[Reader-list] `Commemorating Hurt: Memorialising Operation Bluestar'; Radhika Chopra, CSDS, Feb 11

[Rajesh Ramakrishnan]

Wednesday, 11th February, 2009

Radhika Chopra will speak on

Commemorating Hurt: Memorialising Operation Bluestar

at 2:30 PM in the Seminar Room, CSDS, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi – 110 054


The storming of the Darbar Sahib at Amritsar by the Indian army in
June 1984 has become a commemorative event in the ritual calendar of
the Gurdwara. Memorialised every year in June, Ghallughara Dihara (Day
of Genocide) telescopes 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 memorialising, subtly discounting the pre-eminence of
particular Khalistani leaders killed in the army action, telescoping
them within the generalised 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 link continued claims for
political asylum and rights of residence with political persecution in
the 'homeland'.


Radhika Chopra studied at the University of Delhi. She has co-edited
"South Asian Masculinities: Contexts of Change, Sites of
Continuity"(2004); and guest edited a special issue of the journal Men
and Masculinities, "Muted Masculinities: Contemporary Indian
Ethnographies" (October 1 2006, Volume 9). She is currently working on
issues of militancy and migration in Punjab.