A summary look at the history of the Sikh religion, its interactions with British colonialism in India, its rituals

and documents, and Sikh fundamentalism

Sikh Religion (Gurmat)

A Short Look at the Sikh Religion

By Bruce Miller

August 2012

Sikh Religion (Gurmat) The Sikh religion emerged in the 16th century out of a mystical tradition closely associated with the Vishnu religion, one of the main Hindu religions. Guru Nanak (14691539) founded the Sikh religion, often referred to as Sikhism in English but called Gurmat, Gursikhi or Sikhi by its practitioners. This paper uses the Gurmat terminology.

The young Guru Nanak sleeping under the protection of a cobra

(Source: McLeod, 1991)

It may surprise many Westerners that Hinduism is itself a controversial concept. The present writer follows the description of Hans Kng and Heinrich von Stietencron in regarding Hinduism as primarily a set of three monotheistic religions: Vishnuism, Shivaism and Shktism. (Hans Kng et al, 1986) Hindu monotheism assumes that there is only one God, even though he may have various manifestations. (Von Stietencron) But one God may signal something very different for practitioners of Hindu religions or of Gurmat than it does to Western Christians. The most important term that Guru Nanak used for God is Akl Purakh.
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The Sikh scriptures are based on the Adi Granth, a collection of sayings from Guru Nanak, are derived from Vishnuist mysticism likely with some influence from Sufism (Islamic mysticism). 1 The full set of scriptures recognized today, the Guru Granth Sahib, is an expanded version of the Adi Granth and was finalized in its current form in the mid-17th century, although Hew McLeod reports a tradition that the last Guru, Gobind Singh (1666-1708), did a final revision to the Adi Granth early in the 18th century. (McLeod, 2012) There is a separate code of conduct and belief for the religion, called the Sikh Rahit Marayada, or simply the Rahit. The Sikh Rahit Marayada is something like a statement of orthodoxy, though strictly speaking it defines conduct for the Khalsa group, to which not all Sikhs belong. The Sikh community as a whole is known as the Panth, though Khalsa is also sometimes used too expansively to refer to all Sikhs. British colonial rule and Sikh encounters with the West The British East India Company was granted trading rights in India in 1600, which could be taken as the major landmark point for the beginning of the long and ugly history of British colonialism there. Robert Clive (1725-1774) established a more direct British colonial rule in the state of Bengal, a sponsored state controlled by British merchants. It was Clive who first established the British Empire in a formal way in India. Britain worked to exploit Indian rivalries to secure its own rule.2 The Sikhs became important allies for the British, but not before two Anglo-Sikh Wars that finally established British control over the Sikhs in 1849: the First in 1845-46 and the Second in 1848-49. Britain would rule the Sikh Punjab until Indian independence and the partition of 1947. Lepel Griffin, who served as Chief Magistrate of the British Indian colonial districts of Lahore and Amritsar, which he called the principal districts of the Sikhs, wrote that after the British victory over a Sikh revolt in 1849, From that day to this, the Sikhs have shown themselves the most loyal and devoted subjects of the Queen. (Griffin, 1901) When the Bengal army, in [the Indian Rebellion] 1857 , was driven into mutiny by the crass stupidity and criminal carelessness of the military authorities, writes Griffin, the Sikh Maharajas, chiefs and people, sprang again to arms, and fought with the utmost gallantry by the side of the British, whom they had learned to respect. The British presence would not only shape the perceptions of the Sikh religion in the West. The interaction with the West and Western interpretations of Gurmat (Sikhism) would shape Sikh theology in important ways. A key event in both factors was the translation of the Adi Granth by the German Indologist Ernest Trumpp, published in 1877. Arvind-Pal Mandair argues:

Hew (W.H.) McLeod says specifically of the hymns that Nanak's authorship of these works is beyond doubt. (McLeod, 2012) 2 India until its post-Second World War independence included todays India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

