World Sikh News correspondent in India says he stands by his report published in the World Sikh News Of July 28. This is his rejoinder.

Scholars point out that the philosophy Dr. Singh espouses, pays lip service to universal values while perpetuating the caste system which denies equality, in fact condemns as untouchables, a vast majority of Hindus.

Dr. Singh says no one has suggested his involvement in the ‘unfortunate events in Northern India.

The Punjab Human Rights Organization and the Punjab Sikh Lawyers Association have both linked Dr. Karan Singh to the attack on a Procession of peaceful Sikhs in Jammu.

“I would like to ask the ambassador whether he has lived in the Punjab at any time since 1984. If he has not, his knowledge is based ‘On reports put out by the largely government controlled media as to the state of affairs in Punjab. His government sounded ‘the death knell of amity by attacking the Golden Temple in 1984. The onus of maintaining that amity does not lie with Sikhs who see their women being raped in police stations and the flower of their youth being wiped out in staged encounters. We want Dr. Singh to tell us what he has done towards alleviating the crises in Punjab.

Guru Nanak Dev Ji’s portrait ‘occupies an honored place in Dr. ‘Singh’s house, It does too in HKL Bhagat’s, the main accused in the mass murder of over 9000 Sikhs in Delhi on October 3 and 4, 1984. What does this establish, piety, innocence, fear or even guilt? “As to Dr. Singh’s much touted claim that his family owed its rise to the patronage of Maharaja Ranjit Singh an eminent historian has a different story to tell. Kashmir was given to the Dogras as a reward for betraying the Sikhs. In “Private Correspondence Relating to the AngloSikh Wars” the biographer of Lord Lawrence says that the British handed Kashmir” over to the Dogra Rajput Golab ‘Singh, who paid us in hard cash which he had stolen from the Lahore Durbar. He was an unscrupulous villain but an able ruler, amenable to our influence…

to aid us in checking any further ebullition of the Khalsa fury.”

“Bharat Karmnad, an eminent journalist now with India Week of New Delhi, too had reservations about Dr. Karan Singh’s appointment as ambassador. His advice to Dr. Singh was not to “treat the Indian Embassy in Washington as another branch of the Virat Hindu Sammelan and himself as the head of the Rama Krishna Mission in that country.”

“Dr. Singh has gone on record, let his actions speak for themselves”

(Our correspondents’ identity needs to be kept anonymous till such time there is security of life and there is rule of law in besieged Punjab Editor)

AMBASSADOR OF INDIA

2107 MASSACHUSETTS AVE

NW WASHINGTON. D C 20008

August 8, 1989

No. WASH/AMB/ 2 3 /89

Mr A.S. Gill

Editor

World Sikh News

4545 Georgetown Plaza Stockton, CA 95207.

Article extracted from this publication >>  August 18, 1989