June marks 30 years since the 1984 attack on the seat of Sikh polity by the Indian government in their homeland of Punjab. A recent article in Caravan provides an engaging account of the event, which gave way to over a decade of regional violence, state sponsored extra-judicial killings and a steady assault on the social fabric of a historic culture already divided once by partition.
“On 7th June, around mid-day, I saw about 90 detainees sitting on the hot marble floor of the Southern wing of Parikrama,” he writes. “They were naked except for the long underwear and their hands were tied behind their backs. Though subjugated they retained their defiant spirit. Instead of looking down, some of them dared to look into the eyes of their captors..."
To paraphrase Wittgenstein, what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence. Today, a new generation of Sikhs are waking up to the notion that they have a voice, that it must be strong, compassionate, and warbling in many tones for a deeper sense of justice for all.
"....A second Lieutenant of the unit who had fought these militants the previous night and lost a few comrades, could not stomach such defiance. When he asked them to look down one of them spat at him. The officer lost his cool and shot him in the forehead.”
Sikhs are only just introducing themselves to a wider world beyond South Asia. Without the comfort of unspoken familiarity, we appear without history, as individuals, stereotypes, echoes of others, a pastiche of evocative physical signs without consistent narrative. 
Sat Sangat Ji, todays challenge is not new: How to respond to a tragedy that recedes in time as it grows in significance, how to cohere a common purpose as individual obligations scatter collective energy, and how best to channel the restlessness of heart and mind that animates individual success and tragedy alike.
Those people who call themselves Sikhs will easily pass through the false choice that is encoded in the most recent violence upon Darbar Sahib (Royal Court). The same choice that appears encoded in any violence, personal or collective, that unsettles one's soul and leaves a satisfactory response in the wake:
Whether to beg for justice out of desperation & take revenge out of bitterness or, instead, use Gurbani (the language that transforms darkness into light) to find where the restlessness sits in you and how it beckons you to move.
The answer to our challenge resides closer to us than our own hand. The will of the Panth, guided by the wisdom of the Granth, is the right path forward.