Violence and the Culture of Sikh Separatism

Cynthia Kepplcy MahmoodUniversity of Maine

Violence and the Culture of Sikh Separatism

Academic approaches to Indian civilization have tended to mirror the popular imaginings ofa foundation of wide consensus, grounded in Hindu philosophy, that underlies the diversityof beliefs, lifestyles and social orders of the subcontinent. Against this backdrop, theconflicts which appear periodically, often dramatically, seem to be enigmas begging ofexplanation rather than inherent or even defining elements of the civilization. The case ofthe Sikhs, which I will consider here, is one which illustrates the fact that consensus andconflict are actually two sides of a coin in India. The dangerous level which Sikh alienationhas reached, as I have posited elsewhere, is but an extreme point on a continuum thatpermeates the entire society (Mahmood 1993). It has reached this point because Sikhmilitants have been relatively successful in creating an entirely separate cultural world inwhich violent rebellion has become normative. Understanding that separate culture, and thecentrality of violence in it, is the task confronting the ethnographer of the Sikh separatistmovement.

Sikhism is a religious tradition with about eighteen million adherents worldwide, most in thenorthwestern Indian state of Punjab but others scattered in diaspora across several continents.It originated in the fifteenth century when its founder, Guru Nanak, gathered a group ofdisciples or sikhs who rejected the ritualism and caste hierarchy of Hinduism in favor ofsocial equality and total devotion to a single divine being. A succession often gurus led theSikh community (thepanth), which quickly acquired converts from various sectors ofsociety. Persecution by Mughal emperors led the Sikhs to develop a firmly militant identity,a militancy started by Guru Hargobind who adopted the characteristic double-edged sword toindicate the complementarity of temporal and spiritual power, and concluded by GuruGobind Singh who established a military brotherhood called the Khalsa ("pure") in 1699.Sikhs who chose to be baptized into the Khalsa took the surname Singh ("lion"), dedicatedthemselves utterly to their faith, and promised to wear the five articles of faith: a sword,uncut hair, a comb, breeches, and a steel bangle.

Though not all Sikhs became baptized members of the Khalsa, Sikhism as a religioustradition generally accepts the legitimacy of violent resistance in the face of insults to orrepression of the faith. "When all other means have failed, it is justified to take to the hilt ofthe sword," said Guru Gobind Singh. The Sikh ideal of the saint-soldier {sant-sipahi) is an

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individual who has "the wisdom of a saint, the courage of a soldier." Through the past fourcenturies, Sikhs have had many occasions to put this ideal into practice, creating a long lineof martyrs who are now venerated alongside the ten gurus. Sikh identity as a wholegradually became tied up with Khalsa identity and its corresponding militancy, though thedefinition of who was and who was not a Sikh remained contested (Fox 1985; McLeod 1989).

The current conflict in the state of Punjab, in which Sikh separatists are battling the Indianpolice and armed forces, has a long history which has been ably analyzed by many scholarsand journalists (e.g. Kapur 1986; Jacob 1991). From the viewpoint of an anthropologist,however, accounts focusing on the economic and political factors behind Sikh violence lacka key component, the interpretation of such violence by the participants themselves. WhileSikh militants have much in common with other religious nationalists around the world,simply calling them "fundamentalists" misses much of the hermeneutics behind their usageof Sikh tradition in their conception of themselves and their enemies. Likewise, though Sikhinsurgents share much with resisters of state rule from Northern Ireland to Peru, the label"terrorists" certainly hides more than it enlightens.

An ethnographic approach to Sikh separatism must take full cognizance of the fact that,although Indian government portrayals of the insurgents emphasize their marginality withinSikh society, in reality an entire subculture has evolved in which the violence of the militantsplays a central, indeed valorized, role. A young Sikh's decision to take part in violentactivities is therefore not a matter of flaunting society's norms but rather of upholding itshighest desiderata. And dying for Khalistan, the sovereign state for which Sikh separatistsare fighting, is perceived by militants as a most meaningful and heroic death.

