- Sikhs feel highly victimized as India continues to remain in denial of Justice for 1984 massacre
- Narendra Modi’s future role creates acute panic among Sikhs
- Indians continue to blame Pakistan for Khalistan insurgency
- RAW created Anti-Sikhs Division under B Raman’s command to eliminate Khalistan movement
- RAW’s anti Sikh Division organized 5 hijackings to establish Sikhs-ISI links but to no avail
- Sikhs’ genocide in 1984 by Indian government exposed India’s blames
- Sikh insurgent leaders, nabbed, killed in India with India blaming them to be in Pakistan
- Hindus never trusted Sikhs for sensitive government jobs
- RAW remained highly active against Sikhs across the world
By Makhdoom Babar
(Additional reporting by Mina Dhillon and Himant Singh Tiwana)
With the Indian government constantly remaining in mode to deny justice to the Sikhs for the ruthless massacre of their dear and near ones back in 1984 by the Indian Security Forces and with the expected installation of staunch anti-non Hindu extremist leader Narindra Modi as the next Prime Minister of India, as he has been announced by his party BJP, the Sikhs all over the world have gone into a state of acute panic and have been gripped by a feeling of absolute insecurity, their simmering desire for having an Independent Sikh State under the name of Khalistan in the Sikh majority part of India has started to resurface all around the world, reveal the latest findings of The Daily Mail.
The Daily Mail’s investigations indicate that the followers of Sikh religion, all over the world have been seeking punishment for those responsible for ruthless butchering of thousands of innocent Sikh men women and children in India during a sham security operation in 1984. The Sikhs had been looking forward to successive Indian government for justice in the direction during the past 29 years but to no avail at all. To add salt to the wound, the Indian court, just recently acquitted Congress leader Sajjan Kumar of all charges who is the prime accused in 1984 massacre of Sikhs, making mockery of the sentiments of Sikhs.
The Daily Mail’s investigations reveal that if on one side, the Sikhs have been given a shut up call during the successive Congress led governments at Delhi, than on the other side, the community has gone into a deep state of shock and fear after the extremist Hindu party BJP announced party’s hard core Hindu leader Narendra Modi who is much known to the world for his hatred for non Hindu Indians, would be the Prime Minister of India if BJP wins the upcoming General Elections, which are very much expected to go to BJP due to constant loss in popularity of ruling Congress Party and also owing to the deep grown nexus between Indian army and extremist Hindu hardliners that are part of BJP.
The daily Mail’s investigations reveal that the Sikhs feel that if a person like Modi would take over as Prime Minister, there would be no place safe for non Hindu Indian across India as he is worldwide known for organizing genocide of non Hindus.
The Daily Mail’s findings indicate that Modi’s track record against Sikhs is also very controversial. Despite being a staunch ant-Muslim Hindu extremist, Modi is not much known as being soft towards Sikhs as well. Apart from other atrocities against Sikhs, Modi, just recently, being the Chief Minister of Gujrat state of India, organized forcible eviction of hundreds of Sikhs farmers from Gujrat, forcing them to sell their lands at throw-away prices and leave Gujrat forever. Sikhs fear that with this track record and mindset against Sikhs, if Modi becomes Indian Premier, he and his cronies would unleash hell on Sikhs.
The Daily Mail’s investigations indicate that the fears of Sikhs and their desire to attain an independent State out of India to maintain their religious identity and origin is not just politically motivated but it has very strong historical reasons. These investigations indicate that right from the beginning, after the British rule ended in India and Hindu led government was formed, Hindus, particularly belonging to the Indian establishment, never liked and trusted Sikhs. In Hindu dominated Indian government, Sikhs were considered to be suspicious elements and a potential threat to the Hindu power. Soon after the division, Sikhs were dubbed as Pakistani agents by the Indian intelligence establishment and the same mindset prevailed in the entire Hindu society.
On the other side, a very handsome number of Sikhs had migrated to certain Western countries including UK, Canada and US in search of better future. Most of the migrating Sikhs belonged to middle or lower class of Indian society and thus worked with deep dedication to change the their future. Despite living in Western countries, these Sikhs carried on with their traditional and religious bindings very strongly. They always preferred to maintain their roots in India and never submitted to the western culture. They always kept an eye back home to live settled lives back in India and had great feelings for their country. However, soon, these Sikhs started to realize that the Hindu dominated Indian government was not being sincere to them. The migrant Sikhs faced with a variety of issues in Western countries related to their religion and as any other patriotic citizens, had great hopes that their government would help them in getting such sensitive issues resolved in different countries but only to found that their government back at New Delhi had actually abandoned them completely. For instance, in England, the Sikhs approached the Indian High Commission, seeking Indian government’s intervention in redressing their issues with British authorities for availability of space to build a Sikhs’ worship place but they found that government of India had completely abandoned them and refused to extend them any help while the Indian government otherwise remained very helpful to migrant Hindus everywhere in the world in such issues.
