The award of Nobel peace prize this year to Nelson Mandela has many notable aspects which deserve serious attention. The Nobel Prize customarily goes to the most deserving persons although there may have been exceptions in the past. It speaks volumes of the credibility of the panel of persons who select the awardees that even Indira Gandhi at one time aspired for the prize. It was in the wake of the operation “Blue Star” in 1984. An Indian journalist went to Norway to broach the subject with the prime minister of Norway who has a substantial say in the award. The prime minister rebuked the journalist as well as the then Indian prime minister when he reportedly made the following observation: ”How on earth do you presume it is even under consideration when Mrs.Gandhi is not even on talking terms with leaders of any of India’s neighbors? Moreover, Mrs.Gandhi had given us a homily on peace movement in the West while maintaining conspicuous silence on the movement of tanks in the streets of the Soviet Union.” The South African nationalist leader richly deserved the award unlike Mrs.Gandhi. Mrs.Gandhi not only was not on speaking terms with leaders of India’s neighbors but her hands were soiled with the blood of thousands of persons belonging to Sikh, Muslim and other minority communities. Mandela fought for a cause which had been taken up by successive generations of African blacks for as long as 350 years: a South Africa free from White oppression and battered. He spent 27 long years in jail and was afflicted by tube rculoses, to his own misfortune and to the misfortune of his wife, the two had to be separated even after Mandela’s release. : The whole world admired the black leader’s courage and sense of dedication to the cause he held dear. recover files usb drive The U.S. Congress invited him to address it, a rare honor indeed because the Congress did not even invite the Queen of England prior to that. Nelson Mandela in his address to the Congress defended the right of his people to use arms to end apartheid. Such steadfastness, courage and bravery is hard to come by these days. One is reminded of the life of Guru Gobind Singh who made unprecedented personal sacrifices in pursuit of his mission of freeing humanity in a part of the Indian subcontinent. In a way the Sikh struggle for freedom is as old as the black movement in south Africa to achieve a democratic, nonracial south Africa. But the blacks produced a Nelson Mandela and they are proud of him. The Sikhs did not produce Guru Gobind Singh, It was Guru Gobind Singh who produced the Sikhs. True, the Sikhs later did produce many heroes to carry on the struggle, the last one being Sant Jamail Singh Bhindranwale. There have been long gaps in the Sikh struggle for freedom. It is a pity that there is a leadership void at present in Punjab, the homeland of the Sikhs. We are badly in need of a Nelson Mandela, a man who has the courage of his convictions. A man who can tell the white dominated U.S. Congress that his people have the right to use arms to achieve their political aim, Is there a Sikh leader who will make such a daring Statement? We have the sorry spectacle of the so called Sikh leaders fighting for “maryada” and undertaking political “Khalsa marches” rather than spelling out their political aims precisely and forthrightly, if necessary, at the world for a. That is why the world does not take much notice of the Sikhs and their political ideology. Sikhs have a great deal to learn from their own past. They have a great deal to learn from the interactional struggle for justice. They have much to learn from leaders like Nelson Mandela and how and why of the Nobel peace award to him.
If your cause is just and you have doggedness and tenacity to pursue it, the world will respect you in much the same way as it has respected Nelson Mandela and his proud people.
Article extracted from this publication >> October 22, 1993
