that he was the main suspect.”
But noting that that did not happen as he was killed in a fake police encounter, Gill said: “Where is the value of a citizen? If we have no justice for Canadian citizens, does that mean we are third grade citizens, the same as in India? Our concern here is that if he was the real mastermind (behind the bombing plot), he should be brought to justice. … This is the view of the congregation about Parmar.”
However, Saklikar told me: “To me it is unacceptable to think they can put a picture of Parmar and also honour our dead, and this goes back to the non-negotiable, for me, just speaking for me who lost my aunt and uncle. It is unacceptable to do that. If you want to grieve with me and stand in solidarity and if we want to have a discussion about how to move forward, we can do all of that, but you need to take the picture down.”
MOVING AHEAD IN UNITY
So how do we move forward in solidarity?
This week, some people spoke about the collective guilt Sikhs feel for the Air India bombing. This is why it is paramount to stop with the “terrorist” name tagging and the continued use of labels such as “moderate” and “extremist” Sikhs which has divided the community and created a code of silence to openly talk about Air India.
Gagun Chhina, PhD candidate of Sociology, said: “I have seen how Sikhs tend to avoid the Air India issue. It is not even talked about in my household and a lot stems from the guilt and how people’s views are often constructed by association with Air India so that the turban and being brown has pre-constructed ideas.”
Chhina said that this negative construction has motivated many Sikhs to reconstruct these images and reaffirm their benefit to Canadian society with youth and gurdwaras holding langars in Downtown Eastside to feed the poor being a good example of that.
Saklikar echoed the need to reconstruct Sikh identity, saying: “Sikhism is a beautiful religion which has been unfairly targeted and I think it is time to reclaim all the goodness that there is.”
Part of coming together to discuss the issues around Air India also involves putting aside our differences and not blaming people, and in Saklikar’s words: “To have an honest discussion and that sometimes means disagreement which for me is moving forward, the appreciative inquiry. But let’s agree that killing people for any ideology or any purpose is wrong and there is no dancing around that.”
An essential inclusion in the discourse about Air India is the “possible” role of the Indian government and a historical context which includes the massacre and cultural genocide of thousands of Sikhs in 1984. However, these human rights violations against Sikhs in 1984 should not be used as a politicized expression to justify the “murder” of the innocent victims of Air India. The youth have taken the leadership to begin the discourse and provide fresh points of discussion and to consolidate our views so we can coexist peacefully on a global front.
|
[Go To Top]
|
| |
|
|
