CHANDIGARH: The Akali Dal (Mann) president Simranjit Singh Mann has charged in a memorandum to Indian premier Chandra Shekhar that state repression the failure of political parties and the center to fulfill Sikh aspirations and lack of investment in Punjab were the cause of Sikh militancy.
Mann said state repression was the biggest factor in the rise and spread of militancy and alleged that Punjab was a police state ruled by executive decree through a coterie of corrupt and brutal police officials and civil servants.
Had Punjab got adequate investment the states per capital income would have been equal to that of South Korea Mann claimed.
Mann charged that the principal interest of the police officials and civil servants in Punjab was not to restore normalcy or protect the interest of Punjab but to extend their own Rule in the state he alleged.
Mann charged that their misrule and decadent life styles had greatly alienated the public the state has been denied an elected government for 44 months.
Sadly the failure of the Indian government and political parties to honour their pledges to the Sikhs or fulfill other aspirations of the freedom movement has given incredibility to the view which doubted India’s fitness for home rule.
Laws like the 59th constitutional amendment have denied the Sikhs the right to life liberty expression and an elected government Black acts like TADA and NSA which are more draconian than any law enacted by the British have led to the detention without trial of thousands of Sikhs
Many thousands have been killed in false encounters tortured and are missing and have been insulted and humiliated. It is our hope that the government and the people of India will honour our constitutional political democratic regional and economic rights the memorandum said.
He said the stand of the Sikhs refusing to ratify the constitution then had been vindicated by the state of the country and events in Punjab Jan 7.
The memorandum handed over to Chandra Shekhar on December 28 last said that the pledge to seek approval of the Sikhs in framing the constitution was forgotten. In tum the Sikhs could not be party to a document which condemned India and themselves to a life of slavery and despair. Therefore they refused to ratify the constitution. They stand vindicated by the state of the country and events in Punjab Jan 7 the memorandum said.
It further said that the constitution framed for free India became thinly disguised unitary document conferring all powers to a central authority. Inbred were all the evils we witness today in crumbling centralized political and economic systems in the world.
The authors of the Indian construction by diluting the basic checks and balances of a democratic federal state doomed India to a future of poverty corruption nepotism injustice inequality communalism and destruction of natural resources The system was bound to end in anarchy or fascism or both the signs of which are all too visible today it said.
Article extracted from this publication >> January 11, 1991
