Sikhs have a reputation for their daring entrepreneurship. There is no branch of knowledge and practically no field activity in which they have not excelled often to a point of envy. There is hardly any country on the face of this planet which has escaped their strong exploring hands. Yet their remarkable record of accomplishments stands eclipsed, their hard won trophies look like stolen goods, their essentially broad, secular out-look groans for recognition from under the forcibly foisted mask of uncompromising fanaticism, their legitimate aspirations appear sinister and suspect, their peaceful clamour for justice and equality points to dangerous portends. Why this monstrous distortion? What villain is slowly but surely sullying our fair image? Wheelies the fault? The fault, dear Sikhs, is not with the stars, but with ourselves, for we have criminally neglected the most deadly force of the modern age the media.
Modern world is a manipulator’s paradise where truth bleeds at the crucifix of Machiavellian politicking, where personalities are built through sensational gimmicks and destroyed through a concerted barrage of insinuating fabrications. Facts merely form the flexible clay to which the reporter’s prejudice-ridden subjectivity gives the shape it desires. The unsuspecting readers never attempt to probe beyond the surface dressing and innocently digest the artfully sauced and spiced fare with rare relish.
Day after day the government sponsored media kept spinning the most fanciful yarns, voluminous enough to form a heavy horror encyclopedia, to project us as ruthless renegades. Curiously we allowed our detractors to portray us in whatever fashion they deemed profitable for their ominous designs. Only after the sanctity of the Golden Temple was outrageously violated, Akal Takht destroyed and innocent Sikhs in thousands brutally butchered with none in the world coming forward to condemn or censure the perpetrators of the most heinous crimes, that we are beginning to wake up to the necessity of having our own voice the voice that will cancel the curse cast around us and reassert the truth.
Launching of the weekly World Sikh News is a solid step in that direction. It is a challenging task and will have to contend with many difficulties as well as obstructionist mines planted in its way by our adversaries. Particular care and protection is imperative at this stage, and every kind of support must flow from every quarter to make it an effective instrument of articulating the collective aspirations of the Sikh nation. Hopefully, we aspire and commit ourselves to so shape and develop it as to make it a compulsive habit with every Sikh.
Article extracted from this publication >> DECEMBER-28-1984
