Satinder Singh Sandhu, Ph.D.
The whole world and the Sikh nation in particular, is horrified to hear of the atrocities being perpetrated on Sikhs in India.
This episode is reoccurrence of the events started back in fifteenth century when Guru Nanak Dev, the founder of Sikh religion, preached the Oneness of God, equality of all human beings, and salvation through prayers and good deeds. At that time, the Hindus had their society divided into four conspicuous groups on the basis of the vocations in life. The Brahmans considered themselves the most superior of all of the other castes. The motive for the categorization of the Indian society was to exploit people to the advantage of the Brahmans. Guru Nanak’s philosophy the brother and sisterhood of all human beings was a hindrance in the perpetuation of the divisive concept in society. Of all the occupational categories of the people the Untouchables. (Shudars) were hard hit. They had to do the menial jobs. Guru Nanak’s teachings put the Brahmans and the Untouchables on the same level as human beings born equal. This irritated the Brahmans and the fight between Hindu and Sikh philosophies. Since then the Hindus are vowed enemies of the Sikhs. The two ideologies have been nurturing deep animosities between their followers for about five centuries. The nature of fight has been different at different times.
Two Sikh gurus, Guru Arjan Dev and Guru Teg Bahadur, were martyred due to the Hindus. Two sons of Guru Gobind Singh were also gotten killed by Brahman Gangu. The Hindu kings fought several times with Guru Gobind Singh’s armies and were utterly defeated at the hands of valiant Sikhs. During the times the Muslim kings were the rulers of India, Hindus always instigated the local officers to do some harm to Sikhs and, if. Possible, kill them, on, tance of some pretexts. This is a centuries old feud which has taken a heavy toll of Sikh lives.
The British era was, more or less, peaceful for the Sikhs except the Jullianwala massacre in which hundreds of Sikhs were killed. The loyalties of the Sikhs to the British raj were, then, shaken end they decided to free India of British raj. More than 90 percent of the persons died for the freedom of India were Sikhs.
The Hindu Raj started in 1947. The Sikhs had opted to live with Hindus after forgetting and forgiving all that happened between the two communities. Moreover, Mahatma Gandhi and Jawahar Lal Nehru had promised the Sikhs “A Glow of Freedom in the northern India.
“Right at the beginning of Hindu raj, the Hindus started discriminating against Sikhs. They completely forgot the promises made to the Sikhs. The first blow to the Sikhs was the non-accept Panjabi language by the Panjabi Hindus. They spoke Panjabi all day but denied it as being their language. I don’t know a religion that teaches to lie like that. After struggling for many years, Panjabi speaking state was created which is a lot smaller than it would have been had the Hindus not lied about their language. The truncated Panjab state has no capital of is own; it shares a city, Chandigarh, built on the lands of Panjabi speaking Sikhs.
The next step, Hindus thought, would be to hurt the Sikhs economically. They have diverted Punjab’s water and electricity to other states.
The Sikhs have been holding nonviolent and peaceful demonstrations for many years to have their grievances redressed, but all fell on deaf ears. Thousands of Sikhs courted arrests for their legitimate demands but Hindu Raj did not care.
The tension caused by the indifference of Hindu Government to the legitimate demands of the Sikhs led, after minor incidents, to Golden Temple massacre in which many thousand innocent Sikhs were killed. The killing of Indira Gandhi is an outcome of her own folly of ordering the army into Golden Temple whose attacker has never escaped death.
What happened all over India, especially in Delhi and surrounding areas, after the demise of Indira Gandhi, is a living proof of the deep-rooted policies of the Hindus to annihilate Sikhs and make them extinct, if possible.
It is true that history repeats itself. Again the sons .of Guru Gobind Singh the Sikhs have been burnt alive in the Sikh houses at Delhi. Again the Sikhs have been slain in the streets of the Indian capital while the police looked on instead of defending them. Indira Gandhi was killed by her own body guards who happened to be Sikhs. Looking at the incident critically one can Six Nation Summit. Eycearnic from Declaration find out the reason for the assassination. Besides the revenge for the Golden Temple Massacre, it indicates the extent to which the Sikh masses have been hurt at the hands of Hindu government.
