Language is both informed by and, in turn, shapes our understanding of reality. The strength of language in naming the events of June and November of 1984 cannot be underestimated. The terminology becomes a medium for catharsis, validation, healing, and self-determination. Language helps us understand how the events of 1984 unfolded and centers the narrative of either the perpetrators or the Sikh community.

Throughout my journey as a Sikh activist and academic, I have continued to follow the development of language around 1984. Each evolution in terminology has been thoughtful, expanding the global Panthic¹ conversation and emboldening Sikh voices to tell their own stories. Negotiating identity and history in English-speaking colonial spaces has often demanded that Sikhs adapt to English diction to describe their own experiences. In this paper, I suggest a return to Panjabi-Sikh terminology to encapsulate the Sikh experience better and to reunite with the strength that our language gives us. Using the term Ghallughara is an intentionally decolonizing act that centers the Sikh experience and better encompasses the power of previous terminologies used to talk about the events of 1984. 

The Indian government’s attack on Sri Harimandar Sahib and Akal Takht Complex in June of 1984 was given the codename Operation Blue Star.² The international and domestic Indian media almost universally used this term, further embedding the government’s language into the psyche of not only the wider public but the global Sikh community as well. Throughout my childhood, in the 1980s and 90s, when discussing the attack in English, the government’s subconsciously absorbed terminology became our own. Over the last two decades, however, there has been a movement, especially amongst diasporic Sikhs, to change the language being used when discussing the events of 1984, to turn away from government terminology, and to reframe the events from a Sikh lens. This movement, as noted, has largely been a diasporic phenomenon; when discussing the events of 1984 in Panjabi, Sikhs in Panjab largely refer to the events as a Ghallughara, with the term Tija (third) Ghallughara or Charasi da Ghallughara (Ghallughara of 84) being the preferred wording. This essay will explore these changes and what we can learn from the power of language used when discussing 1984. 

From Riots to Pogroms

One of the first instances of consciously changing the language was the resolve to utilize the word pogroms instead of riots, specifically regarding November 1984. In November of 1984, government-sponsored and organized mobs systematically attacked Sikhs across India, especially in the capital of Delhi.³ Sikh businesses and homes were targeted,⁴ Sikh women and girls were sexually assaulted, and Sikh men and boys were burned alive.⁵ Guru Granth Sahib sarups,⁶ and other religious scriptures were desecrated.⁷ These events had long been called riots. Around the turn of the millennium, young diasporic Sikh activists started to realize that the word riot was problematic in that it connotes spontaneous violence. This word painted the events of November 1984 as an emotional response to the assassination of then Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi. It is a word that justifies the violence. What had long been clear to Sikhs, however, and has now been thoroughly documented, was that the events of November 1984 were in no way spontaneous. They were extremely well organized.⁸ Voter registration lists were used to find the addresses of Sikhs.⁹ Careful procurement of gasoline occurred during the massacre, and what were once thought to be mindless mobs were actually paid thugs who were organized by Congress Party officials.¹⁰ The word riot was not only inaccurate but also actively harmful, as it misrepresents the reality of what transpired. The term riots implied that there was no organization; the government, police, and Congress Party officials were all off the hook for the consequences of their inhumane actions. 

Sikh activists coalesced around using the word pogrom instead.¹¹ Pogroms are organized street violence against a particular group, often by state forces. The term pogroms had historically been linked to the experience of European Jews, who had suffered through such organized violence for hundreds of years. A pogrom is “a mob attack, either approved or condoned by authorities, against the persons and property of a religious, racial, or national minority. The term is usually applied to attacks on Jews in the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.”¹² Meaning the word was very much linked to the experience of the Jewish people. Was this a conscious choice by Sikh activists, then, to link the experience of what Sikhs endured in 1984 to the experience of the paradigmatic example of a people who have undergone oppression, the European Jews? I believe it may have been. There has long been a desire amongst some segments of Sikhs to utilize language used to describe oppression against the Jewish people to describe the traumatic events of Sikh history. The occasional use of the word holocaust to describe the events of 1984 is especially notable.¹³ 

Thus, though the term pogroms was a much more accurate term than riot, it carried with it connotations not particular to Sikhs. It was also not a well-known term. This has been one of the central tensions in the exercise of trying to find new terminology to describe the events of 1984. Much of this work has been centered around making the experience of Sikhs legible to outsiders. It begs the question, though, what is the value of using a more accurate term when that term itself is not well known?

