When I got home, I received more good news when my sister told us she was going to get married. She had met an amazing guy from overseas, and they were going to start their life together. I was sad to see my sister move so far away, but that couldn’t dull my happiness for her. Though our family would be geographically fractured again, between two continents and different cities, I couldn’t remember a time when we were so happy.
Loving someone is neither easy nor simple. It’s complicated in the best circumstances, let alone when you’re trying to figure out how to care for someone who causes you and your family harm. But love is an incredible force, and at its core lies the courage to forgive.
My father wasn’t the one I grew up with, and I was no longer the insecure teenager unable to voice his fears, as I once was. We’d become new people. That’s why I believe in reincarnation; I’ve seen it with my own eyes.
Chapter Seventeen
FOR THE BETTERMENT OF ALL PEOPLE
Throughout the rest of 2008 and into the next year, my family continued to mend the bonds that had been broken between us. My brother and I were living in the house in Mississauga, while my mom and dad remained in Windsor. Things were slowly but steadily getting better. Each time I visited my parents, I could see a bit more stress lifting from my mother’s shoulders. My dad seemed to be healthy and was enjoying a busy practice.
I was grateful for the new peace that our family was building, especially as 2009 marked a challenging time for our community: the twenty-fifth anniversary of the November 1984 Sikh genocide.
Gurratan and Amneet had continued their work over the past couple of years developing a safe, positive space for the Sikh community to discuss the trauma and pain they’d suffered. They often consulted me for advice, and I did my best to guide them on a positive path. As a result of their organizing, Gurratan and Amneet had built up a massive network of progressive-minded youth, and had put on incredible events.
For the twenty-fifth anniversary, Gurratan and Amneet planned a big event called Tears and Ashes, referring to the Sikhs burned alive during the genocide and the many more who were secretly arrested and cremated until the midnineties. They planned to pack a thousand people into Brampton’s Rose Theatre for an evening in which people could learn what really happened during the genocide and share their own stories of trauma.
Nothing like it had ever been done before. Until then, our community’s coping mechanism was silence. So many of our parents shied away from activism because of fear, whether it was fear of being branded extremists, of being banned from India, or of the memory of the state hurting their family members back home. As a result, they raised us in a way that rewarded silence. But silence didn’t help the mental health and addictions issues that trauma causes. Aside from creating a safe space for healing, the event was intended to reignite the spirit of activism in the community, especially its youth, and assure them it was okay to talk through their problems.
Leading up to the event, Amneet and Gurratan turned our house into their headquarters, with volunteers in and out of the house every evening. They lined up theatre groups who used tableaux to capture what had happened and to act out scenes that had been reported in official inquiries. They contacted survivors from the Greater Toronto Area who shared their vivid lived experiences. And they invited a genocide scholar to provide an academic perspective on everything.
Gurratan and Amneet were bringing legitimacy, credibility, and critical analysis to a historical event fraught with misinformation. I was happy providing support as an unofficial advisor, but I was surprised when Gurratan asked me to give a speech at the event.
“Why me?” I asked. “Why not a refugee or academic? Someone directly affected.”
“We have both lined up, but we also need you. You are directly affected,” Gurratan corrected. “Affected the way the majority of our community has been. You’ve been called a terrorist just for having a beard and a turban. And how many years has it been since Air India?” Everyone we knew had unequivocally condemned the bombing, but we still faced baseless suspicion because of the way we looked.
He was right. I’d seen it throughout my life—like so many marginalized groups, we Sikhs were expected to speak for the reprehensible crimes committed by a few bad people in our community, but we were never asked about the racism we faced or the crimes committed against us.
“Still,” I said, “I seem like a random choice.”
“We need a strong, young voice who knows the history and can talk about it passionately,” Gurratan said.
“This is more than running civil rights seminars at universities,” I said. “I’ve never done this before.”
“Sure you have,” Gurratan said with a smile. “You do it every day, in front of a judge.”
I eventually relented and agreed to give the speech. On the night of the event, I waited backstage as the lights dimmed. I thought I would be nervous, but in the moment, I was in a positive state of mind, ready to try to provide a healing perspective.
I walked to the podium and spoke from the heart about my concerns for our community. I spoke about the need to recognize the massacre of Sikhs in November 1984 as a genocide. I stated that recognition would end the false notion that violence was communal in nature and instead clarify that it was planned and organized by the state. This action would officially recognize the pain suffered by the community. I said that recognizing a genocide denounces the actions against the target community and also works toward the prevention of any similar acts of violence in the future. It would be a first step toward healing. In closing, I said that the daily meditation of a Sikh is not to ensure justice and betterment for Sikhs alone. I explained that our mission is to ensure the betterment of all people, and that’s what we would continue to do.
