I am in exile. For the last 27 years. Living in exile is a unique journey. Very few people hurdling through the passage of life are endowed with the privilege of living through this kind of existence. On June 4, when we all bow to the martyrdom of Sikhs who laid down their lives in the 1984 Ghallughara (holocaust), I wish to share with my fellow Sikhs the experience of “living in exile”.

Stepping into the footsteps of adulthood, I penned down a few lines, which set the difficult passage I was to follow. The lines were,

“I have a thought, a dream
I am determined to have” my own house”
I am convinced that I have to lay down my life.”

In a sense, my exile started on that day in December 1971, when during the course of a public meeting of the then Prime Minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi at Dera Bassi, near Chandigarh, I openly threw leaflets on the dais and publicly declared my intentions flowing from the lines that I had penned. Soon after, giving birth to the historic movement of Dal Khalsa along with colleagues who thought alike further strengthened the campaign to live a life of ostracism.

When the events of June 1984 unfolded, I was within the four walls of a prison. As news trickled down through BBC radio, I was shattered. I could not do more than visualize the imagery of a destroyed Akal Takht, the devilish rulers of the Delhi Durbar and the blood-soaked bodies of Sikh martyrs. The poet in me could not but say that “the fledgling Delhi Takht had challenged the Takht of the Almighty”. I also imagined the bloody days ahead.

I join the entire Sikh nation in reiterating that the remembrance of June 1984 is an occasion to reaffirm our commitment to the cause for which our brethren laid down their lives. It is also an opportunity to recall the brutality of the Indian state.

Today, when I pay tribute to all those who bravely fought and attained martyrdom, I ask myself the question, “When does one be ready for such a state –to die for a cause? My quick response is, “when one goes into exile”. To go into exile is a state of mind. The numbers of people who undergo physical exile may be small, but there is no dearth of people, either in my nation or in any nation, for whom, living in exile is actually a way of life.

When I was very young, my father secured my Sikhi and my mother instilled the spirit and essence of Sikhi. My key inspiration was Sirdar Kapur Singh. In a sense, I went into exile the day my mother educated me about the concept of “sikhi khanneo tikhi- the path of Sikhi is razor-thin” and the importance and significance of “my own home”. While I was still studying in Chandigarh, I went in search of “my own home”. I went “into exile.” Since then, I have lived life thus.

Though the numbers may be small, there are people –men and women, young and old in our community who are living in exile. They physically dwell where they are, but their heart and mind is somewhere else. Exigencies of life force us to bid our time in search of the “my own home”. The pressures of life make us spend a lot of our time, resources and energies into directions we actually do not want to spend. We are waiting. Still, we are dreamers, living with hope and more hope.

Do you think you are alone in this voyage? Am I alone? Was I alone? Sometimes these questions bother us. Persecution is a worldwide phenomenon. It is the privilege of the few who listen to the voice of their conscience to fight persecution. From Palestine to Kashmir, from Tibet to Sri Lanka, from Nagaland and Manipur to Burma, the search for “my own home” goes on.

So, are we alone? Well, there is only one Dalai Llama in this world. There is only one Aang San Sui Kyi in Burma, one Syed Ali Shah Gilani in Kashmir, one Prabakharan in Tamil Eelam and we had only one Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale in Punjab. They are all conscience keepers of their respective nations. We are all co-travellers. We all have one destination. I am not alone. You are not alone.

The journey of going “into exile” and the path from exile to freedom for any individual or nation has to be a long, painful and arduous one. It has been so for the Sikhs in the past and even today it is so.

Times and technologies have changed. The geo-political realities of the Indian sub-continent have also changed. A substantial portion of the Sikh nation’s demands to the Indian state have become infructuous as technology has overtaken events. Substantial barriers have broken down. Still, it is not time to relinquish our search as a majority of our own people may think and want. Years of governance under colonialism may have numbed us but the facade cannot be assumed to be reality. Truth will strike the Sikh nation when they become masters of their own destiny under a dispensation which unlike the present one is free and fair. It is time that a meeting of minds takes place of all those who are “living in exile”.

Have the times really changed? In 1981, Afghanistan was under Soviet rule and now it is under US domination. Soviet Russia is only Russia today and there is a huge increase in the UN membership. Like men, nations too have their fate. It is a fact of history that there are nations who have been struggling for centuries without result and others, whose names people do not know, are independent.

During the course of the present phase of life, many a friend has posed this to me, “Don’t you feel like “going home”? My reply has been, “which home –the one which has rendered me stateless and forced me into “living in exile”?
(The message was read in the conference on ‘sacrilege of religious places of minorities in India” held at Amritsar on June 4 to mark the 24th anniversary of army attack.)