Dear Mr. Mann:
Sat Sri Akal,
I very clearly remember being glued to the radio, listening to BBC and hoping against hope, praying for a miracle that would avenge the carnage, the humiliation, the utter and total defeat. I heard about the mutinies in Ramgarh, in J&K and in Rajasthan, “The Sikh soldiers are marching towards Amritsar” the BBC blared. I was almost tingling with expectation. But the end was sudden and anticlimactic. The carnage, the humiliation, the defeat were still there, overshadowing and impregnating every pore of my psyche, Then India’s ambassador to Norway resigned and asked for asylum. Excitement and hope once more. I thought, “Sikhs in bureaucracy! They could all resign. At least the test of the world would know of our anguish” Indeed there were a few courageous souls who put their faith in Sikhism above their personal fate. Your letter of resignation was one of the few straws of hope that came our way amidst that tide of gloom and despair. The Sikh nation is forever indebted to you for that brave act. At that dark moment you showed that there was hope still, that there were intelligent and articulate people who felt the same way as we did. After all we are Sikhs, we can’t give up hope.
That same hope collectively materialized into the massive mandate that you received from your constituency in the recent elections. That mandates not only from your constituency but implicitly also from the majority of the Sikh nation dictates you to stand in the halls of an aggressor government and vociferously demand our independence not make deals and dabble in personality politics. Thus it was all the more distressing to read that you had met with the Indian prime minister and agreed that the Punjab problem was merely a result of Indira Gandhi’s genocidal policies. That’s wrong! Please, don’t even for a moment think that 1984 was an aberration in an otherwise calm and peaceful India; or for that matter, that Gandhi was the only to blame. There are greater historical and cultural forces at work. Indira Gandhi was just an instrument trying to capitalize on these forces. Try to feel what the masses feel. Are the Hindus at large empathetic to the Sikh anguish? Did they throw out the Congress government because of its human rights violations of the Sikhs? No, of course not and I am sure you are aware of that. So, if the masses are not empathetic to our feelings how their representative cans government is understanding? For how long anyway? So you see, the mandate that you carry places a big responsibility on you, namely to be wary and not go the way many inept Sikh leaders have gone. The lives of thousands of innocents force you into yet another obligation; to steer away from the personalities and focus on the issues,
Issues like survival of the Sikh nation. Do you think Sikhs as a nation can live in the Indian union and be free culturally, politically and economically? When all is said and done, Punjab only gets 13 seats out of 542 in the Lok Sabha and out of those 13; Sikhs get only 8 or 9. Now, can you really do anything concrete if the representatives of the Hindi belt want to institutionalize a policy in conflict with the Sikh interests? We are at their mercy! Is that acceptable to you? Don’t let the present convivial situation color your judgment, think of the future, may be another dictatorial government. In the numbers game we will always come out behind. So the focal issues are self-determination and cultural independence. I, as a Punjabi Sikh, have nothing in common with a Bihari, except the fact that we shared a common colonial ruler for a century. Is that enough to tie our fates together? Certainly not! I do need to buy coal from him and he needs to buy my wheat. So we will be glad to live in a loose economic confederation, but it is absolutely unacceptable that my taxes should go for his upkeep and not on my roads and my villages. That’s cheating, that’s subjugation and that’s against everything that our free spirited nation stands for. And I do earnestly hope that is not acceptable to you either.
So, Mr. Mann you have decision to make. You can either choose to be wrapped around the personalities and go on calling the Indian PM “Raja Sahib” and be brushed away into the sidelines of history or you can be true to the people’s trust in you and stand tall and debate and demand our just tights. This decision, as the one you made in 1984 goes beyond your personal fate, it affects all of us. We, in the diaspora eagerly await your response on the various issues raised here. R. Singh
Article extracted from this publication >> February 2, 1990
