Hola Mohalla at Anandpur Sahib, March 1985

Who: Sikhs gathered at Sri Anandpur Sahib for Hola Mohalla, most of them young; the writer M.J. Akbar and Barjinder Singh Hamdard, editor of the Punjabi daily Ajit, who saw it and wrote about it; and Bhai Ajmer Singh, who quotes both in 1984: Unchitviya Kehar, the source of this page.

What: Ajmer Singh calls it the first Hola Mohalla after the two great sakas of 1984, the attack of June and the killings of November. Akbar, as the book quotes him, says the gathering ran for three days, 6 to 8 March 1985, and was less a celebration than an angry challenge to Delhi. The crowd was far larger than usual and almost all young, the men in saffron turbans and the women in saffron scarves, and he says they expressed their separatist feelings openly. He says they were looking for new leadership and found it in Bimal Kaur Khalsa, widow of Beant Singh, while the moderate Akali leaders were discredited. Cassettes of new songs praising Beant Singh, Satwant Singh and Kehar Singh were being passed round, and the singers did not hide their names. He ends that saffron now covers every village and town of Punjab: "we", he writes, have learned the price of the blue war and must take care to avoid the destruction of a saffron one.

Hamdard's editorial in Ajit, as quoted, describes a river of colours flowing to Gurdwara Keshgarh Sahib, with saffron, the colour of sacrifice, standing out, new Dhadi vaars and songs for the new Shaheeds, and a Qaum that grows through struggle. He writes that paramilitary forces and police stood everywhere with their weapons on show while the Qaum's devotees moved without fear.

Ajmer Singh adds that the gathering closed on 9 March, that Sant Harchand Singh Longowal was freed from Udaipur jail on 11 March, and that the next day Arjun Singh was named Punjab's new Governor, which he reads as Delhi's answer to the mood at Anandpur.

Where: Sri Anandpur Sahib, on the road to Gurdwara Keshgarh Sahib.

Why it mattered: Ajmer Singh writes that at the first Hola Mohalla after the two great sakas of 1984 the Sikh Qaum told Delhi's rulers that it had not learned to bend before tyranny, and that fighting had stopped being a choice for the Qaum and become a necessity. His book is the only account used for this page; the words of Akbar and Hamdard are given as the book prints them.