As an anthropologist, I hope to come to understand these attitudes, not by ignoring but byrespecting what militant Sikh interlocutors tell me about their struggle. Following Rosaldo(1989) who was able to humanize the world of headhunters by taking seriously their ownconceptions of what they were doing and Scheper-Hughes (1992) who refused to second-guess what maternal neglect actually meant to impoverished mothers in Brazil, I take Sikhinterlocutors at face value when they insist that they suffer and perpetrate violent actsreligiously. The task is to get behind this radically different world view, to see what it meansto them.

In June of 1984, the Golden Temple Complex at Amritsar, containing the holiest shrine ofthe Sikhs as well as the seat of temporal authority in the Sikh community, was attacked bythe Indian Army under the orders of then prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The reason for the

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attack was to flush out a heavily aimed group of Khalsa Sikhs, led by the charismatic leaderSant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, who were demanding the economic and political autonomyof Punjab and the integrity of the Sikhs as an identifiable religious community. The attackheavily damaged some of the buildings (including the near-total destruction of the SikhReference Library), killed Bhindranwale and many of his militants and also resulted in atleast several hundred casualties among the innocent pilgrims worshipping at the temple.

The attack on the Golden Temple Complex, called "Operation Blue Star" by the Indiangovernment, certainly forms the founding event in militant Sikh consciousness. There ishardly a home in the separatist Sikh community in which a picture of the damaged buildingsdoes not hold pride of place alongside portraits of the Sikh gurus and the martyr-hero of themovement, Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. The sense of being a community under siegewas exacerbated by the communal riots following the Sikh assassination of Indira Gandhi,which are seen by militant Sikhs not as riots but as the determined slaughter of Sikhs byHindus, often with the complicit aid of Indian police. The assassination itself, called"punishment" or "delivery of justice" in the separatist community, outraged some Sikhs butwas enormously empowering for others. Suddenly it became clear just what a few Singhswith guns could do (see Jeffrey 1986).

On April 29,1986 the independent state of Khalistan was declared in Amritsar by the PanthicCommittee, a group of five men who led the initial phases of the separatist struggle. Severalguerrilla forces were established, loosely coordinated but working toward the same goal.Their actions against Indian government targets were successful enough to provoke amassive crackdown in Punjab, involving the stationing of large numbers of police and otherarmed forces in the state, new legislation that made it possible to imprison suspectedterrorists without the cumbersome judicial procedures usually required, and the generalestablishment of an atmosphere of terror among a great portion of the population. AmnestyInternational and other human rights organizations, though barred from entry into the area,reported widespread torture, rape, extra judicial killings and other abuses on the part of thegovernment (Amnesty International 1992).

Two points must be made here. One is that it is impossible for an underground guerrillaorganization to sustain itself without widespread popular support. Thus, while it isimpossible to say what proportion of the Sikh population actually sympathizes with themilitants, labeling this group as extremists without a popular base is clearly inaccurate.Secondly, it is also clear that the counter-insurgency itself, however warranted from theviewpoint of state security, has prompted and continues to prompt new converts to the

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separatist Sikh cause. Each new case of abuse, news of which spreads like wildfire throughthe militant community, contributes to the sense of siege and to the feeling that any actionstaken in retaliation are justifiably seen as defense of the faith.

According to a Panthic Committee spokesperson, a militant in the field is considered to havea life expectancy of about two or three years. The near certainty of death under fire doesnot, however, seem to inhibit the recruitment of young men, and women, into the separatiststruggle. In large part, this is due to martyrdom, which plays a central role in the definitionof what it means to be a Sikh for those of militant persuasion. Guru Nanak had advisedSikhs to "[c]ome to my street with your head in your palms," meaning that relinquishingegoistic desires was essential in approaching the divine spirit. Later in history, one BabaDeep Singh, whose head was severed from his body in battle with the Afghans, took thisinjunction literally as he carried his head in his palms to lay it down reverentially inAmritsar. This literal reading of Nanak's advice as to the necessity of giving one's head inspiritual endeavor is not accepted by all of those who claim Sikhism as their heritage. But itwas revived in the founding episode of the current struggle when Sant Jarnail SinghBhindranwale was killed in the 1984 assault on the Golden Temple. When urged to leave thecomplex by a back route, Bhindranwale reportedly pointed to the mark on the floor whereBaba Deep Singh's head had fallen and said, "Baba Deep Singh walked for so many miles togive his head in this place, and I am privileged to be able to give mine right here." Thus thepowerful theme of the physical martyrdom of Sikhs for their faith has acquired yet anotheraccretion. Now Bhindranwale, heroically martyred, stares down from the walls of militanthouseholds alongside of Baba Deep Singh and Guru Nanak. "Physical death I do not fear,"he said. "Death of conscience is the real death." The three figures form a triumvirate acrossthe centuries, reinforcing the belief in the sanctity of martyrdom.

