Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to discuss the lack of human rights in India for Sikhs and other minorities today.

Also discussed in this hearing is the situation in Kashmir, which is a flashpoint of India-Pakistan troubles.  The Western media places a lot of attention on Kashmir.  As Indian Home Minister L.K. Advani has said, "If Kashmir goes, India goes." We agree with this statement.  Our Kashmiri friends do an excellent job of exposing the violations of human rights by the Indian government there.  But as terrible as the situation in Kashmir is, it is not just in Kashmir that massive human-rights violations take place.  Sikhs in Punjab, Khalistan, Christians in Nagaland and elsewhere, the Muslim community in Gujarat, and other minorities throughout India, such as Assamese, Bodos, Dalits (the dark-skinned "Untouchables," the aboriginal people of the subcontinent), Manipuris, Tamils, and others suffer similar repression.  Amnesty International has not been allowed into Punjab since 1978.  Even Castro's Cuba has allowed Amnesty International into the country more recently.

Repression is the official policy of supposedly democratic and secular India.  It is, in reality, a militant Hindu nationalist theocracy.  The government pursues a policy called Hindutva - the total Hinduization and Hindu control of every aspect of political, religious, social, and civil life in India.  A senior leader of the ruling party was quoted as saying that everyone who lives in India must either be a Hindu or be subservient to Hindus.  A Cabinet minister was quoted as saying that Pakistan should be absorbed into India. 

At the end of my remarks, I will be submitting a copy of the book Reduced to Ashes by Ram Narayan Kumar and Amrik Singh, published by the South Asian Forum for Human Rights, which documents in detail 750 cases of human-rights violations against the Sikhs.  Names, photographs, and details are provided.  The book includes an excellent foreword by Dr. Peter Rosenbaum, Clinical Director of the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School and an introduction by Tapan Bose.

The Indian government's policy of Hindutva is a policy of elimination of minorities such as the Sikhs. Just listen to the words of Narinder Singh, a spokesman for the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the center and seat of the Sikh religion, on National Public Radio in August 1997: "The Indian government, all the time they boast that they are democratic, that they are secular.  They have nothing to do with a democracy, nothing to do with a secularism.  They just kill Sikhs to please the majority."  A member of this House, Representative Dana Rohrabacher, has said that for the minorities such as Sikhs and Kashmiris "India might as well be Nazi Germany."  Representative Edolphus Towns has noted that "the mere fact that they have the right to choose their oppressors does not mean they live in a democracy."

In its report covering the period of January to December 2002, Amnesty International wrote, "The right of minorities to live in the country as equals was increasingly undermined by both state and non-state actors, despite it being clearly asserted in the Constitution."

An Army commander in Amritsar district threatened the Sikhs of that area that he would murder the Sikh men, bring the women to the army barracks, and "produce a new generation of Sikhs."  Mr. Chairman, this is disgraceful and extremely insulting to the proud Sikhs.  It is unbecoming of an army commander of a nation which claims to be the world's largest democracy. It shows the true face of India's self-proclaimed secularism.

On February 18, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom announced that it was recommending to Secretary of State Powell that he designate India as a "country of particular concern," meaning that, according to the report, they "engage in particularly severe violations of religious freedom."  The Commission urged Secretary Powell to "implement meaningful policy in response to such designation."

According to figures compiled by the Punjab State Magistracy, which represents the judiciary of Punjab, and human-rights groups, over a quarter of a million (250,000) Sikhs have been murdered by the Indian government since its brutal military invasion of the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the center and seat of the Sikh religion (similar to the status of the Vatican or Mecca) and 150 other Sikh Gurdwaras through out India in June 1984.  These figures have been published in Inderjit Singh Jaijee's excellent book The Politics of Genocide.  They join over 300,000 Christians in Nagaland who have been killed by the Indian regime since 1947, as well as more than 85,000 Kashmiri Muslims who have been killed since 1988 and tens of thousands of other minorities such as the ones I mentioned above.

Amnesty International reported in February that at lest 100 individuals, including social activists, human rights defenders, and lawyers, were currently being tortured in Punjab.  The attorneys for three individuals accused of involvement in the assassination of the brutal former Chief Minister Beant Singh are among those who were arrested.  The defense attorneys are actively involved in human rights work.  They have been interrogated about their human rights activities and accused of involvement in the January 22 escape from Burail Jail of Jagtar Singh Hawara, Jagtar Singh Tara, and Paramjeet Singh.  Burail Jail is one of the Indian regime's torture centers.

