The murderous attack on Singh Sahib Giani Sahib Singh in the premises of the Golden Temple is both shocking and unfortunate. It is so outrageous a desecration of the holy shrine that no true Sikh is likely to resort to it, whatever be the motive or the provocation. Yet the police, in its characteristic and routine fashion, has put the blame for this dastardly attack on those Sikh youths who are still carrying on their peaceful crusade for justice and dignity.
It is true that Sikh youths have been feeling unhappy and have often openly and unambiguously expressed their resentment at the un-Sikh behavior that Giani Sahib Singh has been exhibiting on various occasions ever since the Operation Bluestar. He has been accused of acting more as the spokesman of the ruling circles than as the promoter of Sikh traditions and values. The fact that the members of AISSF were critical of Singh Sahib’s un-Sikh behavior in itself is enough to dismiss the police doubts as baseless. How can those who accuse him of violating the Sikh Code of Conduct, themselves resort to the same kind of violation? But in police vocabulary there is no such word as logic.
Obviously, police conclusions, which are wholly conjectural and not the result of any scientific investigation, are both misleading and motivated. Their accusing finger aims at discrediting the All India Sikh Students Federation so as to alienate it from the Sikh masses. The growing power and popularity of AISSF is extremely unpalatable to the Central government as well as to the Akali leadership. In their bid to arrest the increasing identification of the Sikh masses with the programs and aspirations of the Federation, the State and the Central rulers have been resorting to stratagems that are far from ethical or even human.
The depth of devilry and villainy to which the Indian rulers can stoop to is evident from the scandalous story published in the foremost Canadian Newspaper, The Globe and Mail. After a four month investigation into the last June’s Air India Disaster in which 329 passengers perished and the explosion in C.P. Airplane at Tokyo’s airport, the paper suggests that “as a result of its activities in Canada, India itself may have been indirectly responsible for the two bombings.”
A government that can blow up its Jet planes and innocent people, merely to divide and discredit the Sikhs living abroad, can most certainly manipulate an attack on the Head Priest of the Golden Temple also. The attack could lead to the accomplishment of three clear objectives 1) to discredit AISSF, 2) to introduce harsher measures against its members and 3) to further delay the release of Sikh youths who have been found innocent by the Bains Commission.
As the events would unfold themselves in the natural time sequence or when the objective historians would sift the truth from the sand-dunes of falsehood, the tragedy of Punjab would be interpreted as only a long narration of Indian government’s deceit, duplicity and communal suppression. And many more Singh Sahibs would keep suffering the same fate so long Sikhs do not wake up to the reality and determinedly put a stop to this recurring tragedy.
Only a few days, dearest,
A few days more
Here in oppression’s shadows Condemned to breathe.
Still for a while
We must suffer
And weep and endure, What our forefathers, not our own faults, bequeath.
Faiz Ahmed ‘Faiz’
Article extracted from this publication >> December 6, 1985
