Sir,

Too often people here usually non-Sikhs either through ignorance or by choice refuse to believe that the Sikhs in India are being discriminated. On the contrary they cite Indian Government propaganda without any statistical evidence to show that the Sikhs hold a disproportionately large number of administrative judicial or other positions in relation to the size of the Sikh population.

Here is re-produced a letter originally published in the Statesman Weekly of June 231990 from a Sikh gentleman Mr. GS. Grewal from Chandigarh explaining how the Sikhs are being denied senior judicial posts of Chief Justices of either the Supreme Court or the State high courts. No wonder there has been no Sikh Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. For the last seven years there has been no Sikh Chief Justice of the High Court of Punjab and Haryana either. It is probably same kind of ingenuity (shown below) being practiced in appointing the Chief of the Army Staff. Sikh officers are supposed to be constituting 10 to 20 per cent of the officers rank in the Army and yet there has been no Sikh as Chief of the Army Staff for the last 43 years.

“Sir To highlight any injustice meted out to Sikhs in Punjab these days is to encourage terrorism in the eyes of the present rulers. Most of Sikh intellectuals suffer in silence to escape their wrath.

“At the Supreme Court we have only one Sikh judge the second since independence. He was appointed direct from the Bar a great honoured! But at the time of appointment a younger man was made his senior so that a Sikh may never aspire to be the Chief Justice.

“Sikhs constitute 60% of the population of Punjab according to the last census. Yet the last Sikh Chief Justice of the High Court of Punjab and Haryana was transferred in 1983 for not being pliable to the Government. When Sikhs are appointed their age not merit is kept in view. A Hindu in his forties is considered suitable for appointment as a High Court Judge a Sikh is not. For a Sikh the qualifying age is well above 50 so that he should retire before even dreaming of becoming the Chief Justice. The present judges are so placed according to their age that in the next 15 years no Sikh can aspire to the highest post. What happens after 15 years will depend upon new appointments if and when made.

“It is because of this kind of secularism practiced by the rulers that even after 43 years of independence the country is not emotionally integrated and its unity is threatened. You can enforce obedience but not loyalty.

“The majority community has to accommodate the fair and just aspirations of the minorities. Otherwise the centrifugal forces will gain in strength. No wonder the bonds of national integration are weaker today than at the time of Independence”.

Sarjit Singh

730 South Street

Clarion PA 16214

CHANDIGARH: The Punjab Language Department recently decided to celebrate Punjabi Week from January 1 to 8.

According to a press note of the department the state advisory council of the department at its meeting on January 27 1989 had recommended the celebration of Punjabi Day In February it was decided to celebrate Punjabi Week in November but due to disturbed conditions in view of the anti-reservation and pro-reservation agitations the week could not be celebrated.

Sir,

Dr. McLeod’s denial appearing in the issue of India Abroad dated December 14 1990 that when I read Dr. Jodh Singh’s book ‘Kartarpur Bir de Darsan’ I abandoned the notion (apparently about deletion in the Kartarpur Bir) is amazingly inexplicable for its inconsistency. For in 1975 he wrote “Later still portions of the Kartarpur manuscript (the original manuscript written by Bhai Gurdas) were rather ineptly obliterated in order to bring the two versions in line”. This he wrote despite Jodh Singh’s book which he even quoted having appeared many years before 1975. And he expressed similar doubts in his book The Sikhs of 1989 despite Jodh Singh’s and Daljit Singh’s earlier books.

Is the present denial due to the fact that four Indian organizations have addressed the University of Toronto in 1989-90 accusing McLeod of libel and blasphemy for his statements against the authentic of the Sikh Scripture without ever having examined it? How do the University who have hired him or Dr. McLeod who has published these statements reconcile the contradiction or justify such academic conduct? The issue is of serious public concern. Swaran Singh

Article extracted from this publication >> January 4, 1991