It may seem surprising, though it would hardly be an exaggeration, to suggest that Ernest Trumpp's basic thesis concerning the Sikhs' religious system summarized in twenty short pages-remains historically the most influential document concerning the question: 'What is Sikhism?' The brevity of this prefatory chapter entitled 'Sketch of the religion of the Sikhs'' belies the profound impact it has exerted on the reception and representation of Sikh scripture. (Mandair, 2005) Mandair describes several aspects of the pre-Trumpp prevalent view: that the Sikh religion was a 'moralizing deism' that it possessed some historical or 'leavening' impulse of its own that Sikhs were not really 'Hindoos' but had been wrongly identified with them on account of their own 'fall' or that their 'fall' was due to the incursions of Brahmanism that their encounter with the British would help to revitalize the original spirit of Sikhism

Giving the Sikhs a somewhat ambiguous compliment, Griffin writes that the Afghans, who Britain famously failed to subdue as the Russians and Americans would later fail, that they were equal to the Sikhs in bravery and fanaticism, presumably due to the perceived original spirit of Sikhism to which Mandair refers. The Western view was generally Christian-centric, even with the secularizing trends of the nineteenth century. Following Hegels characterization of world religions as a progression from the lower stages of Oriental religions (Buddhism and Hinduism, both natural religions in Hegels terms) to Judaism and Greco-Roman religion (religions of spiritual individuality) to Christianity (the absolute religion), the religions of India were generally viewed by Westerners as inferior in intellectual quality to Christianity, which of course for most was considered the one and only true religion. Lepel Griffin certainly looked at the Sikhs and their Gurmat religion from a Western colonialist viewpoint. For instance, he makes the assertion, unlikely on its face, that the troubles and enigmas which have confused and perplexed many Christian communities found their exact counterpart in Sikhism. There was the same conflict between predestination, election and free will. (my emphasis) His article cited here gives a lot of focus to the Sikhs role as an ally to Britain against their foes in the area. The British didnt create the first hostility between Sikhs and Muslims, but they encouraged it for power-political reasons. Griffin writes, Nor is the hostility between them [Sikhs and Muslims] at an end at the present day, and the Sikh warriors, in 1857, followed the call of the English to Delhi and Lucknow [against the Muslims], to avenge their slaughtered prophets and co-religionists of days long past.