Genocide: The Overarching Narrative

In recent years, the use of the word pogroms has also fallen into disuse. Instead, many Sikhs now describe the events of both June and November 1984 as a genocide. Genocide is a powerful word and one that very much speaks to the public conscience. It encompasses the horror of the events of 1984 while also making what happened to Sikhs intelligible to outsiders. It makes the Sikh experience more comprehensible. This is useful when advocating with governments to recognize what the Sikhs experienced in 1984, as had occurred in Ontario, Canada, when in 2017, a motion was passed in the provincial legislature declaring the events of November 1984 as a genocide.¹⁴ Three years later, in 2020, a bill was proposed to have the first week of November be designated “Sikh Genocide Awareness Week” in Ontario, but this, unfortunately, did not pass into law.¹⁵ 

Sikh human rights activists have spent considerable effort demonstrating that what the Sikhs experienced in November 1984 qualifies as genocide according to legal standards. In Chapter 6 of her book, Twenty Years of Impunity: The November 1984 Pogroms of Sikhs in India, Jaskaran Kaur, of the human rights organization ENSAAF, methodically lays out the legal argument for why the events of November 1984 qualify as a genocide.¹⁶ She goes through relevant arguments and decisions from legal cases involving genocide and demonstrates how what the Sikhs experienced falls within the framework of the term genocide. The hard work of human rights activists and lawyers demonstrates the usefulness of the term genocide in the legal sphere when advocating for legal justice for the events of 1984. Perhaps the most significant example of this would be Advocate HS Phoolka’s¹⁷ work, which culminated in the Delhi High Court’s decision of 28 November 2018 when the court stated, “The large scale rioting, mob violence, arson, plunder, genocide, and looting has been duly proved and established.”

However, the term genocide has its own issues as well. Though other cases of genocide are widely known, such as the Armenian and Rwandan genocides, invariably, when the term is used, one thinks first of the Holocaust. This needs to be examined when advocating for centering the Sikh experience. 

The strong association of the term genocide with one group places the experiences of European Jews as the ultimate example of suffering and oppression the world has seen. Recent events in Palestine demonstrate how dangerous that narrative can be, as the Israeli state has often used the Holocaust as justification for its own genocidal actions against Palestinians.¹⁸ Implicitly, every use of the term genocide is compared to the Holocaust. There are continuous debates around the validity of the Sikh experience of genocide.¹⁹ If Sikhs were not rounded up in concentration camps and then systematically killed over many years, can what they experienced even be called genocide? Must every genocide be compared in scale and horror to the events of Nazi-perpetrated crimes of World War II? The Indian state greatly benefits from the perplexity caused by the inability to fit Sikh genocide into the mainstream understanding of genocide. Indian politicians have used this confusion to both gaslight Sikhs into ignoring the realities of 1984 and then swinging wildly to using the term to validate Sikhs in an attempt to gain votes.²⁰ The struggle for centering the Sikh narrative plays into a distraction that primes the Indian state to reproduce epistemological violence. 

A further problem with this word is that it takes agency away from those who have experienced genocide and instead inscribes them as perpetual victims.²¹ It denotes a passivity that is unheard of in Sikh history. While the term genocide may be appropriate for November 1984, when discussing June 1984, we quickly reach the limitations of the designation. Sikhs have never been passive victims. Genocide also ascribes a state of victimhood to those “virtuous” Sikhs who did not lead an armed struggle. They are the ones who are easily portrayed in films, stories, and art about 1984.²² This leaves Sikhs who were active in a struggle for self-determination to be painted as somehow deserving of state violence. We know that over 200 brave Sikh warriors, under the leadership of Sant Jarnail Singh Khalsa Bhindranwale, fought back against the army attack on the Harimandar Sahib and Akal Takht Complex.²³ The narrative of fighting back, of defending the sovereignty of Sikh institutions, of embracing martyrdom for a larger principle is important and perhaps outside of the realm of the term genocide as it has been known. The warrior preparedness and the Sikh ethos do not automatically qualify Sikhs to be recipients of state violence. 