Such issues and acute discrimination in daily life matters back in India added maximum to the frustration of Sikhs as they felt being aliens, with no national or religious identity. This frustration however reached to its peak in 1970s which eventually led the Sikhs to launch movements under the names of Sikh Home Rule Movement in UK and United Sikh Appeal in the US, seeking justice for Sikhs from the Indian government. These movements were later followed by movements like International Sikh Youth Federation (ISYF), Dal Khalsa, Babbar Khalsa etc in different parts of the Western world.
In the meanwhile, in 1971, before the Indians launched a war to disintegrate West Pakistan and to create a new country with the name of Bangladesh, the unrest of Sikhs had forced them to seek an independent State, comprising the Sikh majority areas in India. Some historians clearly say that it was just the frustration of the Indian establishment from the Sikhs ’demand for a separate State that forced Indians to launch operation Bangladesh to divert the pressure of the Sikhs movement for a separate State. However, after seeing the formation of Bangladesh, the Sikhs’ desire for attaining an independent Sikh State rose very high and Khalistan movement took birth at this point of time.
The Daily Mail’s investigations indicate that though the Indians have constantly been blaming Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence for creating and fueling the Khalistan movement, they continue to forget that when Sikhs developed the desire to have an independent State, ISI was not even formed and When Khalistan Movement got generated, ISI’s was merely headed by an officer with the rank of a Brigadier and conducting external operations was not in its domain neither it had resources to do so. It remains a fact that to make Khalistan Movement controversial and to portray it as a foreign backed militant campaign and not to let it have an identification of an indigenous, religiously and socially motivated movement; India linked it to Pakistan’s intelligence mechanism for the global audience and back home, for local Hindu society, linking any such movement with Pakistan was more than enough to generate maximum hate and opposition for Sikhs and any of their just demands.
The Indians also kept blaming the US and its CIA for helping the Khalistan Movement and hurled a variety of accusations in this direction but were never able to prove anything in this direction.
In the late 70s and early 80s, Indian Intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing, commonly known as RAW was tasked to counter the Khalistan movement. It is worth mentioning here that up till that time, there was complete ban on inducting any Sikh into RAW. RAW created a completely new Division for the purpose and B. Raman, a Police Service Officer of RAW was made the head of this Division.
The first major task that this Anti-Sikh Division in the RAW achieved was that it started creating fabricated wings of different Sikh independence movements by luring certain unemployed and illiterate Sikh individuals, having criminal backgrounds or who were already in police custodies for different criminal charges. Through such fabricated factions of highly motivated movements like Dal Khalsa and Babbar Khalsa, this anti-Sikh RAW Division organized a number of criminal operations with giving credit to original Sikh movements, to generate maximum hatred and opposition for genuine Sikh movements for Independence. Through such fabricated factions, RAW organized extortion activities and also dacoities and killing of cops just to defame the original Sikh movements that were actually financially supported by very well to do Sikhs from different parts of US, UK, Canada etc , having no reason to generate finances for the movements through criminal activities or extortion. It was just going on for playing a big game.
The Anti-Sikh Division of RAW, under the Command of B Raman, came out with first major card on September 29, 1981 when it succeed in getting an Air India passenger plane hijacked by the members of fabricated Dal Khalsa, from New Delhi Air Port and made it reach Lahore to start adding fuel to its claims of Pakistan supporting the Sikh insurgency movement. Panicked Pakistani government, with general Zia-ul-Haque as the President and Army Chief of the country, however, managed to counter this RAW move very effectively and succeeded in getting all the hijacked passengers released and arrested the hijjackers who were subsequently tried in Pakistani Courts according to the state laws and were sentenced and imprisoned.
However, the anti-Sikh Division of the RAW did not end up here and it continued with this policy to portray Sikhs’ independence movement as a terror movement by continuously organizing sham hijackings with subsequent landings in Pakistan. After the above mentioned high jacking drama, RAW organized three hijackings with similar course of events and eventually this ploy started to fade away with global community and world’s clandestine specialists started refusing to believe in these tactics. This added to the frustration of head of RAW’s Anti Sikh Division, B Raman and he decided to come up with some more innovative methodology to achieve the desired goals.
In the process, on 24th August, 1984, B Raman and company came up with a value added hijacking drama. This time, as they knew that Pakistani authorities had gone sick of handling these RAW organized hijackings of Indian passenger aircraft and thus would not allow any hijacked Indian plane to land on its territory, they planned something extra, something special. All arrangements were made in advance and then the drama was released for global audience.
For this particular episode, the then Chief of RAW, Rameshwar Nath Kao, on the request of the agency head of anti-Sikhs Division, established some special ties with certain authorities at the UAE and a senior intelligence official of the Arab World, who was running hi-fi prostitution dens in different parts of UAE, comprising prostitutes of Indian origin, with the dedicated help and support of RAW, helped RAW to the maximum.
