I lost my father a year ago. He had been battling with cancer since 2015 and died within a few days after I arrived in India to see him.

I had been to India three times in a row to meet him. First in January 2016, then in February 2017, and then again the same year in the beginning of November to spend some time with him out of fear that I may not see him again.

My worst nightmare came true on November 4, 2017. Incidentally that was the day of celebration of the birth of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, a religion my father followed.

He suffered a massive cardiac arrest at home in Punjab that led to his death. A night before he directed my mother to donate flour and lentils to the community kitchen at gurdwara next door. Unfortunately, he couldn’t get medical help in time.

Nobody picked up the phone when my brother kept calling for the ambulance. And when it came it had no equipment. By the time we took my father to the hospital he was unconscious and declared dead on arrival.

When we were heading for his cremation I noticed that unknown people along the route folded their hands and bowed their heads in respect. That has always been a practice among the Indians who feel obliged to give last respect to anyone who is dead. This was in sharp contrast to what had happened a few weeks earlier.

Gauri Lankesh, a journalist who was critical of the right-wing Hindu nationalist BJP government in India, was murdered by suspected Hindu extremists in the southern state of Karnataka. Attacks on religious minorities have grown ever since the BJP government had come to power in 2014.

Particularly disturbing is the increasing number of cases of cow vigilantism where people suspected of consuming beef are being lynched.

The cow has always been seen as sacred animal by Hindus. Under the BJP government it has become holier than thou. Lankesh was critical of the BJP and its divisive politics. The fact that some BJP supporters rejoiced her murder goes against the spirit of real India and humanity.

My father was also concerned with growing attempts to turn India into a Hindu nation where all minorities would be unsafe.

Then came the special prayers for my father at a gurdwara. Among those in attendance were few local politicians who knew him. While giving eulogies, they listed the contributions of their parties to prevent cancer.

I couldn't take this and requested to say a few words. I pointed out that the current government has done more to protect cows instead of making the lives of human beings affordable and safe through funding for cancer research and a sound health-care system.

After spending several days of mourning with my mother and brother and his family, I came back. One day I got a text message from a very close friend’s son, Bikram, who shared his condolences. I was touched by his gesture as it is very rare that young folks take out time for such niceties.

This year, close to my father’s first death anniversary, Bikram passed away at the age of 24. He died of a seizure while sleeping at home. Being the only child of his parents, the tragedy left everyone in shock and disbelief. My own grief seems to be so insignificant when I think of the death of such a decent boy who was otherwise healthy and expected to live longer. His death only made me angry.

Of all people, why did his parents have to suffer?

His parents are such nice and God-fearing people who provided the best of the opportunities to their son and taught him to be compassionate.

As sometimes happens with a train of thoughts, my mind wandered and my anger and frustration doubled. What wrong my father do, either? He was taking good care of his health. He worshipped every day and never accepted my atheism. When I cut my hair he was very sad. No good Sikh is supposed to shorn hair. And yet he was inflicted with the ailment and died.

What aggravated my anger was the response of many visitors to the family of Bikram. The aggrieved parents were repeatedly told to accept God’s will.

Another close associate suggested giving up all anger against anyone. To this person, worrying about political right means nothing and what ultimately matters is your kids.

This conversation made me even more agitated. While I could understand such discourse in a situation for someone like my father who was ailing, why should I accept the untimely death of Bikram, who was like my son?

And why the hell was this lesson is not being given to powerful people, especially those on the right side of the political spectrum? Do they not understand this already? Do right-wing politicians not know that death is imminent? So why should we relent? Why not them?

If God really loves, why did Bikram have to die? Why not those who have committed oppression?

When I went to see my father the very last time, I reached Delhi Airport on October 31. It was the same day Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards in 1984. They wanted to avenge the sacrilege of their holiest shrine in Amritsar where the army was sent in June that year to flush out religious extremists. 

The high-profile murder was followed by a well-organized anti-Sikh pogrom all across India. In Delhi alone, more than 3,000 Sikhs were slaughtered by mobs who were instigated by leaders of Indira Gandhi’s Congress party. Memories of the violence directed at Sikhs kept haunting me as a bus I took at the airport bound for Punjab passed through Delhi streets. These areas became killing fields in the first week of November 1984.