The term genocide has also lost some of the power that it once had.²⁴ Whether it is fatigue from the constant barrage of terrible news from around the world or the fact that governments and international organizations do not see an obligation to “do something” when faced with ongoing genocides, the term has lost the power to compel action as it once was perceived to do.²⁵ In fact, the arguments around whether an ongoing crime against humanity qualifies as a genocide can actually become a hinderance to governments taking action. When discussing events in Sudan, Scott Staus argued, “Darfur has shown that the energy spent fighting over whether to call the events there ‘genocide’ was misplaced, overshadowing difficult but more important questions about how to craft an effective response to mass violence against civilians in Sudan.”²⁶ 

While the term genocide has brought strength to the Sikh telling of the events of November 1984 and has allowed for advocacy from other governments, as well as a route to legal justice, it has fallen short of understanding the complexity of Sikh agency, especially when discussing June 1984. 

Just as pogroms eclipsed the term riots, which was then replaced by genocide, a new term has arisen to describe the events of June 1984: the Battle of Amritsar. This is another strengths-based attempt to bring a Sikh focus to the events of 1984.

From Genocide to War: The Battle of Amritsar

The term Battle of Amritsar has been used by Sikh activists and scholars in the diaspora for over two decades.²⁷ The word battle centers the experience of the warriors who fought back against the Indian army and replaces the passive connotation as denoted by the term genocide. This term clarifies that some Sikhs consciously chose the path of martyrdom, to walk the edge of the khanda, giving their everything to defend the spiritual and socio-political heart of Sikhi—the Harimandar Sahib and Akal Takht Complex. The term has gained more prominence recently with the release of the well-received documentary by Sikh activists, The Battle of Amritsar.²⁸ 

The term Battle of Amritsar is a powerful one. Not only does it encompass the strength of the Sikhs who fought back against the Indian army, but it also creates a connection between those Sikhs and other Sikhs in history who also fought and died defending the Harimandar Sahib and Akal Takht Complex, such as Baba Dip Singh and Baba Gurbaksh Singh Nihang.²⁹ Historical continuity occurs when the events of June 1984 take their appropriate place in the long and proud history of the Sikh people. 

Yet, the Battle of Amritsar also has certain limitations. Firstly, there have been six battles of Amritsar in Sikh history before June 1984,³⁰ the first one being fought by Guru Harigobind Sahib in 1628. Claiming the 1984 battle as “the” battle of Amritsar creates an inadvertent hierarchy, thus minimizing the memory of these earlier battles. Perhaps, for clarity, we can use the term the Seventh Battle of Amritsar instead.

Secondly, the term Battle of Amritsar is not completely accurate because we well know that the events of June 1984 were not geographically limited to the city of Amritsar. Over 108 other Gurduaras were attacked in the first week of June 1984 around the state of Panjab.³¹ In fact, the whole state was put under siege in late May 1984, with telephone lines being cut, railway and highway traffic being disrupted and foreign journalists being removed from the state.³² In this sense, the secondary name of the event, as used by some Sikh organizations, as Jang Hind Panjab³³ (Battle between Panjab and India), is more appropriate, as it encompasses the far-reaching scale of the events of June 1984. 

However, it is not just the “Amritsar” part of the Battle of Amritsar which causes issues. The term battle is also not without problems. While the battle does focus on the experience of the great Sikh warriors like Bibi Upkar Kaur, Bhai Amrik Singh, and General Shabeg Singh, it complicates the narrative of the more than ten thousand Sikhs who had gathered at the Harimandar Sahib and Akal Takht Complex to commemorate the Shahidi Purab³⁴ of Guru Arjan Sahib.³⁵ Yes, a bold and inspiring battle occurred over the first week of June 1984. However, a whole-scale massacre of non-combatants also took place at the same time, a very purposeful one, it seems, with the army allowing thousands of Sikhs into the Complex for the Gur Purab³⁶ only to create a curfew that trapped them all inside.³⁷ While genocide highlighted the experience of these non-combatants (I hesitate to use the word “innocents” as that would mean that those who fought back were not innocent and were somehow guilty of a crime of sorts), the term battle erases the experience of the thousands of women, children, and men who were trapped in their beloved Complex in the brutally hot days of June 1984 and who were murdered by their own government. 