As the night drew to a close and I saw how many people came up to thank Gurratan, I’d never felt more proud of him. He and Amneet had managed to break the silence that plagued our community for twenty-five years. They organized more events about social justice and cultural issues affecting Canadians, as well as a massive Sikh arts festival, and throughout it all, Gurratan kept wrangling me to speak to crowds. Most times, I agreed to speak—at the time, it felt like a duty to my community and I couldn’t say no to my brother. But I also saw how these events were making a difference. We were charting a new course forward, one that replaced the silence with activism. We were providing the language to express the frustrations and trauma of the community in a positive and productive way. More and more, I felt not obliged, but compelled, to speak. I might not have been able to put that in words at the time, but Gurratan could see it—years later, he confessed to me, “I was trying to activate you.”
The first steps of reconciling trauma are to speak about it and acknowledge the harm suffered. I learned that academically from research, and from discussions I had with experts. But I also knew it from personal experience. Much of the trauma I had endured only started to fully heal when I acknowledged the pain I’ve suffered.
So despite our best efforts to chart a positive path for our community’s healing—relying on the language of justice and reconciliation, and tearing down divisive myths to build bridges between communities—it hurt when people claimed there was a rise in Sikh extremism in Canada; even when challenged, they were unable to provide an iota of evidence to substantiate those claims. Without any rhyme or reason the entire Sikh community was being cast as extremists, and none of our voices were given the space to respond.
More insults followed. In March 2010, my friend Harbaljit Singh Kahlon, a community organizer and political insider, called me with a scoop.
“You know Kamal Nath?” he asked.
I knew the name well. Kamal Nath was one of the members of the Indian National Congress Party who, some believed, had been involved in leading a mob of thousands that attacked a Gurdwara during the November 1984 Sikh genocide. Kamal Nath admitted he was present during the violence but denied that he led any mob. He was never charged. Q
uite the opposite, in fact—he’d risen to become minister of urban development.
“I got word Nath is coming to Ontario for some trade talks,” Harbaljit said. “Meeting with the Ontario Liberals, invited here by Premier McGuinty himself.”
“Are you serious?” As much as I understood the importance of having solid foreign relations, Nath remained a very divisive figure. How could someone with such a controversial history get invited on an official trade mission? I tried to imagine what would happen if a modern Canadian politician remained in some eyes the subject of similar serious allegations. It seemed unfathomable that they would retain their position, let alone rise.
“They’re meeting next week at the King Edward Hotel in Toronto,” he said. “Let’s get the word out. We don’t have much time.”
The first people I called were Gurratan and Amneet. Amneet, though only twenty-five at the time, was one of the most politically astute people I knew. He and a group of young Sikh professionals started organizing meetings with representatives of the Ontario government to explain to them the disrespectful nature of inviting Nath.
“This is not something that happened generations ago,” one of our group said to the politicians. “The violence is recent. Sikhs were targeted for just being Sikh, they were burned alive, shops and homes of Sikhs were destroyed, thousands were killed and thousands more displaced. That’s what Kamal Nath represents in their minds.”
Still, the Ontario government refused to disinvite him. On the day of their meetings with Nath, we reached out to media and mobilized a couple of hundred protesters outside the King Edward Hotel. The crowd chanted “Go back, Kamal Nath!” and “Kamal Nath: human rights violator!” from behind a police-guarded barricade. Emotions were high. I played the role of legal observer, ready to provide assistance for any legal issues that could arise and to make sure nobody’s safety was compromised.
The protest ended without a single issue. We ran a peaceful protest, flexing our democratic right to free speech. Sadly, it fell on uncaring political ears.
Nath also met with federal leaders from the Conservative Party of Canada. That disappointed us, too, but it didn’t shock us. The Ontario Liberals and federal Liberals, on the other hand, were, for many Sikh Canadians, the default party. The party and the community had a solid relationship. That the party would so suddenly turn their backs on the community puzzled us. It felt to me as though they’d just taken the community for granted, assuming we’d never leave them.
Not all the Liberal politicians were so feckless, though. In June 2010, Sukh Dhaliwal, a Liberal MP for Surrey-Newton in BC, and Andrew Kania, representing Brampton West, prepared to read a petition in the House of Commons calling for the government to formally recognize the November 1984 massacres as “an organized campaign of genocide.” More important, it asked Canada to call upon the Indian government to bring those responsible to justice.
Reading petitions in the House isn’t a big deal. Members of Parliament are technically obligated to read a petition if they’re presented with one. It’s not anything binding. It just shows that there are people—in this case, thousands of them—who believe in the issue.
I was shocked to discover, then, that the Liberal Party’s leader, Michael Ignatieff, was pressuring Kania to withdraw from reading the petition. Dhaliwal, to his credit, wouldn’t capitulate.
Still, before Dhaliwal stood up in the House to read it, Ignatieff released a statement that threw the two MPs under the bus. The statement called the term “genocide” both inaccurate and inappropriate. “It is used here to provoke a charged, visceral response which will not bring Canadians closer to mutual understanding and closure in regard to these tragic events,” Ignatieff wrote, adding that the Liberal Party “will never stand with those who seek to polarize communities, or aggravate the tensions around long-standing conflicts that divided us in other lands.”
