Commemorating Hurt: Memorializing Operation Bluestar

The storming of Sikhism's most sacred shrine, the Darbar Sahib at Amritsar by the Indian army in June 1984 has become a commemorative event in the ritual calendar of the Gurdwara. Memorialized every year in June, Ghallughara Dihara (Day of Genocide) fuses the modern event with medieval Sikh history. The remembrances of Bluestar and its martyrs are primarily viewed as an anti-state ritual, evoking the devastation of the Akal Takht as the hurt remembered. But over time ritual performances have altered the meaning of memorializing, subtly discounting the pre-eminence of particular Khalistani leaders killed in the army action, telescoping them within the generalized category of martyrs. Within Darbar Sahib celebrations a sense of a restoration of ‘order’ and divine authority embodied in the Akal Takht prevail over the memory of charismatic leaders who were central to the movement for Khalistan. Ritual enactments among the Sikh Diaspora in London on the other hand, continue to bracket together claims for asylum with political persecution in the ‘homeland’.