Unless these attorneys, human rights activists, and others are charged with a recognizable offense, India has no right to hold them.  In any case, it has no right to torture them.

A report by the Movement Against State Repression (MASR) shows that India admitted to holding 52,268 Sikhs as political prisoners.  They are held without charge or trial, some of them since 1984!  It is routine to file new complaints whenever the government's flimsy basis for holding them is dismissed.  Tens of thousands of other minorities are also being held as political prisoners, according to Amnesty International.  A 1994 report from the U.S. State Department reports that between 1992 and 1994, the Indian government paid over 41,000 cash bounties to police officers for killing Sikhs.  Several of the Sikhs they received bounties for killing have subsequently showed up in courts and elsewhere, raising the question of exactly who was killed in their stead.  One police officer even received a bounty for killing a three-year-old boy!

Why does a democratic state hold tens of thousands of political prisoners, Mr. Chairman?  Why does a democracy pay bounties to police officers to kill minorities?  Why does a democracy need a Movement Against State Repression?

According to the February 17 issue of the Tribune of Chandigarh, a Sikh named Gurnihal Singh Pirzada, who was a high official of the Indian Administrative Service, was released from jail claiming that "his fundamental right to liberty was violated." He was arrested after allegedly being seen at a meeting of gathering of Punjab "dissidents."  Pirzada denies attending such a meeting, but points out that it would not be illegal if he did.  This is the state of freedom in Punjab, Khalistan under Indian rule.

The supposedly secular Congress Party is no better.  In June 1984, under Congress Party rule, the Indian government brutally invaded the Golden Temple and 150 other Gurdwaras around Punjab.  Over 20,000 people were killed in these attacks, including such Sikh leaders as Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, who was the strongest spokesman for Sikh rights and Sikh freedom.  More than 100 young boys, ages 8 to 13, were taken outside into the courtyard and asked whether they supported Khalistan, the independent Sikh homeland.  When they answered with the Sikh religious incantation "Bole So Nihal," they were summarily shot to death.  The Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh scripture, handwritten in the time of the ten Sikh Gurus, was shot full of bullet holes by the Indian military.  Sant Bhindranwale warned that if the Indian government invaded the Golden Temple, it would "lay the foundation stone for Khalistan" and it did.

In 1995, the Human Rights Wing, under the leadership of Sardar Jaswant Singh Khalra, conducted a survey of burial grounds in Punjab.  They found that the Indian government had a policy of arresting Sikhs - often innocent ones - then torturing them, murdering them, declaring their bodies "unidentified," and secretly cremating them without even notifying the families.  Based on his survey, Mr. Khalra concluded that at least 25,000 Sikhs had been made to "disappear" this way.  Subsequent work following up on his efforts places the number around 50,000.  For his efforts, Mr. Khalra was arrested by the Punjab Police on September 6, 1995 and killed in police custody about six weeks later.  His body was never given to his family.  No one has ever been brought to justice for the Khalra murder.  Instead, the only eyewitness to his kidnapping has been repeatedly harassed by the Punjab police, including being arrested for trying to hand a petition to the then-Home Minister of the United Kingdom, now Foreign Minister, Jack Straw, asking for British help in exposing the human-rights violations.

Sardar Gurdev Singh Kaunke, who was Jathedar of the Akal Takht, the highest Sikh religious position, was murdered by police Senior Superintendent of Police Swaran Singh Ghotna.  He has never been punished for this crime.  The driver for another Sikh religious leader, Baba Charan Singh, was tied to two jeeps heading in opposite directions and torn apart.  Torturing those in custody by rolling heavy rods over their legs is a routine procedure.

In March 2000 in the village of Chithisinghpora, 35 Sikhs were massacred while then-President Clinton was making a state visit to India.  There have been two studies of this massacre, one by the International Human Rights Organization, based in Ludhiana, and the other conducted jointly by the Punjab Human Rights Organization and MASR, Both concluded that the massacre was the work of Indian forces, a conclusion supported by reporter Barry Bearak in the December 31, 2000 issue of the New York Times Magazine. 

