LUDHIANA: The International Human Rights Organization has said the Amritsar Declaration is a historic document, which seeks independence for different national cultures, within the framework of Indian unity, but not within the framework of Indian Constitution.
IHRO Chairman D.S. Gill, General Secretary M.S. Grewal, Administration Secretary Gurbhajan Singh Gill and Secretary Balbir Singh Sooch, in a statement here, said “the declaration clearly demands confederation, rather than federation of states in the country.”
It, commits to support the Sikh struggle for an independent sovereign state, Khalistan in case India is not restructured on nonfederal lines. “Otherwise, it literally seeks a union of nonfederal states.” Elucidating further, the IHRO activists added, the sovereignty lies in the nonfederal units, and not in the union, as opposed to federal set-up meaning that the union gets powers from the states by their mutual consent or treaty.
Though a sanctioned document as such has been adopted by the Akali Dal (A) leadership under the patronage of Akal Takht, the declaration has divided the entire Akali leadership into three camps-federalists, co federalists and separatists, they said. According to IHRO, the ideological differences among Akali leaders are due to the reason that the separatists” lobby mainly represented by Simranjit Singh Mann is over-reaching the document to mean Khalistan, while feder alists (Bamala, Amarinder and Badal factions)play it down to the Anandpur Sahib Resolution, “But, it is a compromise between the two lobbies, that is, a confederation within India union.
“And for this, a united Abadi federalist leadership should to the Government of India, Diva it least one year’s time to resolve the conflict, before over or running away from the document
The non-party human rights pour as called up in the Center to devise a plan for restructuring India co federal basis as is the forma Soviet Union, as similar trending emerging in Europe.
Article extracted from this publication >> January 27, 1995