Years have passed but political leaders involved in the crime remain unpunished. So much so that Muslims were also killed in a similar fashion in Gujarat in 2002.

The present Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, was the chief minister of Gujarat back then and his party, the BJP, was complicit in the massacre. Agree or not, the 2002 massacre happened because of events of 1984, which set the precedent of impunity. It gave people in power licencce to organize mass murders to polarize the Hindu majority against minority groups.

"Where is God?" I thought to myself. "Why did he or she choose to punish my father instead of the killers of the members of his community or those who murdered Muslims?"

I am sure that my father passed away sharing the pain of many Sikhs who continue to fight for justice against perpetrators who remain unpunished. While we were safe as we lived in Punjab, Delhi and other parts of India were engulfed by violence, and the whole episode left everyone in the community saddened.

Though I failed to become a good Sikh in the eyes of my father, I will keep the issue of the Sikh massacre alive through my writings and through a bit of activism until justice is delivered. That's the least I can do for him and his community.

This past Sunday, on November 4, I and other members of Indians Abroad for Pluralist India organized a rally in Surrey for the victims of the 1984 pogrom. It was also the first anniversary of my father's death. I hope I did justice to his faith in Sikhism, which teaches us to stand up against repression.

The first guru, Nanak, not only challenged oppressors of his time, he guided Sikhs to stand up against injustice.

My father was a sales manager with a government-run fuel company in Amritsar when the army invaded the Golden Temple Complex, the holiest Sikh shrine. He was instrumental behind the installation of gas cylinders inside the temple kitchen.

During the army attack he was given a special pass to go inside the complex and remove the cylinders to avoid any catastrophe during the shelling. Once he came back, he was a changed man.

The signs of destruction inside the temple became unbearable for him. He always believed that the army attack could have been avoided and some other methods should have been used to make the militants surrender. 

Before the military attack my father was a carefree man who often trimmed his beard. Even though he was a practising Sikh who sported long hair and turban, he wasn’t strict enough in following the religious code that barred him from cutting his beard.

On one occasion, the militant Sikh leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale—who was accused by the Indian establishment of fortifying the Golden Temple complex and who died fighting against the army—advised him to stop the practice of trimming his facial hair. This came during his routine visit in connection with the installation of gas cylinders.

But my father never bothered. He remained critical of Bhindranwale and his followers for turning the temple into a fortress, though he was even more critical of the government that was not listening to genuine demands of Sikh leaders who were merely asking for political autonomy and religious concessions.

He strongly believed that the circumstances created by the government forced the militants to take up arms. Nevertheless, he was outraged when some violent activities took place in and around the Golden Temple complex, particularly when a senior police officer who was visiting as a devotee was murdered by militants right outside.

However, the army attack forced my father to stop cutting his beard. He also became deeply religious in subsequent years. I still remember the morning he told me with a choked voice that "I have decided not to cut my beard anymore as the man (Bhindranwale) who suggested me to stop this is now dead."

Thus, the army operation alienated Sikhs and turned Bhindranwale into a martyr for people like my father.

As regards Bikram’s family, one of his uncles has frequently donated blood in Vancouver in memory of the victims of 1984 anti-Sikh violence. Every year, the Sikh Nation organizes the annual blood drive, which has saved 130,000 lives since 1999. His mother’s uncle, Gulzar Singh Sandhu, is a famous author who wrote a short story on the Sikh massacre.

God and its believers must be made accountable for the deaths of my father and Bikram—and many other harmless people. Though I can still forgive and forget the death of my dad who was suffering with a disease, I cannot and won’t ever accept what happened to Bikram.

If God really exists and is powerful and omnipresent, he or she must punish the tyrants, such as those who orchestrated violence against the Sikhs in 1984 and Muslims in 2002, rather than blessing them with power. Such oppressors continue to commit crimes against humanity in the name of God.

If believers have no convincing response to this, then they should stop preaching the myth.