Griffin seems to have largely shared the pre-Trumpp prevalent view that Mandair describes. But he took a different perspective on Gurmat than Trumpps. He was not entirely happy with Trumpps translation of the Adi Granth: [Trumpps] command of English was not equal to a rendering of the spirit of the original, and he further appears to have considered the Granth as an incoherent and shallow production, and its chief value to be linguistic, as a treasury of the medieval Hindu dialects. This judgment appears to me to be mistaken. There are, it is true, many puerilities and vain repetitions from which the books of no Eastern religion are free; but it is scarcely possible to turn a single page without being struck by the beauty and originality of the images and the enlightened devotion of its language. No Catholic ascetic has ever been more absorbed in the contemplation of the Deity than was the prophet Nnak when giving utterance to his rhapsodies. The British understanding of Gurmat was not only a matter of academic interest or missionary proselytizing. The British were working with a ranked scheme of religions, in which the pantheistic religions were held to be inferior to the monotheistic ones, and therefore less civilized by Western standards. Pantheistic religions like Buddhism and Hinduism have also been described as the immanence series of religions and monotheistic ones as the transcendence series. (McBrien, 1994) Broad categories like these are useful in making high-level distinctions. But any category broad enough to lump Hinduism and Buddhism in one category can easily obscure major and obvious differences. And monotheistic/transcendence religions like Christianity, Judaism and Islam have definite mystical trends within them that may resemble Hindu or Buddhist assumptions in some ways, while the pantheistic/immanence religions also have less-mystical varieties. For instance, late 18th century Protestant Christianity in Germany included the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and the intense mysticism of the Pietists. And broad classifications can seem even stranger from the standpoint of lived religion. American Protestantism in the 21st century includes the urbane restraint of High Episcopalians and the emotional intensity of fundamentalism or Pentecostalism based on a feeling of the immediate presence of God. But in British colonial assumptions, Christianity stood as the highest religion, and the monotheistic religions higher than the pantheistic/immanence religions. So the more a religion or religious current leaned toward monotheism, the closer it was to civilized British Christianity. And that perception in turn had implications toward British colonial policy toward the Sikhs. As Mandair explains: Unable to find reasonable grounds for specifically differentiating the notion of Supreme Being in the Adi Granth from the orthodox Hindu philosophy, Trumpp proceeded to classify the Granth's central philosophy as 'pantheism', albeit one that leaned towards a degraded 'dualism'
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What for Trumpp appeared to be a contradiction - that Indians were not concerned to separate the unity of the Supreme Being from a dualistic pantheism, etc. - becomes part of a general strategy on his part to show that the Adi Granth is an incoherent document full of contradictory statements. Unable fully to account for this contradiction, however, Trumpp resorts to distinguishing between two different varieties of pantheism within the Adi Granth: a 'grosser' as opposed to a 'finer' kind of pantheism. British colonial officers concerned to keep a close alliance with the Sikhs preferred to see them as practitioners of a higher (monotheistic) religion, one with an un-Hindu-like character, a kind of moralizing Deism. And this meant, for the first time Sikhism was installed into a position on the graph of the historical evolution of religions, in a position even lower than that of Hinduism. In fact Trumpp placed Sikhism on a par with atheistic Buddhism. (Mandair) Mandair argues that Trumpps terminology defined Sikh theology in important ways, by forcing both Sikhs and Westerners like Lepel Griffin to define Sikh religion with particular emphasis on a rigorous conceptualization of Gods being. On the Sikh side, that meant proving that their central texts could provide a suitable concept of God if they hoped to receive political recognition and patronage from Europeans as a valuable and useful religion. For their British friends, it meant that having determined the nature and essence of the Sikh religion in terms of its conception of God and the self, the path was cleared for the only real task that remained, i.e. comparative and classificatory study. Griffin associated the loss of enthusiasm for fighting on the part if the Sikhs, i.e., fighting for the British, with Trumpps view of Gurmat. He admitted that the Sikh fighting quality has in no way deteriorated, although the available quantity has become less. He associated the more desirable (to the British) higher, monotheistic form of Gurmat, with Guru Gobind [Govind] Singh, (1666- 1708), the Tenth and last of the Sikh Gurus. Griffin approvingly views Guru Gobind Singh as a warlike monotheist who promoted a form of Gurmat in which, No regard was to be paid to Vedas, Shastras or the Koran, neither to Hindu priests or Mohammedan mullahs; visits to temples and shrines and the observance of Hindu ceremonies at birth, marriage and death were alike forbidden. But since the days of the Tenth Guru, the Sikhs had lost much of their desirable warlike militancy against the Muslims, as Griffin saw it: The religious ardor of the Sikhs, under the discipline of the regular army and the orderly progress of civil life, has become an almost burthensome encumbrance and in no way enhances their value as soldiers. Its decline is only to be regretted in that it diminishes the number of recruits to the military caste, for the Hindu Jat peasant, although equally staunch with the Sikh, has not the same inclination to warlike pursuits and prefers to cultivate his ancestral fields. Day by day, the new faith of
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Govind loses its hold over the people, and the old creed of Hinduism, with its Brahmanical sacerdotalism and its worship of strange gods, is taking its place. The Sikh still, from time to time, visits the temple to listen to the reading of the Granth; he abstains from tobacco and leaves his hair and beard unshorn, while his observance of caste restrictions is lax, and he is content to take food from even the hands of a Mohammedan. But the Brahman has now again become an object of reverence and is called to officiate at births and marriages; the men, and especially the women, always most superstitious and most ready to accept priestly control, visit the idol temples and local shrines; and, in those districts of the Punjab most distant from the religious centre, there is little to distinguish the Sikh of to-day from the ordinary Hindu. Increased active Sikh resistance against British rule, inspired in part by the anti-caste tradition of the Sikhs, led Griffin to mourn that Sikhism, which, as taught by its first prophet Nnak, was so full of promise, and was inspired by a pure morality and a high conception of the Deity, should fall back again into the idolatrous materialism from which for a time he had raised it. Griffin here seems to be lamenting the attitude taken by one of the two major factions among the Sikhs in the 19th century, both of them considered part of a larger reform trend known as Singh Sabha. The Sanatan Sikhs identified their religion with Hinduism and promoted more strict observance of some customs like men not cutting their hair. An opposing reform group, the Tat Khalsa, was more purist in their desire to maintain the Sikh traditions and emphasized the distinct nature of Gurmat from the Hindu religions and placed even more emphasis on observing the Rahit. They adopted as a prominent slogan, We Are Not Hindus. Contrary to what Griffin apparently expected and feared, the more orthodox Tat Khalsa trend that emphasized the distinction of Gurmat from Hinduism was to become essentially the general Sikh position. One of the distinctive emphases for the Tat Khalsa was the importance of formal education for women. This development was related to another translation and interpretation of the Adi Granth, this one by Max Arthur Macauliffe (1841-1913). Macauliffes interpretation of Gurmat places more emphasis on its distinct nature compared to Hinduism. He produced a six-volume work, The Sikh Religion: Its Gurus, Sacred Writings and Authors (1909), which was highly regarded by Indian Sikhs and by Western scholars.3 This gives a flavor of his view of Gurmat and Hinduism in this well-known description: Truly wonderful are the strength and vitality of Hinduism. It is like the boa constrictor of the Indian forests. When a petty enemy appears to worry it, it winds round its opponent, crushes it in its folds, and finally causes it to disappear in its capacious interior. In this way, many centuries ago, Hinduism on its own ground disposed of Budhism [sic], which was largely a Hindu, reformation; in this way, in a
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A version of Volume 1 is online at: http://www.sacred-texts.com/skh/tsr1/index.htm