In another village in Kashmir, Indian troops were caught red-handed trying to set fire to several Sikh houses and the local Gurdwara in pursuit of the Indian government's divide-and-rule strategy.  Sikh and Muslim villagers joined together to stop this atrocity before it could be carried out.  The Indian Border Security Force had to come by later to collect one of its vehicles that was seized by the villagers.  The Indian newspaper Hitavada reported that the Indian government paid the late Governor of Punjab, Surendra Nath, the equivalent of $1.5 billion to foment and support covert state terrorist activity in Punjab and Kashmir.  Yet half of the population of India lives on less than $2 per day.  According to the January 2, 2002 issue of the Washington Times, India is supporting cross-border terrorism in the Pakistani province of Sindh.

Perhaps India's most brutal act of terrorism occurred in 1985 when it bombed its own airliner, killing 329 innocent people, just to blame the Sikhs and provide a pretext for more violence against the Sikhs.  This has been well documented with a mountain of supporting evidence in the book Soft Target, written by Canadian journalists Zuhair Kashmeri of the Toronto Globe and Mail and Brian McAndrew of the Toronto Star.  The book shows that the Indian consul in Toronto, Mr. Malik, abruptly took his wife and daughter off the flight shortly before departure.  An auto dealer who was a friend of Mr. Malik also abruptly cancelled his reservation, as did another Indian government official.  Yet before the bombing was public knowledge, Mr. Malik was calling Canadian officials trying to pin the blame for the bombing on  an "L. Singh," a Sikh.  This would later turn out to be Lal Singh, a Sikh who testified that he was offered "two million dollars and settlement in a nice country" by the Indian government for false testimony in the case.  The book quotes an officer of the Canadian Security Investigative Service (CSIS) as saying, "If you really want to clear this matter, send a van over to the Indian High Commission in Toronto and Vancouver, load up the van and bring them in for questioning.  We know it and they know it that they were involved."

The atrocities against the Sikh Nation would be bad enough, but Sikhs are unfortunately not the only victim of India's brutal tyranny.  Since Christmas 1998, there have been hundreds of attacks on Christian leaders, worshippers, and churches throughout India.  As recently as February 17, Christians in Madhya Pradesh were complaining about the harassment.  Father Michael Bhuriya, a spokesman for the diocese of Jhabua, Father Franco and Father George Varaich of Trinity College in Jalandhar, and Tarsem Peter, general secretary of the Pendu Mazdoor Union, held a press conference to say that Christians are living under a reign of terror in Madhya Pradesh.  They reported that Christians there were attacked after the rumor was spread that a girl had been raped in the mission school. 

Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two young sons were brutally murdered by being  burned to death while they slept in their jeep by a mob of Hindu militants affiliated with the militant, pro-Fascist Rashtriya Swayamsewak  Sangh (RSS) who chanted "Victory to Hannuman," a Hindu god.  An American missionary from Pennsylvania, Joseph Cooper, was expelled from the country after being so severely beaten by RSS goons that he had to spend a week in the hospital.  In January 2003, an American missionary and seven other individuals were attacked by RSS-affiliated Hindu militants.  RSS-affiliated gangs have raped nuns, murdered priests, and burned churches.  Christian schools and prayer halls have been attacked and destroyed.  A Christian religious festival was broken up by police gunfire.  Church staff have been harassed.  Church events have been disrupted.  And yet India continues to claim that it is secular and democratic.

The RSS, which supported the Fascists in Italy, is the parent organization of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP.)  The BJP is the political arm of the RSS.  Indeed, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee told an audience in New York, "I will always be a Swayamsewak."  Both Prime Minister Vajpayee and Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani, who is also President of the BJP, are members of the RSS and neither one has renounced its militant Hindu ideology.

In March 2002, between 2,000 and 5,000 Muslims were brutally murdered by RSS-affiliated mobs in Gujarat, according to newspaper reports,  while the police were ordered to stand aside and do nothing.  According to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, "Hundreds of mosques and Muslim-owned businesses and other kinds of infrastructure were looted or destroyed."  The Commission reports that "Many Muslims were burned to death; others were stabbed or shot.  India's National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), an official body, found evidence in the killings of premeditation by members of Hindu extremist groups; complicity by Gujarat state officials; and police inaction in the midst of attacks on Muslims. The NHRC also noted 'widespread reports and allegations of well-organized persons armed with mobile telephones and addresses, singling out certain homes and properties for destruction in certain districts, sometimes within view of police stations and personnel,' suggesting the attacks may have been planned in advance."  Prime Minister Vajpayee refused to condemn the massacre for more than a year.