The lack of nuance around the term battle has highlighted a host of issues around language and terminology when discussing the events of 1984. For example, I consciously strive to present a Sikh narrative in my work. Therefore, I will use the term Battle of Amritsar, but I will add to it the Attack on the Harimandar Sahib and Akal Takht Complex to ensure that the story of the non-combatants is also captured. When discussing both the events of June and November 1984, phraseology becomes even more complicated. Should the term genocide be used only to describe November 1984? Was June not a genocidal attack as well? However, if we use the term genocide, the story of the warriors who fought back is erased. And, if we use the term battle, then what of the non-combatants and so on? We are then left with ungainly and awkward descriptions like, “The June 1984 attack on the Harimandar Sahib and Akal Takht Complex and subsequent Battle of Amritsar as well as the genocidal attacks on Sikhs of November 1984.” What, then, is the solution to this linguistic conundrum? Simply put, I believe the answer lies in returning to our native vocabulary, as Sikhs in Panjab have been doing for the last 40 years. It behooves us to reframe the events of June and November 1984 as what they are according to Sikh history… Ghallugharas.

Embracing the Sikh World View: The Ghallugharas of 1984

There is strength and power in utilizing one’s own language to describe something as horrific as wide-scale massacres and displacement. The Holocaust is the Shoah for Jewish folks.³⁸ The Armenian genocide is known as the Medz Yeghern.³⁹ The transatlantic slave trade has been named the Maafa⁴⁰ from the Kiswahili language. Utilizing one’s own terminology, birthed from a community’s arterial language and history, allows for a robust understanding of the events an English placeholder can never have. 

But this is more than just about using a native term to describe deeply personal and panthic events to all Sikhs. This is about the fact that the events of 1984, especially June, are complicated, and there is no one English term that encompasses all of the different aspects of the event. Operation Blue Star, genocide, holocaust, Battle of Amritsar, Jang Hind Panjab… all of these fall short in one way or another. The only phrase that captures the true scope of what occurred 40 years ago is Ghallughara. 

Ghallughara is a uniquely Sikh term. According to Bhai Kahn Singh Nabha’s epic encyclopedia, Gur Shabad Ratanakar Mahan Kosh, it is not a term that originated from another language but was created by Sikhs in the 18th century to describe the horrors that they experienced. Let us look at the two historic Ghallugharas in more detail to understand better what the word encompasses. 

   The Chotta (Lesser or Smaller) Ghallughara

The year is 1746. Lakhpat Rai is a minister in Lahore's government. He had already tried to eradicate the Sikhs before and was responsible for the execution of Bhai Mani Singh. After the Khalsa killed his brother, a Mughal feudal official who was targeting Sikhs for extermination, he convinced the governor, Yahiya Khan, to declare a genocidal campaign against the Sikh Panth. Lakhpat Rai wanted to eradicate Sikhi once and for all. He began his genocide by rounding up all the Sikhs of Lahore, who were then tortured and executed on 10 March 1746.

A large portion of the Khalsa, 15,000, were camping in a swampy jungle near Kahnuwan, 15 km south of Gurdaspur. The Mughal Army, composed of 50,000 infantry and cavalry, was able to surround the jungle, catching the Khalsa off guard. The Khalsa rushed the Mughal lines and broke out of the enemy trap but suffered brutally high casualties in the effort. The surviving Khalsa crossed the Ravi River and tried to retreat to Basohli in the hills of Jammu. But there, the Hindu hill tribes attacked them and drove them back. The Khalsa suffered incredibly severe casualties as the Mughal forces surrounded them once more. The Khalsa managed to push their way through the Mughal ring and recrossed the Ravi. Exhausted and injured, and without having eaten or rested in days, many were swept away by the current. The survivors continued south, crossing the Beas and then the Sutlej and finally finding safety in the Lakhi jungle, a Khalsa base since Guru Gobind Singh Sahib's time.

