Dear Editor:
While I must compliment Mr, Shekar Gupta for his bold initiative to at least partly examine as to why India is at the verge of disintegration today in his article published in the Wall Street Journal of Sept.8, 1986. Yet he did not delve deep enough to bring out the root cause of the Sikh disharmony in India. Although he has made excellent effort to analyses the policies of Mr. Rajiv Gandhi, yet he has subtly implied that the alleged Sikh chaos in fact is on the increase, He even clearly blamed the assassination of the former Indian Chief. Mr. Arun Vaidya on the Sikhs while there is no available evidence as to who carried out the assassination. In fact it has become a habit of the Indian Government and the press to blame any such Grime on the Sikhs after the Golden Temple attack on June 6. 1984. The due process of law is completely ignored and incriminations made at will by the Indian Government.
Similarly the assassination of Mrs. Indira Gandhi was blamed ‘on two Sikh bodyguards following which thousands of Sikhs were brutally massacred and burnt alive with open state connivance yet, about a yearlong inquiry into the assassination has been concealed from the world at large by a special ordinance issued by the President of India, Not a single criminal has been indicted and punished by the law of land, Could anyone guess why?
‘After Mr. Rajiv Gandhi signed peace accord with Mr. Longowal who was not the regular Sikh leader at that time it appeared to some Sikhs that he might adopt a policy of reconciliation with the people of Punjab. This accord was termed as a shallow accord by the Sikh intellectuals who are not dismayed at all when they found that not even the first provision of the accord has yet been implemented, instead he has delegated vast powers to the Police Chief. Mr. Julio Rebeiro who has made public statements that for every Hindu killed in Punjab he will kill four Sikhs. it must be told to the American people at this time that numerous reports are coming out of Punjab of the Sikh youth being taken away from home by Indian forces (Police and paramilitary) and later reported killed by the government sources in police encounters. Since June 6, 1984 and in the post assassination period of Mrs. Gandhi, tens of thousands of innocent Sikhs have been punished by law. Does it mean that the life of any Indian citizen other than Hindus does not have any value? But the tragedy is that international community is not aware of all this since the media is under tight control of the Indian Government,
Mr. Shekar Gupta used extremely derogatory expression like political Frankenstein” for the late Sikh leader Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale which is indicative of the fact that the minority leaders and communities will be labeled at will by the Indian Government and the press. No wonder that the world at large knows about the Sikhs is terrorism while the state terrorism has been persistently justified in the name of curbing Sikh “terrorism”,
As champion of human rights the Sikhs urge the United States Government to raise its powerful voice to safeguard the human rights of the Sikhs and ask the Indian Government to let the international label media report the truth from Punjab than to slanderously label the Sikh problem as that of terrorism while it is truly a desperate struggle for the very survival ‘of the Sikh people.
Jaswant Singh Press Secretary International Sikh Organization.
Article extracted from this publication >> October 17, 1986