By Balpreet Singh, The Province April 3, 2012
Sometimes I think Sikhs are a little like ink blots. What people see
when they spot a bearded man in a turban says more about them than it does
about members of my faith, which probably explains the number of media
commentators anxious to revive the myth that Sikhs are extremists, after a
recent rally in Ottawa.
They're missing the story. Sikhs from Toronto to Paris, London, Brussels
and New York are all protesting the state-sanctioned murder of Balwant Singh
Rajoana precisely because they are not terrorist-sympathizers. They are trying
to prevent the sort of injustice that led to violence in India two decades ago.
As a Sikh, and as a member of a human-rights group called the World Sikh
Organization of Canada, I don't condone violence of any sort, let alone the
sort that targets civilians — and that includes capital punishment. Our supreme
religious authority, the Akal Takhat, specifically opposes capital punishment,
which is one of the reasons protests against Rajoana's hanging brought the
Punjab to a halt March 28.
But to understand why so many Sikhs around the world are lobbying to
spare this man's life, you have to know the tale of the horror that led to
Rajoana becoming involved in a plot to assassinate Beant Singh, then chief
minister of Punjab.
When he committed his crime in 1995, Rajoana was living in a world that
most Canadians can't imagine: one in which rape and torture were tools of the
state, police were corrupt thugs who disregarded the rule of law; and the
government murdered its own citizens to maintain its power.
By the early 1990s, Rajoana was a young man who watched as his closest
friend, Harpinder Singh, was hunted and killed by the Indian police. He also
saw Harpinder Singh's newlywed sister arrested, raped by the police and
ultimately murdered.
He went to their parents, who were like family to him, and said, "I
am now your son," and vowed to oppose the state's terror.
Like most Canadians, I'd like to think that no one would ever go to the
extremes Rajoana did. But it's also true that there are few Canadians who can
understand what it's like to live in such harrowing circumstances.
In Canada, we have recourse to the courts, our politicians and our
community. Not so in the India of two decades ago.
But times have changed in Punjab. The Sikh community has worked hard at
creating peace. And the man who faces hanging for his attempted suicide-bombing
writes letters asking political activists to avoid violence.
While he has never expressed remorse for what he did, it's telling that
those opposing his death sentence include the daughters and grandsons of the
politician he targeted as well as politicians across the political spectrum.
Indians are aware that Rajoana's crime was committed in a different time
under circumstances that most of that nation now considers shameful. But
Canadian media cling to an image of Sikhs as a community of extremists largely
due to their recollection of the Air India bombing 27 years ago. Many writers
failed to do even the most rudimentary research about the historical facts that
led to terrorism.
One columnist, Jonathan Kay, even argued that Canadian Sikhs are
"expressing solidarity with an unrepentant terrorist" because a
poster for a Toronto rally was headlined, "I am Rajoana." For him
it's a kind of ink blot: he sees a Sikh and all he can see is an extremist.
But those kinds of statements are really a humanitarian call for
compassion and for the sort of values that will prevent the injustices that
lead anyone to think that bombing his oppressor is the only solution.
When those Sikhs say "I am Rajoana," it's just another way of saying,
"There but for the grace of God, go I."
The Sikh community unequivocally rejects violence. But murdering this
man in the name of justice makes a mockery of the word, which is why
human-rights activists everywhere are opposing his sentence.
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Balpreet Singh is legal counsel for the World Sikh Organization of
Canada.