prehistoric period, it absorbed the religion of the Scythian invaders of Northern India; in this way it has converted uneducated Islam in India into a semi-paganism; and in this way it is disposing of the reformed and once hopeful religion of Baba Nanak. Hinduism has embraced Sikhism in its folds; the still comparatively young religion is making a vigorous struggle for life, but its ultimate destruction is, it is apprehended, inevitable without State support. Notwithstanding the Sikh Gurus' powerful denunciation of Brahmans, secular Sikhs now rarely do anything without their assistance. Brahmans help them to be born, help them to wed, help them to die, and help their souls after death to obtain a state of bliss. And Brahmans, with all the deftness of Roman Catholic missionaries in Protestant countries, have partially succeeded in persuading the Sikhs to restore to their niches the images of Devi, the Queen of Heaven, and of the saints and gods of the ancient faith.4 Also in 1919 came the Anand Marriage Act which recognized a Sikh marriage rite distinct from Hindu ceremonies, which became an important milestone in distinguishing the Sikhs legally and administratively from Hindus. After the partition of former British India in 1947 into Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindumajority India, most Sikhs preferred to remain with India and many moved from what became Pakistani territory to India. When British rule ended in 1947 and British India was partitioned into the new nations of India and Pakistan, part of the Sikhs Punjab homeland fell within Muslim-majority Pakistan, and large numbers of Sikhs moved to the Indian side of the border. But moved inadequately describes the process, which Eleanor Nesbitt describes as follows: Indias Partition was in fact the dissection of just two states, Punjab and Bengal. The cost was what a later generation calls ethnic cleansing, involving in Punjab alone the dislocation of some 12 million people among them many Sikhs and the deaths of another 500,000, as well as the loss to Pakistan of some 140 Sikh shrines. The one gain for Sikhs and it was considerable was that they were more geographically concentrated than they had ever been in the undivided Punjab. [my emphasis] (Nesbitt, 2005) The Indian state of Punjab was established in 1966 with a Sikh majority, providing some measure of political self-rule for Sikhs. Nesbitt stresses the importance of the identification of Sikhs with the Punjab culture and language, arguing that any exposition of Sikhism that omits the significance of Punjab for Sikhs is incomplete, especially as Punjab has come to be regarded as the spiritual homeland for Sikhs everywhere.