Here is a brief narrative of one young militant, who clearly drew on the historical theme ofSikh martyrdom in a very personal way as he suffered torture at the hands of police:

In our daily prayers we remember all our Sikh martyrs during the Mughalperiod, those who went through terrible hardships. They were cut topieces, made to survive on a small loaf of bread, and they withstood allthose tortures. I used to think, "What type of people were they?" and whenI got involved in the militant movement there was sometimes a littlethought in the back of my mind that if the time came, would I be able tobehave as those brave Sikhs, my ancestors, did? But finally when I wentthrough it, it was not me but those other Sikhs who were sustaining that. It

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seemed they were taking the pain with me. I felt then the satisfaction ofknowing that with Guru's grace I was able to pass the test of being a Sikh.

This is required of a Sikh, that a Sikh should be able to withstandeverything. What is of the body is anyway just elements and with deatheverything goes back. But the spirit is something immortal and if thisspirit is filled with the love of Guru then that gives all the courage andstrength. Me and my friends, we used to sit together and laugh at how theGuru has made us mortals to be in the spirit of those immortal saints andmartyrs, at how we lived up to this and passed the test of our generationcourageously.

Another famous episode from Sikh history, remembered in prayers every day, involves themartyrdom of some Sikh children who were chopped to bits at the hands of the Mughals.Garlands were made out of the chopped bodies of the children and their mothers were forcedto wear those, whereupon it is believed that they put their hands together and prayed to thankthe Lord that their children had died bravely. Recently, I talked with a militant woman abouther young sons who want to join the armed struggle. "I have only two sons," she said, "noteven enough to make a necklace. If they get sacrificed for Khalistan it will be through thegreat grace of the Guru. They will be able to give back what was the gift of God to us."

Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Guru and founder of the Khalsa, also experienced the brutaldeath of his sons when they were bricked up alive inside a wall by emperor Aurangzeb.With the same fearless bravado shown by the mother, he said to Aurangzeb, "[t]hese are justa few candles you have snuffed out. But the whole blazing furnace of the Khalsa is allaround me, and it will make Punjab so hot that your horses won't be able to gallop across theburning plains."

The confidence in these words, the sheer exhilaration of being part of a movement whoseultimate victory is believed to be inevitable, suffuses the Khalistani separatist communitytoday. Despite the images of death and talk of weapons and strategies that pervade militanthouseholds, the overall atmosphere remains one that is essentially joyous. Aside from thehistorical momentum provided by a long line of endurers and fighters, the religious ecstasyof "knowing God" clearly motivates both those on the receiving ends of horrifying abusesand those on the trigger end of acts of violent liberation.

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Here are the words of one guerrilla fighter on the subject of devotion and violence:

I can tell you this not only about myself and my companions, but about allthe militants I know. We are very devout people. We wake up at three orfour in the morning, bathe, and pray for hours and hours. We pray beforewe go on a mission, that the mission should be successful. When we comeback and it has been accomplished, we thank the Guru for that. Our onlymission in life is to uphold the value of Dharm, righteousness.

The caretaker of one of the gurdwaras that sheltered Khalistani militants paints a similarpicture:

When they go off to a mission they are not excited or nervous at all. Theyare totally at peace. They say their prayers, standing before Guru GranthSahib [the holy book of the Sikhs] and asking strength for what they wantto do. The way they take out their weapons and ready their weapons, it isclose to worship. Then when they come back the first thing they do is lieprostrate before Guru Granth Sahib. They thank Guru if the action wassuccessful. If not then they pray and say, 'Guru, thank you for keeping usalive today, and please give us strength so that next time our mission willbe successful.' They are very devout, full of noble spirit.