A police officer confirmed to an Indian newspaper that the massacre was pre-planned by the government.  Two years later, the state government has made few arrests and has been reluctant to bring the persons responsible to justice.  Most of those arrested were released without charge.  State officials have failed to protect witnesses in the cases against those believed to have participated in this massacre.  At least one witness changed her testimony under the threat of death, leading to the acquittal of 14 persons involved in the massacre.  In October 2003, a BJP legislator and four other individuals were accused of intimidating witnesses.

This is remarkably reminiscent of the November 1984 massacre of Sikhs in Delhi and other cities in which over 20,000 Sikhs were killed while Sikh police officers were locked in their barracks and the state-run radio and television called for more Sikh blood. 

The most revered mosque in India, the Ayodhya mosque, was destroyed by Hindu mobs affiliated with the BJP and a Hindu temple was built on the site.

According to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, Christians were also attacked in Gujarat.  Many churches were destroyed, which follows a pattern that is seen throughout India.  Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, and Orissa have all passed bills barring religious conversions.  These bills are targeted against the conversions of Hindus to Sikhism, Islam, Christianity, and other religions.  Yet Hindu mobs have forcibly reconverted lower-caste individuals to Hinduism and no action is taken.

The Commission on International Religious Freedom writes that "the severe violence in Gujarat provided the national government with adequate grounds -- under the Constitution and existing laws to counteract communal violence - to invoke central rule in the state, yet the BJP government did not do so, despite many requests."  However, the Indian government has imposed such central rule - known as Presidential rule - on Punjab nine times.

India resorts to this tyrannical, terroristic repression to keep its crumbling multinational empire together.  India has never been one country.  It has 18 official languages.  Indeed, there was no such entity as India until the British conquered the subcontinent and threw it together for their own administrative convenience.  History tells us that such multinational states are doomed to fall apart as the Soviet Union, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and others have done.  We hope and pray that when the inevitable collapse of India comes, it will be peaceful like that of Czechoslovakia rather than violent like that of Yugoslavia.

Sikhs ruled an independent Punjab from 1710 to 1716 and again from 1765 until the British conquest of the subcontinent in 1849.  Punjab, the Sikh homeland, was the last country in the subcontinent to be annexed by the British.  During Sikh rule of Punjab, it was a golden age with freedom for everyone.  The Sikh government included Hindus, Muslims, and Christians as well as Sikhs.  Everyone lived together in peace and harmony.

The Sikhs have never accepted the Indian constitution.  At the time of independence, three nations were signatories to the agreement for the transfer of power.  The Muslims got Pakistan, the Hindus got India, and Sikhs took their share with India on the solemn promises of Nehru that Sikhs would enjoy "the glow of freedom" in northwest India and no law would be passed affecting Sikh rights without Sikh consent.  Instead, almost as soon as the ink was dry on India's independence, the Nehru government sent out a memorandum calling Sikhs "a criminal class" and ordering special police activity against Sikhs.

Mr. Chairman, Sikhs are not a "criminal class."  Sikhism is a monotheistic, revealed religion that rejects violence and supports equality for all, including gender equality.  We are commanded to oppose tyranny wherever it rears its ugly head and The Sikh army fought bravely under the British flag in both World Wars and Sikhs sustained over 80 percent of the casualties in India's independence struggle, despite being less than two percent of the population.  We are religiously, linguistically, and culturally distinct from Hindu India or Hindustan. 

When the Indian constitution was adopted in 1950, no Sikh representative signed it and no Sikh representative has signed it to this day.  Yet India insists that Punjab, Khalistan, the Sikh homeland, is an integral part of India.

On October 7, 1987, the Sikh Nation formally declared its independence from India, naming their new country Khalistan.  Since then, Khalistan has been under illegal occupation by the Indian government and its forces.  Half a million Indian forces have been sent to Punjab, Khalistan to subdue the freedom movement there.  Another 700,000 are deployed in Kashmir. They join with the police in carrying out the kinds of atrocities described above.  India calls this "protecting its territorial integrity."  The world increasingly recognizes this as a euphemism for massively violating the basic human rights of Sikhs, Christians, Muslims, and other minorities to hold together a crumbling, theocratic state.  This is not acceptable, Mr. Chairman.