Ibid, Introduction, Ch. 3 p. lviii

Punjab State (red) in India (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Estimates on the number of Sikhs today vary widely, from 18 million (Beliefnet.com, 2012) to 25 million (Hew McLeod, 2012) to 27 million (Inderjit Singh, as reported by Scott Neuman, 2012), most of them in India and heavily concentrated in the state of Punjab. Rituals and Theology of Gurmat Sikh worship involves singing of hymns, prayer and contemplation of the names of Akl Purakh, concluding with the eating of a food preparation called karah prasad. Gurmat assumes humans have immortal souls that are purified in successive reincarnations. Ten Gurus are recognized as having been authoritative interpreters of the religion, and the Tenth Guru Gobind Singh decreed he would be the last. The authority of the Ten Gurus, the eternal Guru, is now believed to reside in the sacred scripture Guru Granth Sahib. Sikh places of worship are called gurdwaras. Hew McLeod describes the major rituals of Gurmat: Sikh Rahit Marayada, the manual that specifies the duties of Sikhs, names four rituals that qualify as rites of passage. The first is a birth and naming ceremony, held in a gurdwara when the mother is able to rise and bathe after giving birth. A hymn is selected at random from the Guru Granth Sahib, and a name beginning with the first letter of the hymn is chosen. Singh is added to the names of males and Kaur to females. A second rite is the anand karaj (blissful union), or marriage ceremony, which clearly distinguishes Sikhs from Hindus. The bride and groom are required to proceed four times around the Guru Granth Sahib to the singing of Guru Ram Das's
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Suhi Chhant 2, which differs from the Hindu custom of circling a sacred fire. The third rite - regarded as the most important - is the amrit sanskar, the ceremony for initiation into the Khalsa. The fourth rite is the funeral ceremony. In all cases the distinction between Sikhs and Hindus is emphasized. (McLeod 2012) There are variations in observance among the Panth (Sikh community); not all Sikhs use the ritual naming convention, for instance. One teaching of Gurmat with major social implications in India is the religions rejection of caste.

Guru Nanak (14691539), the first of the Sikh Ten Gurus, saves a man from a cannibal creature
(Source: McLeod, 1991)

Some but not all Sikhs observe a traditional style established by the Tenth Guru, including beards and a ceremonial sword. The Tat Khalsa faction in the 19th century formalized a set of rules that dated in some form or another from the time of Guru Gobind Singh, who established a group of particularly dedicated followers that he called the Khalsa. The Tat Khalsa name for the later reform group means Pure Khalsa. The best known of these rules in the Sikh Rahit Marayada are the Five Ks (paj kakke): kachha (wearing a type of short cotton breeches); kangha (carrying a small comb); kara (wearing a wrist bangle of steel or iron); kes (not cutting the hair); and, kirpan (carrying a ceremonial sword). Many Sikhs wear their uncut hair in turbans but turbans are not part of the Five Ks, although there is one strict sect called the Akhand Kirtani Jatha that interprets the kes rule as including the wearing of a turban. Nevertheless, as Nesbitt observes, The turban has become synonymous with Sikhism, despite the fact that many men who identify themselves as Sikh are short-haired, clean-shaven, and turbanless. Sikh Fundamentalism A cynical European saying tells us that wars are Gods way of teaching Americans about geography. Something similar could be said about fundamentalism teaching Americans about other religions. The Sikhs came to consciousness for many Westerners of today through a violent incident involving Sikh fundamentalists. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the ensuing American hostage crisis made Westerners aware of the potential new political potency of Islamic fundamentalism. The philosopher Herbert Marcuse was perhaps ahead of the curve when he wrote in a book published in 1972, The agony of religious wars revives at the height of Western civilization. 5 (Marcuse 1972) A conflict occurred in the 1980s over the Harmandir complex, known the West as the Golden Temple. The Harmandir is the most revered of the gurdwaras and the most important religious center for Sikhs. Tensions had grown between the Sikh Akali party that ruled the state of Punjab and the national government headed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and her Congress Party.