7,000 were killed in the brutal two-day battle. 3,000 were captured. They were brought to Lahore and made to parade around the city on donkeys. These brave Khalsa warriors were then tortured and executed in small batches for months.⁴¹

   The Vadda (Greater or Larger) Ghallughara

The year is now 1762. Enraged by their increasing boldness, Ahmad Shah Durrani (aka Abdali), the emperor of Afghanistan, returns to India with the express purpose of exterminating the Sikhs once and for all. Eleven Misls of the Khalsa as well as tens of thousands of non-combatant Sikhs, are camped at Kup Rohira, 12 km north of Malerkotla. They had gathered for a Sarbat Khalsa and were not expecting an Afghan attack.

The combined Afghan-Mughal force included over 20,000 infantry soldiers, 30,000 well-armed cavalry, and substantial artillery. The Khalsa had no artillery, never had an infantry, and had tens of thousands of civilians to protect.

The commander of the combined Khalsa Army, Sardar Jassa Singh Ahluwalia, orders the Misls to make a protective ring around the thousands of non-combatant Sikhs, and they slowly start to try and march to safety.

After just 5 kilometers, the protective ring is broken. The Afghanis & Mughals sweep through the non-combatants and slaughter thousands of them without mercy. There is little the Sikhs could do with over 40,000 people trapped in a small space. Finally, after hours of fighting, the Khalsa were able to push the Afghanis out of the protective ring and began to continue their strategic retreat. But the damage was done. Anywhere between 20,000 and 35,000 Sikhs have been killed, the largest loss of life in Sikh history in a single day. Tragically, the original copy of the Guru Granth Sahib that Guru Gobind Singh Sahib prepared, known as the Damdami Bir, was also destroyed or lost in the battle.⁴²

As we can see from both the Chotta and Vadda Ghallugharas, the term Ghallughara encompasses not only Sikhs who fought against the oppressor (either the Mughal Lahore government or the Afghani Empire as well as the Malerkotla state) but also those who were non-combatants. In the Chotta Ghallughara, all the Sikhs of Lahore were rounded up and executed. These were primarily non-fighters, as the Khalsa warriors were largely in the jungles at the time. In the Vadda Ghallughara, the non-combatants were gathered with the soldiers, and both were killed in the ensuing battle. 

Thus, Ghallughara is able to capture in its meaning both the brave warriors who fought against the Indian army in June of 1984, as well as those Sikhs who were not active fighters and had come to the Complex to commemorate the Gur Purab.

This is not to say that using one’s native terminology is not without issues. If the goal is to make one’s experience legible to the outside world, then using the word Ghallughara is obviously a problem. It is not a well-known word even in the rest of the sub-continent. The use of native terms can also be used to obscure meanings. A prime example of this would be the US government starting to use the term Medz Yeghern instead of Armenian genocide in order not to offend Turkey, a strategic partner.⁴³ In this case, the use of a native term is actually harmful as it is being used not out of respect for victims but instead as a way to appease a perpetrator. Could the term Ghallughara similarly be used to avoid offending India with the term genocide? It is a distinct possibility. 

However, I feel that the word Ghallughara offers much more than it detracts. It ties the events of 1984 to Panthic memory, creating a narrative legacy that binds Sikhs of today to the experiences of Sikhs from centuries ago. It frames the events in a uniquely Sikh way, allowing for a Sikh understanding of the events to unfold naturally. Ghallughara allows us to talk about 1984 from a place of strength. By encompassing the lives of those who did not fight while also acknowledging those who were able to fight back, Ghallughara captures a uniquely Sikh perspective on the events of 1984. Ghallughara also creates space for healing, not from a victim mentality but instead from a place of resilience and strength. The historic Sikh response to the Ghallugharas of the 18th century can be compared to how we have responded to the events of 1984. Ghallughara creates space for the Guru to enter the narrative, allowing for ideas like hukam⁴⁴ and bhana⁴⁵ to be discussed; ideas that don’t make sense when discussing a genocide or an operation.

