14) FROM BABBARS TO BABBARS
By Gurpreet Singh
The death anniversary of Karam Singh Daulatpur, a rebellious participant of the Indian freedom struggle, is an ugly reminder of continued appropriation of secularist heroes by the theocratic militant groups.
Daulatpur died fighting against the British police during the occupation of India on September 1, 1923. He came to Canada in 1907 and spent several years in Abbotsford, before returning home to pursue the liberation of India. Like many Indian immigrants, he had served in the British army before migrating to this part of the world. Most believed in the fairness of the British justice system.
But this myth was broken following their encounter with the rampant racism and anti-immigration policies of the Canadian establishment. Canada was also a British colony back then. They soon discovered that the root cause of their sufferings was their slavery back home. These hardships transformed many into activists, including Daulatpur. They all joined the Ghadar Party that was formed in the US in 1913. The party believed in an armed struggle against the British Empire and was secular in character. Daulatpur returned to India to launch an armed revolt, but was arrested.
By the time of his release, the Ghadar movement had phased out and he joined another armed struggle to free the historical Sikh temples of Punjab, India, from the corrupt priests who enjoyed the backing of the British officers. The British government was using the priest class to keep Sikhs away from the freedom movement, as Punjab was a garrison state that provided recruits to the British armies.
In his new avatar, Daulatpur was a changed man, and his mission was not to let Sikhs become ready recruits for the British. He started a militant newspaper that laid the foundation of the Babbar Akali movement, which indulged in armed resistance against the British agents and corrupt priests. Though the immediate objective was to liberate Sikh temples, the whole campaign was a part of the bigger freedom struggle.
Daulatpur was not alone, as many other former Ghadar Party activists also joined the Babbar Akali movement. They inherited the legacy of secularism and patriotism from their previous party. When partition on religious lines, between a secular India and Muslim Pakistan, followed independence in 1947, many of these former Ghadarites and Babbars tried to save Muslims from the Hindu and Sikh fundamentalists during sectarian violence.
Despite these glaring facts that speak for themselves, the Sikh separatists in Canada continue to appropriate the Babbars of yesteryears to their advantage. Many try to bracket them with banned terrorist groups like Babbar Khalsa, which is blamed for the Air India bombings of 1985, the worst incident in the history of aviation terrorism before 9/11. Its activists recently pled guilty for the bombings of cinema halls in New Delhi during 2005. A former Babbar Khalsa leader, Ajaib Singh Bagri, publicly threatened to kill 50,000 Hindus following ugly political events during 1984, in which innocent Sikhs were targeted by the mobs following the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards.
Going by the plain facts, the Babbar Akali movement cannot be equated with the Babbar Khalsa, a theocratic militant group that seeks a separate Sikh homeland which is likely to be modelled after Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Those who lived in Punjab when the Sikh separatist movement was its peak may recall how these groups imposed a code under which women were forced to cover their heads with saffron scarves, the tobacco shops were closed, and many scholars and journalists were murdered for challenging the ideology of fanatical organisations.
(The above article is from the September 16-30, 2012, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)