The assault made on June 6, 1984, the martyrdom day of Guru Arjan when the complex was filled with pilgrims, caused destruction of the Akal Takht, killing an unspecified number of Sikh worshippers and Gurdwara Clerics as well as Bhindranwale and his main associates who were well armed and fought back inflicting heavy casualties on army in close combat. In an extended and disorganized struggle, Sikhs in Punjab did not hesitate to resort to the use of any arms that they could lay their hands on. The loss of lives included thousands killed in the military assault, by acts of terror and in fake encounters by Police in a ruthless attempt to rein in lawlessness. Most of those killed were Sikhs.
Sikh resentment was running deep. Later that year, two Sikh bodyguards of Indira Gandhi killed her on October 31, 1984. This set off a second sequence of mass violence, this time in Delhi. It lasted for four days and resulted in death of nearly 3,000 Sikhs. In this organized pogrom, possession of kirpaans was of limited help in ensuring safety. Some Sikh Sikligar nomadic communities, who traditionally had been making and selling crude country made firearms, however were able to drive the armed intruders away with their weaponry in addition to kirpaans. Some of the well-to-do possessed licensed firearms. They were safe till they surrendered their arms to the police on the promise of safety but many were killed when the mobs returned and the police was not to be seen or just looked on without intervening.
Coming to the more recent, post Sep. 11 US happenings, the Sikhs have suffered most by the hate crimes including killings. I am not aware of a situation in the US where Sikhs have used kirpaans or other arms for defense or to drive away an imminent assailant even though they have made occasional news for using kirpaans over their internal fights within the Gurdwara precincts. Sikh response to violent attacks on their persons, places of worship or property has been non violent and they seem so far to have chosen to rely on the law enforcement agencies for their safety. It would be recalled that even in case of murders, the Sodhi family in Arizona and the Kaleka kids in Wisconsin have been pleading continuously for living in amity.
Sikhs also have worked with the security agencies to enable enforcement of enhanced check- ups for air safety including finding ways to meet the requirement of no knives or any such articles on person during flights. Sikh civil rights groups are engaged in resolving several cases to smoothen out the difficulties experienced by Sikhs because of enforcement of certain regulations that conflict with Sikh observances. Sikh advocacy has remained peaceful without any aggressive posturing or violent protests.
KIRPAAN & SIKHS IN US27
This discussion would really not be complete without going into the experiences relating to the Sikh observance of kirpaan in the contemporary US setting. The position is that there is a conflict between American anti-weapons regulations and carrying of kirpaan by the Sikhs as a part of their religious observance. The Sikh Rehat Maryada prescribes that Sikhs wear a "strapped kirpaan," but does not specify length of the blade. Some Sikhs wear a small kirpaan pendant or medallion as a necklace. Typically the blade size of kirpaan ranges from 5 inches to over 3 feet. Traditionally kirpaan is kept sheathed except when drawn for religious services or to defend one-self or protect any others. Sikhs in the West presently wear kirpaans with a dull blade length of about 3.5 inches - some wearing it concealed under their clothes.
Canada and the UK legislations are relatively accommodative for the practice of carrying of kirpaan. Canadian Supreme Court has held in a case that prohibiting a student from carrying kirpan infringed on his religious freedom guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms though it allowed the school districts to create reasonable restrictions on the use of this right. The British statute criminalizing possession of a blade or knife longer than three inches in a public place exempts if it is kept for religious reasons. Kirpan fits this exception.
But in the US, both in terms of tradition as well as law concealed carrying of dagger or sword clashes with the norms of life. No American jurisdiction exempts kirpan from weapons laws. A greater controversy arises when Sikh children wear kirpans to school.
The First Amendment provides for free exercise of religion. Supreme Court has interpreted it to imply protection of the right to believe in a faith and to act in accordance with that faith's beliefs, but its enforceability is considered uncertain. Only the following precedents seem to be helpful to the Sikh case for wearing of kirpan:
- In Cheema case Ninth Circuit affirmed compromise plan imposed by District Court limiting the length of kirpan, requiring the blade be dulled, tightly sewn to its sheath and worn underneath the clothing, and granting the school district the right to inspect the kirpan for compliance.
- The case against Dr. Harjinder Singh prosecuted under an Ohio concealed weapons law for carrying a kirpan was dropped because, despite evidence that kirpan could be used as a weapon, the Court agreed with the expert testimony that it was essentially a religious symbol to remind Sikhs of their obligations to do justice.