The Daily Mail’s investigations reveal that in this episode, Pakistan’s ISI had done enough homework and thus had suggested the government not to entertain Indian in case of a hijacking and instead let any hijacked plane go off Pakistan territory. On 24th August, 1984, another hijacked plane of India, that was the 5th in the series within just a few months, a fact that clearly indicates that such a series of hijackings was not possible in any part of the world unless the authorities at the plane originating airport were not hands in gloves with terrorists, sought landing at Lahore airport. Pakistan blatantly refused permission to land to the captain of the hijacked plane. The pilot finally requested that he was running out of the fuel and here, to save the precious human lives, Pakistan allowed the plane but only for the purpose of refueling and ordered the pilot to fly off its air space soon after the refueling is completed and it was done accordingly by the pilots and hijackers both and after the refueling, the plane left Lahore and made next landing at UAE capital of Dubai.
It was just going exactly to the RAW’s plans. The hijacked plane landed at Dubai and the passengers were released by the hijackers while the hijackers were turned in by the UAE’s security officials and RAW, later with the help of the above mentioned influential Arab Intelligence official, managed to grab its own created hijackers back to India.
From here, started the real episode of this drama. In this case, RAW got it attributed to the arrested hijackers that during the interrogations, the hijackers informed the Indian investigators that they hijacked the plane with a dummy, plastic made revolver but at Lahore airport. Replaced this dummy weapon with a real revolver. RAW also managed to create an eye witness to this whole scene and that too out of the hijacked passengers who claimed of watching this entire top secret move himself as if everything was being done quite openly. RAW also claimed of recovering the revolver from the hijackers that they were, according to RAW investigators, provided by the ISI officials at Lahore Airport during the refueling process. Independent media, even at that point of time, raised this question that once the plane had already been hijacked with the help of a dummy weapon, why would ISI replace this dummy weapon with a real weapon and too an official government weapon, particularly when no one knew that the hijackers were having a dummy weapons. The journalists wrote that had been the case that the plane was hijacked with an ISI provided weapon which ISI later got replaced with a dummy weapon at Lahore, it could have make some sense but the version of the Indian investigators made no sense at all.
However, since everything was well planned in advance, the RAW investigators came up with more spice for audience of their drama and stated that they wrote a letter to the manufacturers of the weapon, recovered from the hijackers and the makers of the said revolver, based in West Germany and after the discussion over the details of the said weapon, the German makers informed RAW that the said revolver was sold to Pakistan army, officially. Absurd enough, the said weapon makers were regular weapon providers to Pakistan army and the said very revolver was actually one of the weapons that Indian authorities seized from officers of Pakistan army back in 1971 at the eve of the fall of Dhaka and creation of Bangladesh. The whole episode of this particular hijacking was scripted after digging out that very revolver of some Pakistan army officer from Dacca or Dhaka back in 1971. It were such funny operations, practiced by RAW’s anti-Sikh Division that earned India an acute shame and incredibility across the globe and eventually the Americans also stopped listening to fake hues and cries of the Indians with regard to Delhi’s blames against ISI for helping Sikh insurgency movement.
In the next phase, RAW anti-Sikh Division organized the assai nation of a very honest Indian Police Officer Mr. A S Atwal, a deputy inspector general of Police, who had refused to cooperate with RAW in organizing fake encounters of innocent Sikh individuals to portray them as high profile terrorists. Atwal’s killing was again organized through fake and fabricated Sikh insurgency factions.
On the other side, Indian government continued to hurl accusations that ISI was running training camps for training the members of Khalistan Movement. The Indians gave four names as the top militant leaders of Sikhs and alleged that they were being kept in Pakistan by ISI, However, the Indians later claimed of killing all the said four top Sikh leaders, in different parts of India in routine police encounters, without giving a reason that if they were being kept in Pakistan by ISI, how did they ended up in being killed in police encounters in different parts of India? Why did they come to India, knowing of being on top of the hit list of the Indian authorities? Why did they not flee to any other part of the world if they had ISI backing?
All such acts were being organized by RAW to create a smooth, yet ruthless operation against the Sikhs and to eliminate their freedom movement forever. Following such incidents, RAW persuaded the then Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to order a full-fledged operations against Sikhs as they, according to RAW reports, had headquartered the holiest Temple, the Golden Temple and were planning for a very big operation against the government of India. As a result, Indian security Forces, setting aside all the religious feelings of Sikhs, stormed Golden Temple, known as operation Blue Star in June 1984. They killed a number of innocent Sikhs there, completely damaged the entire religious sanctity of this holiest place of Sikhs and also humiliated their top religious elders and thousands were killed without any reasons as part of the genocide of the Sikhs.
Since then, every now and then, Indian officials, comprising Hindus, Indian intelligence community and the Indian establishment treat Sikhs as their first rated enemies and never leave any opportunity to harm them. This realization is spreading amongst the Sikhs, both living in different parts of the world as well as living back in India. They seek a separate Sikhs’ State and also want a UN level probe in to the massacre of their dear and near ones back in 1984 by the Indian government.