Campaign to have the 1984 killings recognised as genocide

Who: Sikh groups, chiefly Sikhs for Justice and UNITED SIKHS; the Ontario legislators Jagmeet Singh and Harinder Malhi; the Delhi Assembly; and, opposing the word "genocide", the Government of India.

What: From 2012 Sikh groups pressed governments to name the Tesra Ghallughara, the November 1984 killings of Sikhs, as genocide. Main steps:

• November 2012 to April 2013: A White House "We the People" petition, created on 15 November 2012, asked the United States to recognise the killings as genocide. Sikhs for Justice collected signatures, and it reached 30,517 against a threshold of 25,000. The reply, reported on 2 April 2013, said the United States had "monitored and publicly reported on the grave human rights violations" of 1984 but did not say whether this was genocide.
• January 2013: Sikhs for Justice and the Swiss group Movement Against Atrocities and Repression said they had filed a criminal complaint with the Swiss Attorney General against the Congress leader Kamal Nath, forwarded to the prosecutor of the canton of Graubünden. Their account mentions no arrest or charge.
• June 2016: Ontario's legislature voted down Jagmeet Singh's motion to recognise the violence as genocide, 40 to 22, says UNITED SIKHS.
• 6 April 2017: Ontario's Legislative Assembly passed a second motion, moved by the Liberal MPP Harinder Malhi, by 34 votes to 5 (The Tribune reports 35 to 5). It recognised "the 1984 Genocide perpetrated against the Sikhs throughout India". India's external affairs spokesperson, Gopal Baglay, said "We reject this misguided motion", which he called "based on a limited understanding of India".
• 17 December 2018: In convicting Sajjan Kumar, a Delhi High Court bench of Justices S. Muralidhar and Vinod Goel held that the mass killings of Sikhs in November 1984 were in fact "crimes against humanity". It noted that neither "crimes against humanity" nor "genocide" is part of India's domestic criminal law, a loophole that "needs to be addressed urgently".
• 21 December 2018: The Delhi Assembly adopted a resolution, moved by the AAP MLA Jarnail Singh, calling the 1984 violence genocide. It asked the Union Home Ministry to add crimes against humanity and genocide to India's criminal laws. A proposed Rajiv Gandhi Bharat Ratna amendment was not put to a vote.

Where: Washington, Switzerland, Toronto and Delhi.

Why it mattered: The word is the centre of the dispute. Sikh groups hold that the Tesra Ghallughara was genocide; the White House did not adopt the term in 2013, and India's government rejected Ontario's use of it in 2017. Yet the Delhi High Court's finding of crimes against humanity, and the Delhi Assembly's resolution, show that the argument is no longer only between advocacy groups and the state.