As Sikhs continue commemorating the 40th anniversary of June and November 1984, they are met with a meaningful time to reframe the events of 1984 through a Sikh lens and use Sikh vocabulary to describe what the community endured four decades ago. Sikh youth have been moving us through and past the colonizer’s language. With each turn, the community grows closer to making their experiences known by their own voices. No longer do they need to use the terms of the oppressor, like Operation Blue Star, or even terms that make our experience more comprehensible to others, like genocide or battle. Instead, they can embrace Sikh vocabulary and reclaim their own narrative. The Panth remembers all of those who died in the Ghallugharas of 1984: warriors, noncombatants, and activists. And through an indigenous understanding of their own experience, they can stand in awe of a Panth that, even after trauma, can be resilient and grow even stronger from the darkest of times.

Footnotes

¹     Panth, literally meaning path, is the Sikh term for the Sikh people as a whole. Guru Gobind Singh Sahib granted the position of Guru to the Sikh Panth, and it is now referred to as the Guru Khalsa Panth. Panthic therefore refers to something that is of the Panth.
²     Pancholi, et al., Report to the Nation: Oppression in Punjab. New Delhi, 1985.
³     Jaskaran Kaur, Twenty Years of Impunity: The November 1984 Pogroms of Sikhs in India (2nd Edition). 2006, Portland, Oregon.
⁴     ibid
⁵     ibid
⁶     Sarup or Bir refers to a copy of Guru Granth Sahib.
⁷     Jaskaran Kaur, op cit.
⁸     ibid
⁹     ibid
¹⁰   ibid
¹¹   It is unclear when the term pogrom was first used to describe November 1984, however, I personally do not recall its use prior to the turn of the millennium. ENSAAF’s 2004 report, Twenty Years of Impunity, may be one of the first instances of when it appeared in print.
¹²   Encyclopedia Britannica, accessed 2024/02/19
¹³   See Khushwant Singh’s A History of the Sikhs, Volume 2: 1839– 2004 for the frequent use of the word holocaust when describing the events of November 1984. 
¹⁴   Anirudh Bhattacharyya, “Ontario passes motion calling 1984 riots genocide, India says move misguided”, The Hindustan Times, 2017/04/08.
¹⁵   Bill 177, Sikh Genocide Awareness Week Act, 2020, Legislative Assembly of Ontario, accessed 2024/02/25. There is suspicion amongst Sikh activists that pressure from the Indian government was put on the ruling Progressive Conservative Party to not pass the bill into law. 
¹⁶   Jaskaran Kaur, op cit.
¹⁷   Harvinder Singh Phoolka is a senior advocate of the Delhi High Court and has been a long time human rights activist as well as politician. He has spent the last several decades fighting for legal justice for the survivors of the anti-Sikh violence of November 1984.
¹⁸   Raz Segal, “Israel must stop weaponising the Holocaust”. The Guardian, 2023/10/24.
¹⁹   Douglas Todd, “Genocide? Pogrom? Crime against humanity? Words do matter”, Vancouver Sun, 2016/04/23.
²⁰   The current right wing, Hindutva BJP government will call November 1984 a genocide to turn Sikh votes away from the Congress Party, but is largely silent on the events of June 1984; “Rajnath Called 1984 Killings ‘Genocide’, Now MEA Objects When Canada Does the Same”, The Wire, 2017/04/07. 
²¹   Shamsher Singh, “Discourses on June ‘84”, Panth-Punjab Project, 2023/06/08,
²²   Recent Bollywood films like Jogi and Lal Singh Chaddha center the events of November 1984, but are careful to ensure that the Sikh protagonists portrayed are not politically active Sikhs who did not condemn Indira Gandhi’s assassination and are tacitly against the actions of the Sikhs who defended the Harimandar Sahib Complex in June 1984. Therefore, they can be ascribed as victims; worthy of sympathy.
²³   Harcharanjit Singh Dhami, Kanwarpal Singh & Sarbjit Singh Ghuman, Martyrs of June 84: Indo-Punjab Battle, June 1984. Amritsar, 2007.
