By Dr. Awatar Singh Sekhon
The tenth Guru, Gobind Singh, fought against the injustice of the Mughal ruler and spent his life attempting to unite the dis united Hindu rulers of the small mountainous kingdoms of India. Guru Gobind Singh’s army had Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims and people of other creeds and castes, all of whom he treated alike. Lala Daulat Rai, a prominent orthodox Hindu, writes that the Hindus of India should be thankful to Guru Gobind Singh, otherwise their fate would have been different (Guru Gobind Singh in the Eyes of Lala Daulat Rai). Recently, Kashmeri and McCann drew in their masterpiece of several years (James Lorimer Company. Publishers. 1989. Soft Target) concluded that Indian intelligence had penetrated Canada in 1980 in order to carry out espionage activities against the Canadian ‘Sikhs and to propagate imbalance, disturbance, and disharmony in the cultural cum religious lives (the Sikh Way of Life) of the Canadian Sikh community. These attempts to slander the highly visible minority community of the Canadian subcultural mosaic, reached their paramount with the June 84 assault on the Sikh nation and the assassination of Indira Gandhi in October 84. Their main ‘objective was to brand the Sikhs ‘criminals in the eyes of these fellow Canadians and elsewhere in the world. Indeed, the Indian intelligence agents, diplomats, and other hired hands succeeded to a greater extent to achieve their goals. The penetration of Indian intelligence into Canada is consistent with the statement of Mr M. M. K. Wali, one of Indira Gandhi’s chief advisors on Operation Bluestar, who told Mrs Barbara From of the CBC, “that we have broken the back of Sikhs (phase I) and now we will enter in Phase II (As It Happens, 7th June, 1984)”. This Phase II referred to the Indian government’s plan to get the Sikhs elsewhere, i.e., Sikhs living outside India. This situation can be likened to that of the Lybian dictator’s message to the United States that he will direct his activities against the U. S. from American soil. It appears that the Indian government’s agents carried out their operations against the Canadian Sikhs from Canadian soil. For this purpose, the propaganda machine of the alleged largest democracy of the world spent U.S. $6 million in 1984 to discredit the Sikhs and this amount was increased by over 800% to US $50 million on 1988 to persecute the Sikhs in the eyes of their fellow countrymen (Dilgeer. H, S. 1989. The Sword 5: 68 &15), for this purpose, the Indian government employed their Russian trained intelligence personnel, diplomats, spies, and other people for a malicious campaign against the Sikhs. This was a well-planned and systematically hatched programmer which was received exceptionally well by those who did not have the slightest knowledge of the polluted political tricks of the Kashmiri Pandits of India, the class to which Indian prime Ministers like Jawaharlal Nehru, his daughter, Indira Gandhi, and his grandson Rajiv Gandhi belong. Dilgeer (1989; Origins of Anti Sikh Policies in the Nehru Dynasty) stated that the Nehur family never liked the Sikhs since the time of Motialal Nehru, the onetime president of the Indian Congress during the British Raj.
For the information of our fellow Canadians and other readers, it is suffice to mention that the Sikhs made more than 80% of the sacrifices in India’s struggle for freedom (Singh, J. 1987. The Truth 3: 17 21; Singh, D. 1988 Contribution of Sikhs to Freedom. Gurdwara Gazette, December issue). It was not Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of India, or Jawharalal Nehru who initiated and carried out Indian’s struggle for independence. Those who have seen the Richard Atten borough’s move “Gandhi” should first read the history to reassess their facts about Gandhi. Historical facts indicate that it was a Sikh holy man Baba Ram Singh, who initially started (17th January, 1882) the independence movement in Punjab and which later reached its climax on 26th December, 1929 under the leadership of another holy man Baba Khark Singh,
The movement was so peaceful that it put the cries of the Indian Congress, Mr Gandhi, and Gandhi’s followers to shame and shade (The Times, U.K., 29th December 1929). Therefore, Gandhi and Nehru had no alternative but to beg Baba Khrak Singh for the support of the Sikh community in the name of the so called “common cause”. Gandhi in rectum promised everything to the Sikhs and Jawaharlal Nehru stated, “the brave Sikhs of the Punjab are entitled to special consideration. I see nothing wrong in area and a set up in the North where the ‘Sikhs can also experience the glow of freedom” (6th July, 1946). Even Mahatama Gandhi said on 16th March, 1931 in the Sis Ganj Gurdwara (the place where Guru Tegh Bahadar, the ninth Guru, was beheaded to save Kasmiri Pandits from persecution) to Sardar Madhusudan Singh that “let God be witness of the bond that binds me and the Congress with you. In case of betrayal, the Sikhs could, in that case, take their kirpans in hand with perfect justification before God and man” (Young India, 19th March, 1931). On the contrary, just within three months after independence, a sec ret memorandum was issued to all bureaucrats that the Sikhs be dealt with firmly as they are criminals (Singh, K. 1984. Sachi Sakhi or True Story). The National Professor on Sikhism, S. Kapoor Singh, who was an Indian Civil Service personnel, resigned in protest when he read the government’s memorandum regarding the Sikhs. He was branded antinational, communal, etc., because he revealed the government’s motives to the Sikh community. Mr. Gandhi and his followers remained silent and continued their anti-Sikh policies in the Indian administration since then. a Because of these betrayals, no Sikh leader, whether in the Congress Party or within the Sikh community, would sign the Constitution of the Republic of India, accepted on 26th January, 1950: With this token the Sikhs are a nation right from Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s era (17991836).
