As I walked through the London streets towards Trafalgar Square I asked myself, could it happen here? ‘A bloodthirsty mob, almost like a pack of hungry wolves hunting for prey, went from coach to coach in search of Sikhs. In a frenzy of madness the mob, armed with iron rods and knives, brutally dragged out Sikhs, burnt their turbans, hacked them to death and threw them across the tracks'. In just a few days, over 10,000 Sikhs lay slain in cities all over India . While the most renowned genocide of the last century is undoubtedly the mass murder of over six million Jews under the Nazis, other genocides often shamelessly pass us by. The systematic murder of 250,000 Sikhs in India in 1984 is one such genocide.
On Sunday 6 November 2005 Sikhs from across the UK gathered at Trafalgar Square in London to commemorate the persecution of their brethren over the past twenty-one years in India . The event, ‘ Sikhs in the Square' , began by airing an hour-long documentary on a giant television screen highlighting the plight of Sikhs in India . Later in the day guest speakers, including Mayor of London Ken Livingstone and various representatives from human rights organisations, voiced their support for the Sikh people. The aim of the event, organised by the Sikh Federation, was to raise awareness of a genocide that has received scarce press coverage in the Western media, despite the fact that a Sikh diaspora has been present in the UK and the US for over a hundred years now. But what exactly were Sikhs commemorating, and what are the origins of this forgotten genocide?
While India prides itself on being ‘the world's largest democracy', for Sikhs, it has come to symbolise something else entirely. The history of the Sikhs in India since its inception in 1947 has been one of persecution, discrimination and dispossession. When the British finally withdrew in 1947, they didn't leave the sub-continent as they found it, instead : the Muslims, under their unlikely leader Mohammad Ali Jinnah, petitioned for and achieved the Muslim State of Pakistan ; and the Congress Party took charge of a Hindu majority India .
But what did the Sikhs get? Nothing. In fact, they got worse than nothing: their former Kingdom and ancestral homeland Panjab, which they had ruled prior to the British arrival from 1799 to 1849, was split in two, with two thirds of it going to Pakistan . They decided to throw in their lot with India , and after being promised ‘the glow of freedom' by numerous Indian leaders including Gandhi, migrated to Indian East Punjab . Since 1947, however, rather than experiencing the ‘glow of freedom', the Sikh community has faced a continuous string of both civil and human rights violations.
Immediately after partition Indian officials not only went back on their promises, but some even went so far as to describe the Sikhs as ‘criminal people' and instructed officials to take out ‘special measures' against them. Over the next fifty-eight years these ‘special measures' against the Sikhs have included widespread abuses by police and army personnel, no official recognition of their faith in the Indian Constitution, the diversion of 75% of Panjab's natural water supplies - crucial to Sikh farmers - to neighbouring states, and the arbitrary murder of Sikh civil and human rights protesters. Enough was enough.
As a result of these continual depredations a group of young Sikh radicals, headed by the charismatic preacher Sant Jarnail Singh, openly called for an independent Sikh State (Khalistan) within the boundaries of historic Panjab, and encamped themselves inside Sikhism's holiest shrine, The Golden Temple in Amritsar. In June 1984, under the command of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, 150,000 troops were deployed in Panjab and the Golden Temple was stormed in an attempt to crush the freedom movement. Not only were several of the main buildings in the Temple, which are sacred to Sikhs, reduced to rubble by the Indian army, but ten thousand Sikh pilgrims ‘disappeared' – executed, their only crime was their faith. Amrit Wilson of the New Statesman wrote in June 1984 of the Golden Temple storming: “On 4 June, a day of pilgrimage for Sikhs when thousands had gathered at the Golden Temple , army tanks moved into the Temple Complex , smashing into the sanctum and shooting everyone in sight. Those left alive were then prevented from leaving the building, many were wounded but left to bleed to death, and when they begged for water, Army Jawans [soldiers] told them to drink the mixture of blood and urine on the floor.”
In retaliation for this sacrilege and blatant human rights violation, Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards. What happened afterwards exceeded even the Temple massacre: a wave of government organised pogroms, systematically singled out Sikhs in Indian cities and butchered them in their thousands. The BBC's Nicholas Nugent gave his account of the pogrom in Delhi ; “The initial ‘knee-jerk' response had given way to what appeared to be a more systematic and organised outbreak of blood-letting. Sikhs were stabbed, burned and butchered to death.” As the police and army stood by and watched, it was clear that the government was involved in organising the crackdown. To this day not a single person has been brought to account for the genocide. In fact, in the last 21 years the Indian government has continued the indiscriminate murder of innocent Sikh civilians, under the guise of protecting national security from Sikh secessionists. A rough estimate of the number of Sikhs killed is 250,000.

Since the atrocities of 1984 Sikhs have continued to petition for autonomy and for the guilty to be brought to book. Those who gathered in Trafalgar Square on 6 November 2005 ended the day's proceedings with a candle lit vigil and a prayer to commemorate their lost loved-ones. On a dismally wet and sombre Sunday afternoon, perhaps the appropriate mood for such an event, General Secretary of the Communication Workers Union Billy Hayes offered these words of support to the Sikh people: “Your cause is right and just; the Indian government must be held accountable for their actions and I call upon you to continue your fight for truth and justice.”