He was probably thinking of the conflict in Northern Ireland and the Israeli-Arab-Palestinian confrontation.

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Harmandir, known in the West as the Golden Temple, in the city of Amritsar in the Indian state of Punjab (2009) (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

A group of Sikh fundamentalists lead by Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale (1947-1984) established an armed stronghold in the Harmandir complex staring in 1983, and in 1984 occupied the Akal Takht, one of the most important buildings in the Temple complex. They established something of a parallel government to the state system there. (Van Dyke, 2009) Prime Minister Indira Gandhis government in 1984 made a military assault on the building and expelled the militants in a battle that left hundreds (or possibly thousands) dead, including Sant Jarnail Singh who found martyrdom there. Later in 1984, Gandhi herself was assassinated by two of her Sikh bodyguards in retaliation for the assault on the Haramandir complex. In the immediate aftermath of Gandhis assassination, something like a pogrom took place with thousands of Sikhs in New Delhi being attacked with impunity, producing many deaths. Virginia Van Dyke asserts, Complicity of members of the Congress Party in not only condoning the killings but actually organizing the pogrom, is irrefutable. Ironically, Gandhis Congress Party had encouraged Sant Jarnail Singh to get involved in the conflict between the national government and the Akl party in hopes of weakening the latter. Perhaps a cautionary tale for secular governments tempted to exploit fundamentalist passions to counterbalance political foes. The conflict at the Harmandir was not the first armed clash involving Sant Jarnail Singhs followers.