The Sikh business places as well as their houses have been completely demolished and burnt, thus incurring loss to the tune of millions of dollars. With no guarantee of its not happening again, would one venture house at the same place? Definitely not. Nobody would like to live at a place where his life or property is not safe.
Then the question arises where should they go? The answer is obvious. To their homeland, Panjab, where they are comparatively safe. To live or die with one’s own brethren is better than getting killed in Hindu majority areas.
Indira Gandhi had claimed on several occasions that India was a democratic country. That assertion was not true in her times and even less so after her death. I would call it a dynasty rule. If it isn’t, how would you explain the unworthiness of even a Single person amongst the population of seven hundred millions to be the prime minister of India except an individual from Nehru family. Decidedly, this is a dynasty rule starting from father (Nehru), descending to his daughter (ndira Gandhi), and now to his grandson (Rajiv Gandhi).
A few lines about Rajiv regime are quite in order. He has had thousands of innocent Sikhs and their children slain or burnt to rebuild the business or
Alive in front of his eyes under the guise of inevitable violence. What he did four days after the break of violence, couldn’t he do at the beginning of it? Whom is he fooling. The world knows that he was closing his eyes on purpose and wanted that to happen what happened. Now that he has declared his policy officially that he would follow the footsteps of his mother, there shouldn’t be any doubt in the minds of the Sikhs as to his forthcoming actions toward the Sikhs.
Presently, Panjab is under night curfew since the death of Indira Gandhi. Even the villages have not been spared. There is complete news blackout and no foreign news reporters are permitted into the Sikh homeland. It is an appeal to the world leaders that the Indian government be persuaded to see reason and to stop persecuting the innocent Sikhs. The Sikh youth is being shot in fake encounters. How can the Hindu government justify the deployment of the army in every corner of the state if its objective, as it claimed, was just to flush out the terrorists from the Golden Temple. The truth always prevails. Who are the terrorists? The people who have to wear ethnic symbols as a mark of the religious identity, who always stand by the oppressed, and who fight only for the righteousness or the ones who burnt innocent children alive because they happened to be the sons and daughters of the Sikhs? Let the conscience of the fair-minded people of the world answer it.
How does the Indian government explain the presence of the army in Panjab for over a six-month period since Golden Temple massacre? This indicates very clearly the ulterior motives of the Hindus to subdue the Sikhs.
Forth years ago, when atomic bombs were blasted over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the human race became aware that it could destroy itself, and horror came to dwell among us.
“Outer space must be used for the benefit of mankind as a whole, not as a battleground of the future. We therefore call for the prohibition of the development, testing, production, deployment and use of all space weapons. An arms race in space would be enormously costly, and have grave destabilizing effects. It would also endanger a number of arms limitation and disarmament agreements.
“We further urge the nuclear weapon states to immediately halt the testing of all kinds of nuclear weapons, and to conclude, at an early date, a treaty on a nuclear weapon test ban. Such a treaty would be a major step toward ending the continuous modernization of nuclear arsenals.
“We are convinced that all such steps, in so far as necessary, can be accompanied by adequate and nondiscriminatory measures of verification. “That is ‘imperative to find a remedy to the existing situation where hundreds of billions of dollars, amounting to approximately one and a half million per minute, are spent annually on weapons. This stands in dramatic contrast to the poverty, and in some cases misery, in which two thirds of the world population live.
“We urge people, parliaments and governments the world over to lend forceful support to this appeal. Progress in disarmament can only be achieved with an informed public applying strong pressure on governments. Only then will governments summon the necessary political will to overcome the many obstacles which lie in the path of peace.
“Forty years ago, in Hiroshima and San Francisco, the horror of nuclear war was matched by the hope for peace. We would like this year of 1985 to be the year when hope begins to prevail over terror. We dare to hope that by October 24, 1985, the Fortieth Anniversary of the United Nations; we might see the first concrete steps to avert the threat to the survival of humanity.”
Article extracted from this publication >> February 1, 1985