- Prosecutorial and judicial discretion insulated a kirpan wearing Sikh from prosecution in New York. He was arrested for possession of a knife in violation of the New York City administrative code but the court suggested that a kirpan be "encased in a solid protective element such as plastic or lucite" so that it would no longer be considered a knife or a weapon and sua sponte dismissed the prosecution in the interest of justice.
- The prosecution guidelines by District Attorney for Santa Clara County, CA state that the law criminalizes concealed possession of kirpan but if the kirpan cannot be easily removed from its sheath, if it is not capable of ready use, or if it is dulled or rounded such that it is incapable of inflicting great bodily injury or death, a Sikh carrying the kirpan does not violate the law.
These are band aid answers and really offer no abiding solution. Current First Amendment jurisprudence has failed to protect the Sikh population's right to carry a kirpan and though a kirpan perhaps falls within the definition of a weapon or arms, the limited scope of Second Amendment jurisprudence would certainly not create a right to carry a kirpan.
Workplace Religious Freedoms Act "WRFA" proposes to amend Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to incorporate religious accommodations into the workplace. So far it has not received much traction. A state version of the law has been adopted in CA in Sep. 2012.
Sikhs have looked to the courts and the constitution for vindication of their rights. This has given Sikhs some past successes through the free exercise clause of the First Amendment. However, the viability of prior successes is unlikely to guarantee future victories given the presently narrow interpretation of the free exercise clause.
POINTERS FROM SIKH EXAMPLE
My sense is that even though the Sikh example may seem atypical, it has some very pertinent parallels to our present difficulties with the rights under second amendment to bear arms and the example might suggest some pointers to craft answers to some of the vexing questions in the current US debate on guns and the prevalent climate of gun violence.
The Sikh example shows that Sikhs have followed a robust arms bearing tradition, The Gurus in fact placed a larger responsibility on the Sikhs i.e. not only to take personal responsibility for their lives and not blame any for their misfortunes but also to be prepared to make sacrifices for righteous values and help protect the just rights of others. This broad objective possibly should resonate with the variety of eventualities that the founding fathers may have had in mind when setting out the second amendment right to bear arms.
In those times28 when Gurbani, the principles of miri-piri, the order of Khalsa, or Zafarnama were revealed, the aim of Sikh transformation was clearly defined but the praxis developed along a twin track. One was that initiation rites were administered to volunteers who could be trusted to live by the Khalsa ethic to always be in possession of a kirpaan, wear it openly and be prepared to use it for righteous causes including making needed sacrifices. There has been no change to this part of praxis with times.
The other was that in self defense or in pursuit of righteous causes, recourse to use of arms is legitimate, other means failing. This essentially meant a response appropriate to help achieve success with the caveat of keeping the safety of innocents paramount. This part of praxis has been in dynamic sync with the times in that while Sikhs have loyally upheld the kirpaan as symbolic of their beliefs, they have not hesitated to take to the emerging generations of more effective arms for their security needs or to support pursuit of objectives considered by them to be legitimate and crucial for their survival.
In that backdrop, if we were to extend the Sikh example to the contemporaneous US situation on the second amendment issues, some ideas that suggest are:
- Sikhs have a strong tradition of bearing arms and espousing freedom of individuals to make their own choices and take responsibility for them. Sikhs therefore support this right under the second amendment.
- The right of the individual for self defense is paramount. No state should expect or ask its citizens to not keep or use arms for legitimate security needs. This right is not unrestricted. Sikhs did not understand their religious edicts to imply that they had an unrestricted right to maintain cachet of most modern fire arms in their homes for their safety or their vow to defend righteousness.
- The question about who can or cannot bear arms is an important question. The Sikh practice regarding administration of amrit stipulates that the individual, who receives amrit and is thus admitted to the kirpaan donning Khalsa order, must be deemed capable of living by the Khalsa ethic. This suggests that some qualification criteria for possession of lethal fire arms are a necessity.
- Freedom to bear arms should be tempered with credible controls to avoid arms falling into wrong hands and being used to attack and kill innocents. This should be a shared moral responsibility of all interest groups as we seem to be nurturing a generation of youth who, influenced by popular culture of glorification of violence fall in love with their own visions of power of arms and may not stop at anything to taste the enormity of such power by using guns to play out in the raw to their maximum destructive effect. Parents, families and the schools should be helped in this effort to nurture the potentially errant children back onto the correct path.