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There doesn't seem to be any serious doubt that Bhindranwale was the main organizer of a terrorist campaign that was responsible for the random murder of several hundred innocent Hindus and that in publicly wearing arms and defiantly proclaiming his willingness to use them he was making himself a target for retribution. Moreover, by setting up his headquarters in the Golden Temple he was in effect daring the authorities to violate the temple in order to capture him. Neither the people of Punjab nor the precepts of the Sikh religion condone murder. (Leaf, 1985) Armed conflict between the national government and the Sikhs carried on for years, subsiding in 1992. The terrorist attacks on Hindus by Sikh fundamentalists prior to 1983-4 took place in the context of the larger conflict between Gandhis government over a variety of issues in which Sikh demands for more local autonomy in Punjab was very prominent. Leaf argues that repressive policies by the central government disenfranchised the more moderate and presumably pragmatic Sikh politicians, with the result that it left to leave the political stage to politicians and constituencies at the fringes. He also argues that Gandhi intentionally polarized the debate by stigmatizing the Punjab Sikh politicians of Akl as separatists: Who could not support a prime minister who was acting in favor of national unity against dissolution and disorder, and in favor of reason and progress against irrationality, selfishness, and fanaticism? Within Punjab the characterization appeared to be intended (as, for different reasons, were the anti-Hindu actions of Bhindranwale) to drive a wedge between the rural Sikhs and urban Hindus and thus between the two major parties (Akali and Jan Sangh) who had to unite to defeat the Congress. In the end it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. It had the logical effect of magnifying the extremists and discouraging the moderates, even though they never actually ceased to try to present their case. The national governments handling of the immediate aftermath of the Harmandir raid also seems to have polarized rather than defused the situation. In an atmosphere already filled with distrust, Punjabi Sikhs who didnt sympathize with Sant Jarnail Singhs fundamentalism or terrorism found plenty to criticize in the handling of the attack on the Harmandir complex. As Leaf puts it: Bhindranwale and his group were, presumably, guilty of murder and conspiracy to murder. One normally deals with such matters through the police in a legal way and not with the army. If the army was required, it would hardly seem necessary to have invaded the temple with 2,000 men with the result that as many as 1,000 people, including 100 soldiers and, it is said in Punjab, about 400 pilgrims lost their lives. The Golden Temple complex is walled and quite clearly demarcated; it certainly would have been possible to cordon it off. Nor did it seem necessary at the same time to seal off the state with about 70,000 additional troops, simultaneously invade other shrines, declare President's Rule and dissolve the state legislature,
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establish complete press censorship, occupy the temple militarily afterwards, and declare martial law. [my emphasis] T.N. Madan characterizes the fundamentalism of Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale as a selective appropriation of the tradition in a manner which is simultaneously revivalist and futurist. (Madan, 1991) Both Lealf and Madan make it clear that it is not easy to separate the religious and political strains in this brand of Sikh fundamentalism, which based itself in the religious community of the Panth and in claims to possession of religious truth, but also focused intensely on the political goal of an independent Sikh state, a goal with limited appeal among Sikhs even in Punjab state.

Sikh Guru Gobind Singh (16661708), the Tenth and last of the Sikh Ten Gurus
(Source: McLeod, 1991)

