Sikh Assembly of America 1984 Genocide Exhibit

Sikh Assembly of America 1984 Genocide Exhibit

US Capitol, Washington, DC

Statement by Rev. Neal Christie, Executive Director, FIACONA

Five years ago, on the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak’s birth the ecumenical World Council of Churches representing 352 global, regional, and sub-regional, national and Christian churches, initiated a formal encounter between Christians and Sikhs; it was especially appropriate engage in this dialogue while commemorating the life and work of Guru Nanak and generations of Sikhs alongside generations of Christians.

We are reminded each passing day in poignant ways of the growing need for lasting and sustainable peace when faced with the rise of xenophobia, intolerance, violent extremism and populist ethnonationalism in the forms of Hindutva that finds legitimacy alongside other forms of ethnic nationalism. We attest to the urgency of faith communities globally to redouble our efforts to reimagine new models for building peace together because we cannot afford the luxury of thinking and working as isolated entities.

Rather, recognizing the interdependent nature of our common existence, the time is ripe for us to think and act collaboratively, confronting and overcoming any divisive tendencies among and within us.

In a world sharply divided by hate and fear distrust and disunity the best way for religious practitioners either Sikh or Christian to not be part of the problem, but to be part of the solution, is to be part of the solution together.

The Sikh faith emphasizes universal kinship as the highest of religious aspirations and urges followers to treat all human beings as brothers and sisters. The World Council of Churches has remained committed to dialogue centered on a holistic understanding of our all being made in the image of God as central to our desire for peace, an ethic and an affirmation of faith which is intrinsic to Christians and Sikh traditions, bearing in mind that peace without justice remains incomplete.

It is incumbent for churches in conjunction with civil society to remember and retell their adherents that the military invasion of Darbar Sahib, code-named Operation Bluestar, came in the first week of June 1984, and was launched on the anniversary of the martyrdom of Siri Guru Arjan Sahib, the fifth founder of Sikhs in 1606, on the false pretext. As a result thousands of Sikhs — men, women, and children — who had assembled for peaceful prayers were brutally killed.

Joyce Pettigrew, an anthropologist teaching at Queen’s University in Belfast, wrote in her 1995 book The Sikhs of Punjab, “The army went into Darbar Sahib not to eliminate a political figure or a political movement but to suppress the culture of a people, to attack their heart, to strike a blow at their spirit and self-confidence.”

Your presence and advocacy today is a sign that this spirit and self-confidence has not been diminished. In fact, it bears repeating to Sikhs and Christians that the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USIRF) has denounced the “severe escalation of India’s efforts to silence religious minorities and human rights defenders both within its country and abroad.” It is the responsibility of each faith community engaged with civil society to effectively decipher the signs of the times and offer responses to this denunciation which are courageous and committed.

Today FIACONA—the Federation of Indian American Christians of North America which represents the interests of over 1 million Christians in the U.S. laments the rapidly escalating, state-sanctioned violations of human rights that continue to be directed at religious minorities, including Sikhs, Muslims, Dalits, indigenous tribal peoples, and thousands of Christians in the Republic of India and with Sikh’s globally we unequivocally affirm that all people are entitled to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, as enshrined in Article 18 of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This international affirmation is foundational to our pursuit of economic, gender equity, and sustainable development for all of God’s children.

International Christian Concern ranks India as the 3rd of ten “persecutors of the year.” Open Doors USA ranks India as the 11th “most dangerous country in the world in which to be a Christian” a persecution level categorized as “extreme,” alongside Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan — and worse than Saudi Arabia or China. This surge in violence propelled by a Hindu ethno-nationalist or Hindutva supremacist political ideology, which conflates a militant Hindu ideology with Indian citizen identities. The Hindu religion and India’s Constitutional secular democracy have been severely distorted, leading to alarming levels of state-sanctioned violence against all religious minorities in India.

Decades of state sanctioned violence perpetrated against Sikh places of worship and Sikh communities is all too familiar in scope and horror to what we have recently seen in the In the Indian state of Manipur where last year over 65,000 tribal indigenous people, predominantly Christians and Christian churches, have been violently displaced while over 400 churches have been bulldozed or set on fire with the knowledge of the state. These lives matter to us all.

In the state of Chhattisgarh, between December 2022 and February 2023, over 2,500 Christians were forcibly displaced as mobs attacked, looted, and destroyed homes because they refused to convert to caste based forms of Hinduism. In 2023 over 1,300 incidents of harassment in private homes, extrajudicial detentions, church burnings, property damage, sexual assault and murder have been recorded against Christians.

The U.S Department of State 2023 India report details thus urgency for Sikh and Christian communities alike: unaddressed and unlawful killings; enforced disappearances; harsh and degrading treatment in detention and extended incarceration; transnational repression against individuals of other countries; unlawful interference with personal privacy and practice of their faith; collective punishment of families for the advocacy efforts of their relatives; restrictions of freedom of expression and the press; interference with freedom of assembly; and increased gender based violence.

Unless we respond with credible steps the practiced norm will be continued and expected violence against Indian Christians and Indian Sikhs as Hindutva ideology is leveraged by nationalist government policies and hegemonic majoritarianism to reinforce what in the U.S. we have termed a “Jim Crow” style caste system, that seeks to exploit millions of people and especially rural and agrarian peoples and their labor, to generate wealth, power and privilege for a few, and to stifle self-determination and the contributions of all to one democratic nation.

FIACONA and our diaspora Christian communities and constituents in every state are committed to working alongside our Sikh neighbors as we call on the U.S. Department of State to:

· Adopt the recommendation of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) which has been repeatedly called on for the past four years–designate India as a Country of Particular Concern.

· Hold the Indian government accountable for advancing equal human rights for all religious communities. We are calling on legislators with ties to the Indian government to seek reparations and redress for economic loss as well as harm.

· Consider targeted sanctions on Indian government agencies and officials responsible for severe violations of religious freedom and human rights

· Support independent religious organizations and human rights groups in India and US who are targeted for their advocacy of religious freedom and human rights.

· Pass Senate Res 569 sponsored by Senators Coons and Lankford which recognizes religious freedom is a fundamental and expressing support for international religious freedom as the cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy.

I quote my colleague Tarunjit Singh Butalia who serves as executive director of Religions for Peace USA and who wrote this week as the Indian elections were underway, “India desires to be a world power with a possible permanent seat at the U.N. Security Council with veto power. This will not be possible as long as the world’s largest democracy fails to live up to the promises of civilized nations that function under the rule of law and not the tyranny of the religious majority.”

Grief and solidarity go hand in hand. Naming the deep grief and transgenerational trauma awakens us to the depth and sincerity of our compassion for one another both in our personal practices and in our advocacy for public policies. FIACONA is privileged to stand with you to find common ground for our public witness together as a matter of conscience, as a witness to our shared humanity and our belief in the integrity of each person, and our pledge to pursue justice and peace.