The political and religious developments in Punjab and Haryana have become the serious concern of all responsible Indians living in India and abroad. Due to the conflicting reports and accusations we read in the Indian and the foreign media, we decided to depute a mission from abroad to investigate the truth behind the tragedy of Hindu-Sikh disunity and report back their findings. A concise Report was then prepared from the detailed information that was made available. The findings of the mission were both startling and disturbing and quite contrary to most impressions gathered from various news media. The suggestion that Sikhs have sparest tendencies appeared to be clear distortion of the facts, almost certainly designed by anti-Sikh elements to damage Sikh credibility. The report provides well-documented reasons for the unpleasantness between the two communities. Its narrative of events is lucid and compelling.
The present Hindu-Sikh conflict is the saddest tragedy of post partition Indian History. Its genesis lies in a narrow-minded attitude of certain sections of the community that totally refutes the traditional Hindu virtues of tolerance and understanding. One also wonders why the Sikhs are always pushed into agitation for their basic constitutional demands, the kind which were never denied to other states and communities. Why was Punjab the last linguistic state to be formed (10 years late)? Why is Punjab the only state of India whose capital Chandigarh is governed by the central Government? There are many such unanswered questions which deserve serious probing and full national exposure. Indian news agencies and papers will do well to investigate the reasons for Hindu-Sikh conflict arising from Hindu opposition to Sikh demands, even though their demands were made to the Government ( and not to the Hindus of Punjab and Haryana). While most of the Sikh demands are for the welfare of Punjab State, not one demand is anti-Hindu or hurts Hindu sentiments in any way. It is a great pity that the Punjab linguistic problem as such, should have become known as Hindu-Sikh conflict, since Sikhs in our view are no less Hindus than many other sects within the Hindu religion and society. Since most Hindus in Punjab declared to be Hindispeaking (the root-cause of today’s problem) and all Sikhs rightly claimed to be Punjabi-speaking, one wonders why did we all and the press fail to mention them as a conflict between the Punjabis and non-Punjabis, thus avoiding the sectarian and communal title to the problem. A non-Punjabi speaker may not be called a Punjabi in as much as a Maharashtrian or a Gujrati living in Tamil Nadu is not usually called a Tamilian.
The doctrine of fanaticism propagated by certain section of the Punjabi-Hindus has ironically done great damage to the Hindu activities seemed to have hurt patriotic Sikh sentiments; and to win our Sikh brothers back in our Hindu family; we need to expose the activities of certain elements.
Why was there bitter opposition to granting holy-city status to Amritsar. Equally incredible was the opposition by Amritsar Hindus to the Sikh desire of naming of one train as Golden Temple (Hari Mandir) Express, little realizing that the city of Amritsar was built only because of that ancient temple that existed before it. Numerous incidents of these kinds provoked by some extremists of Punjab must be made known to non-Punjabi Hindus all over India, who continue to be victims of one sided anti-Sikh misinformation from various news agencies.
Every care has been taken to verify all the reports and the complaints made by various people. For example, to confirm the truth of the alleged Hindu opposition to the naming of a highway as Guru Gobind Singh Marg, the authors went to the extent of confirming the incident with the President of India. The Report provides us with well documented incidents including those where some anti-social elements have used turbans as a camouflage during religion by attacking all the other faiths and their Prophets. There the act of crime. Accordingly Sikh leaders’ claim that the recent killings of innocent Hindus in the bus, near the border were not committed by the Sikhs appears to be credible and, thought provoking.
It is our earnest and express wish that the facts revealed in this report will become widely known and helps re-create brotherly feelings between Hindus and Sikhs and promote better understanding and strengthen traditional family-like bonds between our two communities.
UNITY IS STRENTH; JAI HIND!
- M. Sathananthan, B.Sc (Econ) Lond.
Managing Editor,
TRANSATLANTIC INDIA TIMES 15/12/1983
