Connecticut to mark ‘Sikh genocide day’

Rachna Khaira

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, July 15

Connecticut has becomes the first state in the US to commemorate a day in the memory of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots that claimed the lives of many from the community.

Following the demand of the World Sikh Parliament (WSP), Connecticut Governor Dannel Patrick Malloy signed a bill declaring November 30 as the “Sikh genocide day”.

WSP member Swaranjit Singh Khalsa, however, said that due to some “typo error”, the date of remembrance day was written as November 30 instead of November 1. He said in the next Senate session, an amendment would be sought to change it to November 1.

“Though in our petition we had sought November 1 to be observed as ‘Sikh genocide day’, due to the typing mistake in the Bill, November 30 has been declared as the commemoration day,” said Khalsa. He said the matter had now been taken up with the senators who had agreed to make the amendment to the Act in the next session. Khalsa said it took eight years to get the bill approved by the Senate and all the 36 senators voted in its support.

With this, Connecticut has become the second state in the world after Ontario (Canada) to observe a commemoration day to mark the alleged 1984 Sikh genocide.

Following a resolution passed during the ‘Sarbat Khalsa’ meet held at a village in Amritsar in November 2015 and at the behest of Jagtar Singh Hawara, assassin of former Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh, a group of Panthic organisations constituted WSP at the world Sikh convention held in the US in March this year.

Second to do so

• Ontario in Canada was the first to observe commemoration day to mark the 1984 Sikh genocide
• Connecticut is the second to do so, but the first state in the US 
• Sikh community members in Connecticut had been seeking November 1 as remembrance day