A MUSEUM, A MEMORIAL, AND A MARTYR

Abstract

In May 2013 a memorial was inaugurated within the Darbar Sahib complex. Ostensibly devoted to memorializing the carnage during Operation Bluestar, the inscription on the entrance suggests clearly that this is a memorial dedicated to the memory of the controversial Khalistani militant, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. The significance of this memorial lies in its location within a sacred space. The tussle for prestige between the sacred complex and the memorial indicates that it is not the sanctity of spaces that is at issue here -- it is their ability to secure memory and therefore their pre-eminence as mnemonic spaces that remains unresolved. The discord that preceded the unveiling of this memorial lays bare the politics that continue to haunt remembrance of the Khalistan movement and its key militant-martyr.

Notes

1 The two memorials are at Shakti Sthal, her cremation ground along the banks of the river Yamuna, and at her official residence, No. 1, Safdurjung Road, in the heart of Lutyens' Delhi.

2 In June 2013, a plaque for a memorial to the Delhi riot victims was installed – again amidst intense controversy – in the Rakabganj Gurudwara in central Delhi. The choice of Rakabganj as a place of remembrance of a particularly horrifying event is itself important to analyse, for the gurudwara literally faces the Parliament of India, and forces upon the Indian political imagination the right to mourn forgotten victims and their histories.

3 The Granth Sabib as a sacred scripture does not exhaust all forms of knowledge about gurus or those who are venerated within Sikhism. Janamsakhis, literally testimonies of birth, but more accurately, hagiographies (McLeod 1994) of Sikh Gurus are also martyrs, but the reverse it would seem, was never possible.

4 In 2001, a group calling itself the Shahid Sant Jarnail Singh and Holocaust Commemoration Committee decided to perform his antim ardas at Akal Takht on the 6 June, ‘in a dignified and peaceful manner’ (The Tribune, May 17, 2001), countering they said, the Damdami Taksal's ‘illogical and ridiculous arguments’ (The Tribune, May 17, 2001). The politics of this tussle is evident in the subsequent action of the Damdami Taksal; just four years later in June 2005, the Taksal decided to honour Mr Apar Singh Bajwa, a retired Superintendent of Police, who had identified the body of Bhindranwale and then witnessed the cremation in 1984 (The Tribune, June 2, 2005).

5 Robust social movements among people of the First Nations have encouraged museums and curators in Canada, the USA, Australia, and New Zealand to recognise the cultural claims of people on sacred objects (Greene 1992; Seligman and Monroe 2006; Mauzé and Derlon 2003). Recently, Tibetan sacred objects have become significant to the exiled community as a way to project their dispossession; therefore, the treatment of their sacred art in museums and exhibitions is of immense concern to community and curators alike.

6 The term ghallughara is translated as ‘carnage’ when referencing the two events of medieval history, the Chotta and Vadda Ghallughara. However, in modern discourse, the translation draws from Holocaust memorials and Operation Bluestar as well as the anti-Sikh riots are translated in the protest literature as ‘genocide’.

7 In relation to the Akal Takht the Harmandir is the sanctum, while the Takht is the protective architectural and ideological layer. Aerial views of the complex accentuate this relationship admirably.

8 CDs of Bhindranwale's speeches were widely distributed in protest rallies against the unorthodox Baba Ram Rahim of the Dera Saccha Sauda.

9 Raghu Rai is a well-known photographer and photojournalist; he was also a protégé of Henri Cartier-Bresson.

10 We cannot forget the two swords of miri-piri worn by Guru Hargobind, who wore the crossed swords signifying twin sources of legitimacy and authority. While displays of weapons in the Keshghar Sahib and during Holla are well established ritual practice and the display of arms on a person's body signifies his exemplar status.

11 The halo was not confined to portraits of Guru; Maharaja Ranjit Singh is shown in profile with a halo, as a sign of his temporal authority, a concrete manifestation of the Sikh tenet of conjoined spiritual with temporal authority. But this is a rare inclusion – though I think an important one – more frequent in representations of gurus than of rulers.

12 Goswamy writes of rasa, or aesthetic delight, as an experience, belonging ‘exclusively to the viewer or listener, who alone can experience it’ (1994, 190). Its counterpart is the mood, or dominant feeling of the object – its bhava, that ‘belongs to the work and can be consciously aimed at by its maker’ (Goswamy 1994, 190).