It was an absurd claim. The accepted description of the event was a riot between Hindus and Sikhs. The word “riot” suggested that there was communal, spontaneous violence between the two groups. But the biggest inquiry into the violence agreed that it was a planned and organized massacre. The petition sought to heal old wounds by replacing the concept of communal violence by more accurately calling it what it was. In light of that, Ignatieff’s comments were offensive and seriously damaging.
I was still giving “Know Your Rights” seminars at universities, and after Ignatieff’s statement, I also started running sessions to raise awareness about the Sikh genocide and refuting Ignatieff’s claims. I printed copies of Ignatieff’s statement and brought them to one such talk at the University of Waterloo.
I began by handing out excerpts of findings taken directly from the 2000 Nanavati Commission, an independent investigation into the Sikh genocide by a former Indian Supreme Court justice. Then I provided copies of the United Nations’ definition of genocide.
“Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group,” I said, reading from the UN pamphlet. “One: killing members of the group. Two: causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group. Three: deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part. Four: imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group. And five: forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
I looked out at the sea of faces. “You now have the definition of genocide. I’ve also given you some findings from an inquiry into an event that took place in November 1984. Take some time to read through everything,” I said. I waited a couple of minutes before calling their attention again. “Can you find any evidence from the inquiry that would satisfy the definition as laid out by the United Nations?”
“Easily,” said one of the students. A chorus of agreement echoed around her.
“Which act?” I asked.
“The first one. Based on the report there were at least two thousand seven hundred people killed in three days. I’ve read reports that put the numbers far higher, in the tens of thousands.” Somebody’s done their homework, I thought.
“But does the definition require a certain number?” I asked.
She looked quickly at the definition again and responded slowly, “No . . .”
“What if we’re talking about an ethnic community of just one tribe made up of less than a hundred people, and that entire tribe was killed?” I asked.
I could see the example had worked. “So the UN definition purposefully doesn’t include a threshold number of deaths,” she said.
“I can’t speak to how they came up with the wording,” I said. “But yes, it’s not a question of how many people were killed.”
Another student jumped in. “Based on the Nanavati Commission, many women were raped, so there’s both bodily and mental harm to thousands more. And obviously that was deliberate.”
“Okay, so that’s two of the five points,” I said. “Now I’m going to give you something else to read.”
I circulated the statement by Ignatieff and gave them a couple of minutes to go over it.
“How does that make you feel?” I asked.
“It’s kind of outlandish, given that the evidence is pretty persuasive,” said one student.
“Yeah,” added another. “At a minimum, maybe you can say you’re not a hundred per cent convinced, but what’s Ignatieff’s justification for saying he opposes it forever?”
“Seems unfair to characterize it as so black and white,” added a student.
One of the students in the front row hemmed and hawed, her mental gears clearly grinding down this knowledge. “You seem to be on the fence,” I said.
“No,” she said. “It’s the other two points in the definition of genocide.” She looked down at one of the first handouts. “Trying to prevent births from that minority and moving their children from one group to another?”
“The definition doesn’t
say it has to be all five acts,” I said. “It can be any one act.”
“Exactly. Those last two sound like Canada,” she said. “Our country has a history of sterilizing Indigenous people. And then there are residential schools. Does that mean the Canadian government committed genocide?”
“What do you think?” I asked.
“By the UN’s definition, yes,” she said.
“What do the rest of you think?” I asked the room.
There was a little surprise at the connection, followed by murmurs of agreement and head nods.
“I absolutely agree as well,” I said. “Beyond the residential schools, which were a clear attempt to destroy Indigenous language and culture, the history of Canadian colonialism is rife with examples of attempts to wipe the land of the first inhabitants. And moving the conversation from Sikh genocide to the genocide of Indigenous people in Canada raises a very important point. Why does all of this matter? Why do we care to define genocide and then determine whether or not it has occurred?”
“It gives the survivor communities a sense of closure,” one student said.
“Definitely. What else?”
“It can help bring those responsible to justice?”
“It can, and that’s important, but why?”
I could see the light bulb go off over one student’s head as his hand shot up.
“In order to prevent it from happening ever again,” he said.
“Exactly. Acknowledging the harm suffered helps survivor communities on their pathway to healing, and to reconciling the harm suffered. Bringing the responsible parties to justice can also help in the healing process. But all of this plays a role in the broader goal of preventing these injustices from ever happening again. Every time we recognize a genocide, we are effectively denouncing what happened and affirming that we won’t let it happen again.”
I had versions of that same conversation at every seminar I ran. Each time I saw the understanding dawn in the students’ eyes, I was given hope. The thought that a new generation could begin to see the world in a new way made me optimistic that we could find a more positive way forward. I felt I was making a difference.
Love & Courage Page 23