New Jersy, USA: It has been forty-two (42) years since the start of the prolonged decade and a half long Sikh Genocide which was carried out from 1984 till 1998. www.thirdsikhgenocide.org

First, an unprovoked and illegal assault on Sri Darbar Sahib and over 100 gurdwaras simultaneously during the first week of June in 1984 across several states, resulting in the mass murder of over ten thousand innocents Sikh which included babies, children, women and men who had come to commemorate the martyrdom the 5thSikh Enlightener – Guru Arjan Sahibji. As Dr. Joyce Pettigrew’s stated: “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.”

Over ten thousand innocent Sikhs, all citizens of the ‘Republic of India’ (ROI) were hounded like animals, raped tortured, burnt and killed from Oct 31, to Nov 3, 1984.

The government of India led by none other than Indira Gandhi the then Prime Minister who had planned a highly secret mass extermination of all Sikhs across India called ‘Operation Shanti’ during the first week of November 1984. Indira Gandhi was assassinated because two of her personal body-guards found out about her secret plot through Indira’s personal secretary ‘R.K.Dhavan’ and took her down before she could implement her master plan to exterminate the entire Sikh population, even though part of the design did get carried out as a scaled down version by her son Rajiv Gandhi.  Over 30,000 innocent Sikh citizens were butchered in over 100 plus cities across India in the space of four days.

During and immediately after this horror, not a single Hindu was harmed by Sikhs in Punjab or elsewhere by way of retaliation, such was the restraint and moral character of all the Sikhs, yet the bloodthirsty Hindu mobs unilaterally carried out an ethno-religious cleansing in the most deliberate manner, with the full tactical support of the state run by overwhelmingly upper-caste Hindus.

In the following years hundreds of thousands of Sikhs were eliminated through extrajudicial killings all across Punjab. Bodies were either burnt, chopped up and thrown into rivers or mutilated beyond recognition. Starting with Indira Gandhi; (her son) Rajiv Gandhi; Vishwanath Pratap (VP) Singh; Chandra Shekar and Narasimha Rao all (upper-caste) Prime Ministers in succession, were all directly responsible and culpable for the nonstop sustained genocide against the Sikhs from 1984 – 1998 in the killing fields of rural Punjab.

To date other than a handful of low-ranking Hindu men who have been put behind bars, thousands of Hindu murderers, police officials, senior bureaucrats, many high-ranking politicians and several former prime ministers of the country, are not only free but were actually given even more powerful positions inside the government. This kind of impunity even though shocking, unfortunately is the norm in the modern (un)democratic ‘Republic of India’ (ROI).

The ROI has multiple erasers in their toolbelt with which they are not only expunging the memories of the horror they perpetuated on their own ethnoreligious minority citizens (Sikhs) but made sure there is no proper hearing, leave alone justice ever, to the gargantuan crimes committed by the state on its people.

It is up to the Sikhs in the diaspora to keep the pressure on all the state actors of ROI to be brought to justice. The gang rape of babies to older women, the public burning of men by Hindu mobs and later the planned disappearances of hundreds of thousands of young Sikh men from rural Punjab can never be forgotten. The onus lies with all of us to necessitate accountability through whatever political means while providing relief to those whose families have been impacted by the terrifying trauma which is now multi-generational.

Today, the religious bias against many minorities, but particularly the Sikhs has got bad to worse, all thanks to the professional actors (Members of Parliament) who run ROI, when most (52%) have criminal police records, according to Association for Democratic Reform (ADR). Genocide comes in many forms. Physical elimination is the most common, but there are other ways to compound it further such as the methods used in Punjab. For the last two decades ROI has planned the strategic distribution of various illegal drugs to every nook and cranny of rural Punjab making more than 73% of the youth into drug addicts.

The ROI’s tight central control on the independent religious identity of the Sikh religion including all major Sikh institutions such as the SGPC, irrigation water, hydroelectric power, all major decisions to invest in infra-structure for major industries, land ceiling act, are all indirectly contributing to the soft and slow genocide which still continues today, to eviscerate the Sikhs completely out of India.