²⁴   Luke Glanville, “Is ‘Genocide’ Still a Powerful Word?” Journal of Genocide Research 11.4, 2009.
²⁵   ibid.
²⁶   Scott Straus, “Darfur and the Genocide Debate.” Foreign Affairs 84.1, 2005.
²⁷   The Sikh Research Institute has been using the term Battle of Amritsar since the early 2000’s. Jakara Movement has also used the term, prominently in their book, Let Them Come: The Battle of Amritsar (1984) and Beyond, 2009.
²⁸   Directed by Shamsher Singh, 2022.
²⁹   Baba Dip Singh was martyred freeing the Harimandar Sahib and Akal Takht Complex on 13 November 1757 from the Afghan army. Baba Gurbaksh Singh Nihang led a group of 30 Sikhs who defended the Complex from the Afghani army on 1 December 1761.
³⁰   The first battle of Amrisar was fought by Guru Harigobind Sahib who led 700 Sikhs against 7000 Mughals on 5 June 1628. The second battle of Amritsar was when Baba Dip Singh led a force of 5000 Sikhs against 20,000 Afghanis on 11 November 1757. The third battle was in the aftermath of the Vadda Ghallughara, when Sardar Jassa Singh Ahluvalia led 30,000 Sikhs against an Afghan army of 50,000 on  Divali day during a total solar eclipse in 1762. The fourth battle was when Baba Gurbaksh Singh and 29 other Sikhs held a last stand at Akal Takht Sahib to defend the Harimandar Sahib Complex against 30,000 Afghanis on 1 December 1761. The fifth battle occurred during the Afghani emperor, Ahmed Shah Durrani’s 8th invasion of India when Sardar Jassa Singh Ahluvalia and 10,000 Sikhs fought against an Afghani force of 15,000 on 17 January 1767. The sixth battle was when Sardar (later Maharaja) Ranjit Singh Sukarchakia led a force of 15,000 Sikhs against 20,000 Afghanis led by Zaman Shah Durrani, the grandson of Ahmed Shah, on 27 November 1798. Besides these battles, there were also the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre of Vaisakhi 1919 and the Massacre of Vaisakhi 1978 that also took place in Amritsar. Violence between Muslims and Sikhs in the lead up to Partition is also sometimes referred to as the Battle for Amritsar.
³¹   Malkeet Singh Bhawanigarh, Ghallughara June 84: Witnessing the Army Invasion of Sikh Gurdwaras. 2021, Anandpur Sahib. 
³²   Christian Science Monitor, 1984/06/08
³³   This is also the title of a popular song by Channi D which narrates the story of June 1984.
³⁴   Shahidi Purab refers to a day marking the day that someone was martyred. The Shahidi Purab of Guru Arjan Sahib, the fifth Nanak, is especially well celebrated at Harimandar Sahib as it was Guru Arjan Sahib who built the Harimandar Sahib. 
³⁵   Inderjit Singh Jaijee, Politics of Genocide: Punjab 1984-1998. Delhi, 1999.
³⁶   A Gur Purab is a day celebrating the birth, Gurgaddi (ascension date) or Joti Jot (end of physical life) of one of the Sikh Gurus.
³⁷   Pancholi, et al., Report to the Nation: Oppression in Punjab. New Delhi, 1985.
³⁸   Shoah means calamity, catastrophe or destruction in Hebrew: Wikipedia accessed 2024/02/25
³⁹   Medz Yeghern means great evil crime in Armenian: Wikipedia accessed 2024/02/25
⁴⁰   Maafa means great disaster in Kiswahili and was first proposed as a term for the transatlantic slave trade in the 1980’s: Wikipedia accessed 2024/02/25
⁴¹   BS Nijjar, “Chhota Ghallughara”, The Sikh Encyclopedia (ed. H. Singh). Patiala, 1998.
⁴²   SS Bhatia, “Vadda Ghallughara”, The Sikh Encyclopedia (ed. H. Singh). Patiala, 1998.
⁴³   Vartan Matiossian, “Medz Yeghern, the Silenced Name: Language, Politics, and the Armenian Genocide”. International Journal of Armenian Genocide Studies, 2022.
⁴⁴   Hukam, literally command, refers to the Command of Ik Oankar (the One creative and pervasive Force, the Divine).
⁴⁵   Bhana, literally willingness or inclination, refers to the Will of Ik Oankar (the One creative and pervasive Force; the Divine).