The four Sikh High Priests have finally issued the clarion call urging Sikhs all over the world to shed all differences and support the freedom fighters “in order to free themselves from the shackles of slavery”. It is for the first time that a clear call for a sovereign status has come from those who can rightly be called the conscience of the Sikh nation. The High Priests were appointed by the Sarbat Khalsa Convention and their appointment was later ratified by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbhandak Committee. Their words, therefore, have a moral, religious and constitutional authority and their call should, now, put at rest the distracting controversies over the Sikh options. In fact after the Indian army attack on the Golden Temple every intelligent and self-respecting Sikh had realized that Sikhs can no longer trust the majority community and have no future in a rabidly communal climate of India.Just as Jallianwale Bagh massacre in 1919 served as a catalyst to radically change the complexion of the Indian freedom struggle, the Golden Temple attack followed by November, 1984 massacre of Sikhs in various Indian towns also helped to clear the perspective and remove the lingering misgivings about the only option for the Sikhs. Indian National Congress took ten years to shake off the half-baked concept of Home Rule and unambiguously declare its goal of complete freedom (Puran Swaraj) at its Lahore session in 1929. However, Sikh Priests waited only for little over three years to raise the banner of complete freedom. Just as vested interests within the Congress were responsible for the delay in spelling out the political aspirations of the Indian people, similarly, the toadies and touts of the Delhi rulers within the Sikh organizations are desperately trying to sell solutions within the Indian constitution, Those who only yesterday were condemning the Anandpur Sahib resolution as secessionist and antinational have lately turned ardent advocates of it and project it as the only panacea for all the Sikh ailments,

The call by Sikh High Priests is not an impulsive outburst to sensationalize the situation but a judiciously considered decision based on long term interests of the Sikh nation. The grisly events following Operation Blue Star convinced even temperamentally and traditionally moderate Sikhs that the Machiavellian destruction of the Akal Takht, the Sikh Library and) the Museum was actually aimed at destroying the very identity of the Sikh religion. They watch with increasing revulsion the daily mounting count of the Sikh youths falling to the bullets of mad Ribeiro who has rendered all due processes of justice and civil rule as irrelevant. A senior sitting Sikh judge of High Court tearfully confessed that he was a helpless instrument in a system wickedly designed for the extermination of the Sikhs. He said that the cases relating to the Sikhs are not decided in accordance with the letter of law, rather the judgments are invariably dictated by the Executive. “I can’t even resign in protest,” he lamented. “Because the moment I resign, I’ll be subjected to the same fate as is being suffered by Simranjit Singh Mann”.

The Sikhs holding high positions in the army, police and other bureaucratic structures have no different story to tell. Reacting to a question why the Council of Sikh Affai did not hold/an inquiry into the allegations leveled by 17 US. Congressmen in their letter to the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Mr. Karnail Singh Doad, a Punjab M.L.A., said, “No inquiry is needed into established fact,”. The Council President, S. Ajmer Singh and other members said that they “substantially” agreed with what the Con gressmen had said in their letter.

It is in this context that the Sikh High Priests have given the call. It is call for a crusade to protect and uphold the very identity of the Sikh religion and for the fundamental right of the Sikhs to freedom, Every Sikh must heed to this call. Sikh organizations must gear themselves to support the freedom fighters. Let all narrow differences flowing from ego problems, personality clashes or conflicting approaches be buried at this critical juncture, Let the goal so clearly marked by the High Priests be pursued with singular devotion. The time now is not to question why, but to die or die.

Article extracted from this publication >>  September 18, 1987