Absolutely no justice can or should be expected from ROI Hindutvadis. It is up to all the minorities from the Muslims to the Dalits, from the Sikhs to the Manipuris and others to band together and fight against the fascist, autocratic, police state that ROI has become by the deadly spawn of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which can only lead it into total chaos, because Brahminical Hinduism known as Hindutva, at its core is not just about ‘divide and rule’, but to keep in place the rigid and draconian Machiavellian Manuvadi ‘Hindu Caste System’, otherwise the permanent upper-caste majority (PCM) will lose their stranglehold on all the (socio-economic) power!

The National Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020), which was approved by ROI on July 29, 2020, does not even contain a single word about any Sikh contribution leave alone any mention of the sustained Sikh Genocide in any textbook from grades K – 12 and beyond.

Fast forward to 2026, and ROI seems to be now hellbent to assassinate and snuff out all peaceful but vocal voices which speak up against the sustained human right violations against the Sikhs by them. At least five prominent Sikh activists from India to Canada including Bhai Hardip Singh Nijjar have been assassinated covertly.

The most recent Sikh-Canadian activists who has been targeted is Narinder Singh Randhawa, whose car was burnt to cinder outside his home on Oct 29, 2026. Burning human beings and associated material things such as vehicles, homes, etc., is a very Hindutva/RSS tactic which is a similar to the message being sent in this case.

Narinder Singh Randhawa’s car being burnt outside his home in Surrey, BC, Canada Oct 29, 2026. (Credit CTV)

India hides behind a veil of bombastic rhetoric, claiming innocence, when the entire world sees the naked truth. Even the home minister of India, Amit Shah has been directly implicated by the Canadian authorities as the mastermind of the transnational repression and planned assassination of Sikh activists in the diaspora.

According to the Indian Express a renowned newspaper on April 30, 2024 the Indian PM Modi stated, "Today, India doesn't send dossiers. Aaj Bharat ghar mein ghus ke marta hai (Today India kills terrorists on their own turf)." If a PM of a country is publicly proclaiming that he will assassinate anyone he does not like, then nothing more needs to said as it is self-evident.

At a bare minimum the Sikhs of Punjab need to get their act together and actually account for each and every Sikh and non-Sikh who were murdered and disappeared between 1984-1998, because without concrete evidence and hard data even the International Court of Justice at the Hague will not entertain a petition.

Also, Sikhs can never ever forget the ‘Sustained Sikh Genocide 1984-1998’ www.thirdsikhgenocide.org and must do everything in their power to remember this particular long drawn out ‘Ghallughara’ through various activities, within and outside the Sikh Panth including becoming part of our daily Ardas, permanently!

The American Sikh Council (ASC) continues to speak at schools, community colleges, universities and other national forums in order to teach and inform the American public about the complete hell, perpetuated on the Sikhs in India.

ASC has also planned and designed the Sikh Genocide Memorial Plaque, starting in 2014. Over 200 of these plaques have been installed at gurdwaras and other locations across the US, while more are being added continually!

Sikh Americans and others need to step up and take charge of their own narrative of recent history otherwise someone else will rewrite it to our detriment, as most of it has already happened.

ASC requests all Sikhs across America and elsewhere to wear black dastaars, keskis, and dupattas to protest the inhumane injustice and memorialize the first week of November 2026, when the Indian regime attacked the Sikhs across India, completely unprovoked, simply to annihilate the Sikhs!

The American Sikh Council (ASC) continue to raise awareness about the sustained Sikh Genocide by the Republic of India (ROI). We hope those nations across the globe that pride themselves about human rights, help in efforts to promote justice and accountability for the Sikhs in ROI. We will never forget our history or the pain and suffering of our brothers and sisters – ever, as justice can be delayed but never forgotten!