When one talks about people who pray before and after killing, handle assault rifles "as akind of worship," and aim for the creation of a religious state, it is hard to avoid reaching forterms like "fundamentalism" and "terrorism." Indeed, it is hard not to suspect that what wehave here are psychopathic or otherwise marginal individuals who clothe their acts ofviolence in religious terms simply to achieve some acceptability. This is where theethnographic perspective, taking one's interlocutors seriously, enters the picture. It is veryclear that militant Sikhs believe they are engaged in righteous struggle and that the certaintyof death in that struggle is not inhibitory but is in some way enticing. As one young Sikhremarked, "[w]ell, if my choice is death as a victim under torture or death as a hero in battle,why shouldn't I take the latter?" And it is equally clear that killing, when carried out in theguise of delivery of justice, is in no way inimical to Sikh morality in the eyes of thiscommunity.

Envisioning themselves as saint-soldiers, militant Sikhs see themselves as following thesecond part of Guru Nanak's injunction about giving one's head, which is that when doing so

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one should be enraptured with love. The "loving revolutionary" of Che Guevara would be, Ithink, familiar to Sikhs involved in the current struggle. "He is a very loving person," and"he is full of love" are comments I have heard about militants responsible for the deaths ofmany individuals. The love of the righteous warrior, the saint-soldier, is a love of truth. Itgoes beyond the affection for particular individuals and indeed may mean, with regret andheartbreak, sacrificing them.

An especially memorable account I heard from the husband of a martyr told how at onepoint his wife and infant son were picked up by the police. When the police began to torturethe infant to persuade the mother to tell the whereabouts of her husband, she asked for aglass of water and, when it arrived, she smashed the glass on the desk, slit her own throat anddied on the spot. "She was so full of love, she martyred," reported her husband. Did hemean that his wife loved him so much that she took this courageous but gruesome step? Idon't think so. What was being expressed with fierce pride was this woman's love of justiceand her commitment to the cause of Khalistan.

Willingness to die for a righteous cause, indeed fearlessly embracing death for a righteouscause, is the key marker of a Khalsa Sikh. (Bhindranwale said, "he who is fearful is not aSikh and he who is fearless is a Sikh.") The fact that one has a cause worth dying for, thatone knows a truth worth dying for, is rather a matter for celebration. After the terriblemartyrdom of Guru Gobind Singh's own children, he sent a "Letter of Victory" to EmperorAurangzeb, signaling that because he knew the truth, he was the victor and not thevanquished.

When I pointed out to an immigrant Sikh mother that her eight-year-old child'spreoccupation with violence would be seen as pathological by most Americans, sheresponded by saying that she pitied American kids who had so little of importance in theirlives that all they thought about was rock-and-roll. Her son had recurring dreams (perhaps"nightmares" in our schema) about shooting down the ropes used to hang the two Sikhs whoassassinated a general in the Indian Army. He wears the full regalia of the Khalsa Sikh, andlooks forward to the day when he can go on a "mission" to Punjab.

The dharmyuddh, the "righteous battle," is seen in fact in far more cosmic terms than asimple struggle for national autonomy. Here are the words of one fighter who is particularlyarticulate about the necessity of righteous battle beyond the establishment of Khalistan perse. Referring to a portrait of the Ninth Guru on his wall, he said:

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That's Guru Tegh Bahadur. His story is so beautiful, because he sacrificedhis life for the sake of another religion, for Hindus. At that time they werebeing persecuted by the Mughals. That's really an inspiration to me. That'swhy I think Sikhs are in the world, not just for Sikhs but for anybody whoneeds a Sikh.

Honestly, deep in my heart I feel like our work in this world has to bemuch bigger man just for ourselves. Some of my friends say that whenKhalistan is established then we'll be able to kick back and relax! But Isay no, the work is just getting started. You have your country, but thenyou need to work on achieving justice in it and then in the rest of theworld.