Sant Jarnail Singh was not an intellectual, and did not heavily emphasize religious doctrine in his agitation. Rather, he focused on the heroic image of the Sixth and Tenth Gurus, Guru Hargobind (1595-1644) and Guru Gobind Singh (16661708), presenting them as examples of militancy. Sikh fundamentalism is orthopraxy rather than orthodox, writes Madan. The emphasis is upon action and the expected fruits of action, and these fruits are this-worldly economic and
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political. Sant Jarnail Singhs exhortations to Sikh youth included appeals for motorcycles and firearms. To this day [1991] the most effective mode of killing used by terrorists is shooting by the second passenger on a motorbike. Madan also accurately described in 1991 the limits of the kind of support Sikh fundamentalists could maintain with their narrow focus and emphasis on terrorist violence: The valorization of violence as righteous killing has resulted in Sikh fundamentalism becoming inextricably involved with terrorism, for the Akali politicians and the temple functionaries have not only not clearly distanced themselves from the terrorists but have often collaborated with them. That most terrorists have little interest in religion or piety seems to have dawned on many Sikhs, particularly after the indisputable desecration of the Golden Temple in May 1988, when a group of terrorists occupied it for several days during which they performed polluting bodily functions of evacuation within it. Details about captured terrorists reveal that many of them are simply criminals or desperate jobless youth, generally of rural origin. In the period 1980-92, as many as 25,000 people died in the conflict, the majority of whom, in spite of the communal rhetoric of the [fundamentalist] movement, were Sikhs. (Van Dyke, 2009) Sikhs were targeted by the central government and moderate Sikhs were targeted by fundamentalists. This level of violence understandably left lasting resentments. But for a variety of causes, including government repression, disillusionment among Punjabi Sihks over the fundamentalists terrorist violence and separatist aims, and shifts in Indian politics that provided more de facto self-government in Punjab, the fundamentalist trend lost its vitality. Even though none "of the outstanding issues - structural and political developments identified by analysts as causes of the conflict - [had been] addressed or rectified." But not all the issues outstanding from the conflict with the fundamentalists have been resolved. In August 2012, the Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) group was successful in getting a US court to issue a summons to a senior Punjabi official visiting the US in a complaint having to do with extra-legal killings in the Punjab. (Kamal, 2012; Singh, 2012; Vielmetti, 2012) The complaint alleges: The exact number of class members is not known, however, it is commonly believed and estimated that from June 1984 till today, well over 100,000 (one hundred thousand) have been extra judicially killed and several hundred thousand tortured by the Punjab Police and other security forces in the state of Punjab, out of which well over 10,000 (ten thousand) cases of torture and extra judicial killings took place during the tenure of and while the defendant was Chief Minister of Punjab. (Sikhs for Justice, 2012) That estimate of deaths far exceeds that cited by Van Dyke for 1980-92. Whatever the merits of the case against Parkash Singh Badal may be, the filing is a reminder of the deep-seated resentments that a conflict like that in Punjab can leave.
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References: Beliefnet.com, Sikhism n/d; accessed 08/08/2012 http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Sikhism/index.aspx Lepel Griffin, Sikhism and the Sikhs The North American Review 172/531 (Feb., 1901) Neel Kamal, "Summons to Badal in US: family of complainant back home being frequented by Punjab police" TNN/India Times 08/11/2012 http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/201208-11/chandigarh/33152892_1_punjab-police-face-harassment-summons Hans Kng et al, Christianity and the World Religions (Doubleday; New York 1986) Murray Leaf, The Punjab Crisis Asian Survey 25/5 (May 1985) Max Arthur MacAuliffe, The Sikh Religion, Volume 1 (Oxford University Press 1909) http://www.sacred-texts.com/skh/tsr1/index.htm T. N. Madan, The Double-edged Sword: Fundamentalism and the Sikh Religious Tradition in Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby, Fundametalisms Observed (University of Chicago; Chicago 1991) Arvind-Pal Mandair, "The Emergence of Modern 'Sikh Theology': Reassessing the Passage of Ideas from Trumpp to Bh Vr Singh" Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 68/2 (2005) http://www.scribd.com/doc/30285195/The-emergence-ofmodern-Sikh-theology%E2%80%99 Herbert Marcuse, Counterrevolution and Revolt (Beacon Press; Boston 1972) Richard McBrien, Catholicsm (Harper San Francisco 1994) William Hewat McLeod, "Sikhism" Encyclopdia Britannica (Chicago: Encyclopdia Britannica, 2012) William Hewat McLeod, Popular Sikh Art (Oxford University Press; Oxford 1991) William Hewat McLeod, The Sikhs: History, Religion, and Society (Columbia University Press; New York 1989) Eleanor Nesbitt, Sikhism : A Very Brief Introduction (Oxford University Press; Oxford 2005) Scott Neuman, Sikhs No Stranger To Violence In Recent Years NPR 08/06/2012 Sikhs for Justice et al, Complaint in US District Court, Eastern District of Wisconsin v. Parkash Singh Badal 08/08/2012 http://media.jsonline.com/documents/sikhs-for-justice.pdf

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IP Singh, Wisconsin court issues summons to Badal over rights violations TNN/India Times 08/10/2012 http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-08-10/india/33136489_1_acts-ofpolice-torture-badal-administration-shaminder-singh-shera Jay Singh, Sikhi is a way of life, of which we are all a part Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) website 08/08/2012 http://splcenter.org/get-informed/news/sikhi-is-a-way-of-life-of-which-weare-all-a-part Virginia Van Dyke, "The Khalistan Movement in Punjab, India, and the Post-Militancy Era: Structural Change and New Political Compulsions" Asian Survey 49/6 (Nov/Dec 2009). Van Dyke provides a useful analysis of the shifting political alliances of Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale leading up to the 1984 showdown in which he died. Bruce Vielmetti, Visiting Indian minister hit with federal suit by Sikh group Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel 08/08/2012 http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/visiting-indian-ministerhit-with-federal-suit-by-sikh-group-qp6e6uo-165505136.html

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