Thousands of Sikhs were murdered all across India in the first week of November 1984 following the assassination of then-prime minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards.

Activists of the slain leader’s ruling Congress party were involved in the pogrom, which was aided and abetted by the police.

Mobs identified innocent Sikhs, burned them alive, and raped Sikh women to avenge the prime minister's murder.

This was all done to win the next general election by polarizing the Hindu majority against Sikhs, who make up a mere two percent of country’s population.

In Delhi alone, close to 3,000 Sikhs were murdered. So far, only one senior politician has been convicted after 34 years, while most senior politicians remain unpunished.

On Saturday (June 29) in Surrey, a campaign was launched for Canada's Parliament to recognize the 1984 Sikh massacre as a "genocide".

South Asian activists came together at the Surrey-Newton Library at an event opened by Sto:Lo activist Kwitsel Tatel. She expressed her solidarity with the cause and mentioned how Indigenous peoples have been subjected to genocide in Canada.

The organizers also extended their unconditional support for recognizing structural violence against Indigenous women as genocide.

Only recently, the missing and murdered indigenous women and girls inquiry report used this word to describe what has occurred. Much like right-wing political parties in Canada that refuse to recognize it as genocide, the Indian state has repeatedly refused to define the 1984 massacre as such.

Former New Democratic Party MP Svend Robinson, a strong voice for human rights, also spoke at the event.

He was the only Canadian politician who showed up and he offered assurances to take the campaign to its logical end.

"What we must acknowledge is that this was not random violence," Robinson said. "This was state-orchestrated violence. And that is why—that is why—we call for the truth to be told, which is genocide.

"What flows from the truth must be justice," Robinson continued. "And what flows from justice must be accountability. And shamefully, there has been no accountability of those who were responsible for this genocide."

None of the elected officials from among the local Sikh community was in attendance even though the organizers invited them. Whereas Robinson came all the way from Burnaby to show his support, Surrey MPs, MLAs, and councillors were conspicuous by their absence.

Notably, the Indian government has denied visas to at least two Indo-Canadian politicians in the past for campaigning in Parliament and the Ontario legislature to acknowlege that genocide against Sikhs occurred in 1984. They are Surrey-Newton Liberal MP Sukh Dhaliwal and New Democratic Party Leader and Burnaby South MP Jagmeet Singh.

Saturday’s event coincided with the fourth anniversary of a Sikh genocide motion passed by the Delhi Assembly on June 30, 2015. The motion was brought forward by Aam Aadmi Party politician Jarnail Singh, who was previously a journalist.

He shot into prominence in 2009 after throwing a shoe at a former Indian home minister, P. Chidambaram, during a news conference. It came in protest against Chidambaram's attempts to shield those involved in the massacre.

The Delhi Assembly is the legislative body for the Indian national capital territory.

Singh, who also authored a book on 1984 massacre, was the keynote speaker at the Saturday event. He presented copies of his book to Robinson and Tatel.  

Others who spoke included independent journalist and poet Gurvinder Singh Dhaliwal; Barjinder Singh from Sikh Nation— a group of volunteers that started an annual blood drive in memory of the victims of the massacre; Sikh activists Dharam Singh, Gurmukh Singh Deol and Kesar Singh Baghi; Muslim activist Syed Wajahat; prominent painter Jarnail Singh; and rationalist society leader Avtar Gill.

A moment of silence was held at the beginning of the event in memory of Tabrez Ansari, a Muslim man recently lynched in India by Hindu fundamentalists with allegiance to the ruling right-wing Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP). It's bent upon turning India into Hindu theocracy.

Speakers in Surrey also touched upon the complicity of the BJP in a 1984-like massacre of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002. Indian prime minister Narendra Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat back then and has been widely accused of being complicit in the mass murder of Muslims, though he's never been charged in connection with these crimes.