All these wars that are going on today, people are demanding justice at allcosts. Bosnia is a clear cut case. We have to not only be more peaceful inspirit, but we have to be willing to sacrifice our lives. The United Nationsdoesn't really have any power because there aren't enough parents willingto sacrifice their sons. If there is injustice and somebody in Somalia isn'tgetting food, the United Nations should be able to take care of it.

When Khalistan is established, if I have any say, I will send 500,1,000,5,000 Sikhs right away. You don't get peace and justice without sacrificeand our Gurus taught us all about that.

This broad sense of righteous sacrifice is accompanied by a millenarian certainty that theindependent Sikh state of Khalistan will indeed be established, that the struggle for whichmany are killing and dying will succeed. It is in terms of this vision that the separatist Sikhcommunity, spread across Punjab, India and the West, defines itself. It makes sense of anynews that might hint at defeat (for example, the capture of the head of the PanthicCommittee last November) by recourse to the rhetoric of infiltration, criminalization orbetrayal from within. Newspapers, cassette tapes and the ubiquitous photos of martyrs thatcirculate through the community keep a certain buoyancy of spirit alive despite all setbacks.The world of Sikh separatism is a hopeful, forward-looking world. The fact that it containsmothers who talk about the potential bloody deaths of their children in terms of garlands ofbody parts is only paradoxical from an outsider's perspective.

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Given the vitality of the culture of Sikh separatism with its normalization of violence, it isclear to me that the conflict in Punjab is far from over. This conflict, along with othersinvolving Kashmiri Muslims and various tribal groups, must be taken not as an aberration inan otherwise harmonious picture of democratic coexistence in India, but as an indicator ofdeep fault lines in the social order. The same fault lines are apparent in the study of ancientBuddhism, where they are easier to ignore because of the ancient and pacifist character ofthe protagonists. The Sikh separatists, contemporary and far from pacifist, bring thechallenge of understanding intercommunal relations in India to an inescapable forefront.

The fact that violence has become embedded in a complex web of cultural meanings in theSikh community means that anthropologists, with their unique ability to withhold judgmentin order to understand another's perspective, have a special role to play. It is a harsh fact oflife that in many of the areas in which anthropologists work, brute force plays a key role inthe lives of many of our interlocutors. Understanding what is behind such force, how it iscarried out, and how it is received, resisted or returned must be an imperative for a disciplinewhich claims humankind as its subject matter. We can learn not only about Punjab or India,but about what it means to be human by coming to understand how and why some peoplefeel their humanity is joyously reclaimed by a bomb placed here or shots fired there. Whilethe ethical and methodological questions surrounding the study of this kind of violence areimmense, anthropologists cannot turn away from it and hope to retain any credibility amongpeople whose lives are shaped by it. As Jeff Sluka notes, "[t]he world is not becoming asafer place for the pursuit of anthropological fieldwork, but, perhaps for that very reason,there is more need for such research than there has ever been before" (1990:124). And thereis more need, I would add, to conduct this research in the most open spirit possible,recognizing the reality of Ilongots who hunt heads, mothers who neglect children, andreligious nationalists who kill as part of the total human experience our discipline is aimed atunderstanding.

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References Cited

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Fox, Richard G.1985 Lions of the Punjab: Culture in the Making. Berkeley: University of

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Jeffrey, Robin1986 What's Happening to India? Punjab, Mrs. Gandhi's Death and the Test

for Federalism. New York: Holmes and Meier.

Kapur, Rajiv1986 Sikh Separatism: The Politics of Faith. London: Allen and Unwin.

Mahmood, Cynthia Keppley1993 "Rethinking Indian Communalism: Culture and Counter-Culture." Asian

Survey 32(4):722-737.

McLeod, W.H.1989 Who is a Sikh: The Problem of Sikh Identity. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Rosaldo, Renato1989 Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis. Boston: Beacon

Press.

Scheper-Hughes, Nancy1992 Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil.

Berkeley: University of California Press.

Sluka, Jeffrey1990 "Participant Observation in Violent Social Contexts." Human

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Tully, Mark and Satish Jacob1991 Amritsar: Mrs. Gandhi's Last Battle. Calcutta: Rupa and Company.

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