As the world is poised to meet face to face during the 58th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), the world is looking at a grim fact that has been quite ignored so far, that the Sikh community in India is systematically oppressed. The scars of decades of violence, discrimination, and judicial inaction are still visible as the community in France awaits to submit an urgent plea to the UN. This call for justice is anchored in the pain of the 1984 anti-Sikh violence in Haryana, where 36 innocent lives were brutally taken away, but the perpetrators still get spared by India’s deep-rooted political structures. However, justice has eluded them in spite of overwhelming evidence. Justice T.P. Garg’s investigation did not hold anyone responsible for these heinous acts, for which numbers of impunity were at play.
But this is far from the close of this tragic chapter; its victims languish in the shadow of a state that wishes to wipe their history from the earth. The Sikh community, however, is demanding accountability for these atrocities more than three decades down the lane. Sikh leaders, who are led by those in France, now make their fresh plea to the UN human rights body not only for justice for past crimes but also for the end to ongoing repression that affects their community in India. As Sikh youth protest for their rights and are then imprisoned for years and decades, this has become the slogan of justice. This is a chilling testament to the Indian government’s systematic silencing of any quest for justice by its Sikh citizens, as some are jailed for up to 30 to 40 years.
The latest reports state that the Haryana High Court has knowingly been responsible for prolonging cases, almost rendering it impossible to try the wrongdoers. The unresponsiveness of India’s judicial system further helps build the sentiment that Sikhs are being ‘silenced’ while the tormenters are covered up and celebrated. This, however, does not mean that the Sikh community’s grievances are wrapped up just in historical injustices. In fact, the Indian government’s present-day assault on Sikh autonomy reaches even greater levels of suppression. The Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) Canal project is the latest chapter in India’s war against the Sikh majority state of Punjab through economic and political warfare on its water rights. The SYL is more than a water-sharing legal dispute; it is a bid to exploit and deplete Punjab’s lifeblood water resources, amounting to thousands of Sikh farmers dependent on it.
Typically, this scheme is an existential threat to Punjab’s agrarian economy, amplifying environmental crises—crises that hit the Sikh community disproportionately. The Punjab farmers’ struggle is a litmus test that the war against injustice is not just about historical injustice but also about defending the community’s future. It is not only a question of a dire humanitarian crisis that must be dealt with, but more importantly, there is a question of international responsibility that is (squarely) before the UNHRC in Geneva. The Sikh community’s appeal to the UN is a cry for justice and a call to the world community. The top line is one in which it is not just human rights abuses that span borders, but that international entities exist to promote peace and justice must also intervene.
Sikh community demands cannot be refused any further. Shielding India’s actions under the aegis of sovereignty is a route through which to let authoritarianism run unchecked in the world’s largest democracy. Ahead of the UNHRC meeting, there can be no more time for India to deny that its repression of Sikh rights is not confined within its borders. This is part of a broader system of oppression designed to erase the community’s political autonomy and cultural identity for which the government tries to curb Sikh voices worldwide, but especially with its sway over diaspora communities.
It not a call for division; it is an appeal for us to recognize the crime and then suffer through hearing the crimes and then understand how much resistance that community put up so as not to be forgotten. Now the world must ask itself, what does the international community stand for when it can’t stand for the international community in the face of sectarian religious repression and human rights violations? And as we come to the 58th UNHRC session, the question is whether the UN will pick up the gauntlet. Will the international body declare some platitudes and stay silent, or will it act decisively by muzzling India for its atrocities? History is watching, and time is ticking.
The Sikh community in France is in a gripping situation in terms of the international arena, as it is getting ready to formally appeal to the United Nations. Community leaders, in anticipation of the 58th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), drafted a letter to the Secretary-General of the UN Office in Geneva soliciting immediate global intervention to prevent what the community leaders term as systematic oppression by the Indian state. This is not a symbolic appeal but a defiant claim of what can only be described as a pattern of state-sanctioned injustice that has been swept under the collective international watch.
Sikhs have been the constant target of relentless political repression, economic coercion, and cultural marginalization for decades. The letter consists of harrowing accounts of atrocities such as the severe massacre of 36 innocent Sikhs in Haryana—a tragedy that has been haunting families and communities over the last 40 years. In the absence of any compelling evidence, an investigative commission headed by Justice T.P. Garg failed to bring in any perpetrators to justice, thus marking a legacy of impunity and unaddressed grievances that continues to fester discontent. The judicial inertia that has deepened with deliberate delays in the Haryana High Court has managed to put an end to the cries for accountability for the past crimes.
It adds to the story of the long-term imprisonment of Sikh protesters, some of whom have been in prison for 30 or 40 years. These are people who committed the crime of demanding justice, the crime of demanding equal rights for the human race, and now they’re a stark, exact, directed reminder of a system that rewards silence with reward and punishes dissent with utter destruction. These were measures that many say have eroded faith in the judicial process and have spurred Sikh activism to seek redress on an international plane. This shows that the community’s will to raise their grievances at the UNHRC is part of a wider demand to be recognized, to receive justice, and to protect their fundamental rights.
The letter also points out the wider Modi government strategy to dismantle the autonomy of the Sikh people by attacking through economic and also environmental means. The Sutlej Yamuna Link (SYL) Canal project, against which the state’s critics object, is an example of such a project. The project is, by its very nature, a threat to devastate Sikh farmers and destroy the economic strength of Punjab’s agrarian backbone. This dual assault, combining political repression with economic warfare, typifies an elaborate strategy of colonizing the Sikh community in the interior and upon the external frontiers, and for that reason provides a rich context for understanding the period in general.
Internationally, India’s actions are raising concerns not that it is a vector for the domestic policy failures of the country, but rather that it is consciously using transnational repression as a way to change global narratives. The Sikh community from nowhere wins an appeal as Western democracies struggle with their own difficulties around electoral integrity and civil liberties, an especially blaring reminder that human rights abuses generally span not just frontiers but also continents. This is a call for intervention to shore down the recurring, systemic injustice so terribly suffered by a people and to hold an offender accountable that must hide behind its bureaucratic inertia and legal loopholes.
The UNHRC session is imminent. The question is: Can the international community respond to any state that undermines justice and human dignity? For decades, the Sikh community has resolutely appealed for justice and protection of their fundamental rights years after the former. At a time of autocracy curtailing democratic values, inertia globally puts autocratic practice on a risky path of condoning systemic oppression. The time for silence is gone; it’s time for the UN to amplify the voices of the suffering for so long and for justice to prevail and history not to repeat the darkest chapters of its past. And it is a pivotal moment that needs decisive action; the world is watching to see accountability.