Although this is a human-rights hearing, a word about India's record of anti-Americanism is in order.  The May 18, 1999 issue of The Indian Express reported that the Indian Defense Minister, George Fernandes, organized and led a meeting with the Ambassadors from Red China, Cuba,  Libya, Iraq, Serbia, and Russia to discuss setting up a security alliance "to stop the U.S."  Mr. Fernandes described the United States as "vulgarly arrogant."  India has sold oil, heavy water, and other materials to both Iraq and Iran.  The Oil Minister described India and Iraq as "strategic partners."  India signed a friendship treaty with the Soviet Union and defended its invasion of Afghanistan while failing to support American actions in Afghanistan against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.  Shortly after the Afghan phase of the war, Pakistan was actively helping American forces look for Osama bin Laden, so India moved large numbers of troops to the India-Pakistan border, forcing President Musharraf to divert troops away from the search.   While India puts on a façade of friendship, its actions show its anti-Americanism.  An independent Khalistan will be a friend of the United States and will sign a friendship treaty with America.  This will bring about an increase in democracy, security, and peace in the subcontinent.

Only a free Khalistan will stop India's repression of the Sikhs.  Only independence for all the nations and peoples of South Asia will bring freedom, dignity, stability, prosperity, and peace to the region.  The cornerstone of democracy is self-determination.  In a democracy, you cannot rule the people against their will.

America has a moral interest in supporting freedom, since it was built on the idea of freedom.  It also has a strategic interest in supporting freedom.  To quote President John F. Kennedy, "We will go anywhere, we will pay any price, bear any burden, support any friend, oppose any foe to ensure the survival and the success of liberty."

Mr. Chairman, there are measures that America can take to help end the repression of Sikhs, Christians, Muslims, and other minorities in India and to support the cause of freedom in the subcontinent.  Cutting off U.S. aid to India would be a good start.  Why should American tax dollars go to support the brutal, repressive, theocratic regime I have described, especially when a British documentary called "Nuclear India" showed that India spends 25 percent of its development budget on its nuclear program and just two (2) percent each on health and education?  All that U.S. aid does is provide additional resources with which to carry out the repression of minorities.  In addition, America should support democracy in South Asia in the form of a free and fair plebiscite under international monitoring on the question of independence in Punjab, Khalistan, in Kashmir, in Christian Nagaland, and wherever the people are seeking freedom.  In 1948, India promised the United Nations that it would hold a plebiscite in Kashmir on its political status.  That vote has never been held.  India claims that there is no support for Khalistan in Punjab, despite seminars and other activities within the past year in support of Sikh independence.  Yet they refuse to put the question to a vote.  Isn't voting how democracies decide issues?  Why does India refuse to settle this important question through a free and fair vote?

Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank you and the members of the subcommittee again for this opportunity.  I respectfully urge you to support freedom for all the minority nations of South Asia as the only way to end the repression and secure full human rights for everyone in that troubled region.  Thank you.

List of supporting documents submitted:
1. Reduced to Ashes (book)
2. The Politics of Genocide (book)
3. India Kills the Sikhs (book)
4. The Sikhs' Struggle for Sovereignty (book)
5. SBS (Australia) Dateline documentary on Punjab human rights (CD-ROM)
6. Appendix A (articles and documents sent by Dr. Tarunjit Singh Butalia) (3 boxes)
7. Statement by Dr. Ranbir Singh Sandhu
8. Punjab Police Official Excesses, India Today, October 15, 1992
9. State Terrorism in Punjab by Justice Ajit Singh Bains, Chairman, Punjab Human Rights Organization
10. Enforced Disappearances, Arbitrary Executions and Secret Cremations, report by the Committee for Coordination on Disappearances in Punjab, Chandigarh
11. Human Rights Wing (S.A.D.) Report, "Disappeared:" Cremation Grounds
12. Partial Inventory of Sikhs Killed in India (from 1981 Onwards), Sikh Educational and Religious Foundation, Dublin, Ohio
13. Report of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, May 1, 2001
14. Statement of Dr. Gurcharan Singh, Professor Emeritus of International Studies, Marymount Manhattan College, New York, NY
15. Dead Men Tell No Tales, Surya, Bombay, September 1984
16. Dead Silence (book), Human Rights Watch Asia/Physicians for Human Rights
17. Facts vs. Fiction Pertaining to the Tragedy in Punjab (excerpts by non-Sikhs from fact-finding reports and independent observers)

The text of Dr. Aulakh's delivered remarks to the Subcommittee on Wellness and Human Rights is available here.