- The conversations on these issues must be moved from strong espousal of ideological positions to the plane of larger good of the community by all interest groups. While the communities and citizens look at the what they can do, the governments at all the levels should come up with their proposals to keep lethal arms out of reach of gangs of organized crime, criminals, terrorists, extremists, supremacists, hate groups, mentally disturbed and the like.
- Citizens should be encouraged to learn the use of weapons like knives for their safety and security in less threatening situations and related laws should be considered for review along with the measures for gun control.
- The Sikh example could be used as a case to promote community based compromise practices that best serve the imminent security needs of the vulnerable among us in a manner sensitive to contemporaneous needs and the diversity of visions on societal relations and external controls.
CONCLUDING
The above short paper briefly reviews the current debate in the US over the issues arising out of recent incidents of mass killings involving guns. It also provides a synoptic view of how a robust tradition of bearing of arms developed among Sikhs and explores the Sikh position on various issues and proposals in the contemporary debate in the light of Sikh theology, praxis, tradition and history. The search revealed that the mix of concepts and circumstantial factors that influenced the emergence of this tradition as central to tenets of the Sikh faith and as a component of early American quest for individual freedom have some striking parallels.
While the paper does not make any attempt to juxtapose the likely parallels, it takes comfort that given certain congruities both in terms of the historical times and aspirations of the two peoples separated by thousands of miles across the globe, the Sikh example may have some relevance to our current situation even though the trajectory of development of the tradition to bear arms among Sikhs has been along a different set of paths. Our plea to the reader, made in all humility, therefore is to look at the related Sikh thought and experience with a view to identify any possible attenuations to our approaches that might help us as a nation to better temper our present practices on this difficult subject.
Nirmal Singh
[email protected]
27 January, 2013
New Cumberland, PA
Camp, New Delhi
Revised: 30 January, 2013
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The author is a former Business Executive; was Principal, COO, CF&AO of a healthcare services provider in Connecticut. Earlier Management Educator and Consultant; Professor, Chair Operations Management & Dean [Consultancy], Administrative Staff College of India and consultant to the UN and several multilateral organizations & Fortune 500 companies.---------------------------Been Head of Planning & Evaluation, Department of Defense Production; Leader Technology Mission [First Secretary] High Commission for India in the UK; General Manager, Praga Tools Corporation; Colonel, Indian Army, Corps of Electrical & Mechanical Engineers; Faculty Military College of Electronics & Mechanical Engineering.
A past President of Connecticut Sikh Association, he has been working for several years on sharing information about Sikh faith, culture and values with the larger American Community. He is associated with several educational, inter-faith and multicultural activities & initiatives to promote wider understanding about Sikhs and Sikhism and serves on the Advisory Board, Educators Society for Heritage of India, Adjunct Professor on Sikhism at Hindu University of America, Associate Sikh Chaplain at Lebanon Valley College, PA and reader and reviewer on Sikhism for Blackwell's Review in Religion & Theology.
Recipient of Indus Award - 2004 awarded to "luminaries in the New England's South Asian community who shine at what they do," the citation saying "through activism and writing, he is helping, in his way, to tip the scale of religious tolerance toward healing, inclusion and understanding." He has been profiled among Community Profiles at Sikh Foundation. He was also invited by the PA Senate to offer the Sikh opening prayer, the first time by anyone not of Christian or Jewish faiths in their 200 year history.
Several of his articles have been published in the Sikh Review, Sikh Studies and Comparative Religion, Abstract of Sikh studies and mainstream media. He has four published books about Sikhi and Sikhs.
Biblio:
27 This is to gratefully acknowledge that the legal issues related to wearing of kirpan by Sikhs in the US and portions of the text in this part of the paper are drawn liberally from an excellent exposition by Rishi Singh Bagga, Esq. Attorney Bagga, a J.D. from the American University, Washington College of Law, having served as a law clerk at the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund, is well aware of issues faced by Sikhs in the US. For details, those interested may refer to the full text of his paper at:
28 The timeline for these developments among Sikhs and the evolving of American institutions is nearly running concurrently. The significance of parallels may therefore deserve more compelling consideration.