Kanpur Nirankari clash, September 1978

Who: Sikhs of Kanpur, men, women and children, who marched in protest from Gurdwara Gobindpuri; Baba Gurbachan Singh, head of the Sant Nirankari Mission, and his followers at the Nirankari Bhawan; and the Uttar Pradesh police.

What: Sikh protests had already stopped Baba Gurbachan Singh from speaking at Varanasi, Azamgarh and Allahabad. Gurmit Singh writes that he reached Kanpur at about 9:30 pm on 25 September 1978, flanked by police officers, and that the Nirankaris at Kanpur had made full preparations for the protesters. The Sikhs marched about three kilometres from Gurdwara Gobindpuri to the Nirankari Bhawan, and some carried kirpans. Gurmit Singh writes that the Nirankaris greeted them with brickbats and even gunshots, that an armed Nirankari volunteer speared Jathedar Kishan Singh in the stomach, and that in the fight that followed the police fired on the Sikhs. He counts 13 Sikhs dead and 74 injured, and names ten of the Shaheed: Harcharan Singh, Jagjit Singh, Jathedar Kishan Singh, Jathedar Karam Singh, Bibi Darshan Kaur, Baba Kashmira Singh, Manmohan Singh, Gurbir Singh, Balwant Singh and Gurjit Singh. The SGPC's white paper says more than a dozen Sikhs were killed in police firing on 26 September, and ThePrint says 12.

Sikh inquiries gave their findings. A committee of Hukam Singh, a former Speaker of the Lok Sabha, the retired sessions judge Mehar Singh Chadha and the Supreme Court advocate Hazara Singh, whose report the Sikh Review published, found that the Sikhs marched peacefully, that missiles and bullets came from the Bhawan, that the police shot to kill, and that the 13 deaths could have been avoided. It records the police officer's version: that he learned at 8 am that a procession armed with lethal weapons and shouting provocative slogans was marching to the Bhawan. Separately, the Delhi Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee's enquiry committee under Hukam Singh reported on 18 October 1978 that if the police had acted promptly the mishap could have been averted. The sources opened for this page do not include an official inquiry's findings.

• 27 September: Sikhs in Amritsar, Delhi, Bombay, Lucknow, Kanpur and elsewhere observed a one-day strike.
• 28 September: the bodies were taken out in a huge procession, and the Punjab Government banned the Nirankari chief from entering Punjab for six months; he had the ban lifted in the Supreme Court.
• 30 September: Delhi's Sikhs marched and presented a memorandum asking for a ban on Nirankari samagams.

The SGPC's white paper says the top Akali ministers at the Centre resigned over police excesses at Kanpur and Delhi, and that the resignations were later withdrawn after a settlement.

Where: Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, between Gurdwara Gobindpuri and the Nirankari Bhawan.

Why it mattered: It came more than five months after the Nirankari clash at Amritsar on 13 April 1978 and deepened Sikh anger at the police and the Centre. Gurmit Singh writes that Bhindranwale drew more strength from the Kanpur incident and, with his supporters, openly challenged the Akali Dal president Jagdev Singh Talwandi at the Akali Dal's conference at Ludhiana in October 1978. About five weeks after Kanpur, a Sikh protest in Delhi against a Nirankari convention ended in deaths on 4 November 1978.