Despite all these betrayals, unfulfilled promises, continued discrimination, and evil policies of the Hindu India administrations, the Sikhs contributed wholeheartedly to the nation building of India, sacrificed their lives on the Indian frontiers, and produced grains to feed the hungry masses of Hindu India.
Gandhi’s administration broke up the post-independence Punjab, into Punjab, Himachal Predesh and Haryana to dilute the strength of the Sikhs in particular and the Punjabis as a whole. The Sikhs were branded antinational and communal when they asked fora state where their culture, heritage and language could flourish. The New Delhi administration of Indira Gandhi kept Chandigarh, the capital city of Punjab, under its own administrative control. Indira Gandhi continued her policy of attempting to divide the Sikhs as much as possible. Her administration waged three wars on Pakistan from the Sikh nation’s soil in order to economically weaken Punjab and the Sikhs, and to create animosity between two brave communities in South Asia: the Sikhs of Punjab and the Muslims of Pakis tan, in the hope that they would continue their fight with each other and thus enable the New Delhi administration to divert the attention of the unemployed, hungry and shelter less masses of India, thereby enabling Indira and her successor to hang on to power. Indira Gandhi waged an undeclared war on the Sikh nation beginning in June, 1984, and mercilessly butchered more than 50,000 innocent Sikh children, men and women (Sekhon 1989), On October 31st, 1984 Indira Gandhi was assassinated in a well-planned and systematically executed way. It is widely known that Rajiv Gandhi, his wife, and other cronies were among the conspire tors who hatched the plan, but a Sikh bodyguard was killed by her security for on the spot.
Two more Sikhs were later declared guilty and sentenced to hang for death of Indira Gandhi (6th January, 1989). Rajiv Gandhi and his wife refused to testify despite repeated requests by the defense counsel, P. N. Lekhi.
Shortly after installation as his mother’s successor, Rajiv Gandhi revenged his mother’s death by sponsoring the killings of more than 30,000 Sikhs in Delhi, Kanpur (U.P.), and other areas in November, 1984. Those who participated in this holocaust of the Sikhs were given cabinet posts in Rajiv Gandhi’s administration such as H. K. L. Bhagat. Even Rajiv Gandhi, before leaving for New Delhi on 31st October, 1984, said at the Calcutta airport, “Jet us teach these bastards (the Sikhs) a lesson.” This is ample evidence that Gandhi participated in orchestrating the revenge plans for the assassination of his mother. The Sikhs lost millions of dollars’ worth of property in addition to being made homeless in their own country; leaving the human sufferings aside. Sikh women, irrespective of age, were gang raped, tortured, and treated inhumanly. On the first anniversary of Operation Bluestar, the Government of India and its agents, with the blessings of Rajiv Gandhi, brought Air India Flight 182 (Toronto London Bombay) down off the Ireland coast, The Indian government and its agents also conspired in another mishap at the Narita Airport in Japan, as it is strongly believed (Kashmeri and MacAndrew 1989). Other noteworthy events related to the anti-Sikhs and humiliation programmers included the demolition of buildings of historical significance adjacent to Sir Darbar Sahib, Amritsar, Punjab, in the name of beautification; the killing of some 60 Sikh students of an engineering college in Bidar, Karnataka, in September 1988; the India army’s Operations Black thunder I&II, Wood rose and Mund in 1988; creation of manmade floods in the Sikh nation in1988 to destroy the economy of its inhabitants; the executions of S. Satwant Singh and S. Kehar Singh on 6th January, 1989; the killings of Sikh academics, Drs Gumam Singh Buttar, Rajinder pal Singh Gill, Prof. Tony, etc., in staged encounters; the killings of Bhai Avtar Singh Brahma, Bhai Labh Singh and hundreds of thousands of Sikh youths, men and women in faceencounters, the tortures of Sikhs in Indian jails (World Sikh News, 29th September, 1989); the economic, religious, cultural, heritage and language persecutions (Dilgeer 1989); persecutions of the Sikhs in the state controlled Indian and international news media; Hinduization of the Punjabi language; the confiscation of Justice Ajit Singh Bains passport in order to prevent him from presenting his findings on India’s gross abuse of Sikhs human rights to the United nations group on Human: Rights (The Globe and Mail, 28th Avgust, 1989); the massacre of Sikhs in Jammu on 13th January, 1989; the organized killings of the Sikhs by State and/or central police force, as admitted by the former Director General of Pun jab Police, Reibero, on 31st July, 1989, in a press conference; the rewarding of police officers who participated in the prosecutions and persecutions of Sikhs (like Mr Reibiero who has been sent as ambassador to Romania; the use of chemical terrorism, such as napalm gas, against innocent Sikhs in Punjab; torture and detention of 780 Sikhs in a jail without trial: suppression of the findings of Jus tice Sodhi’s report (WSN 29th September, 1989) regarding tortures in jails; branding a 2yearold Sikh child terrorist; interference in the Sikh way of life, especially in the principles of Miri and Piri given by their Gurus; rewarding Pandey brothers with Congress (I) tickets for U. P. legislative assembly elections, who high jacked Indian Airlines plane to secure Indira Gandhi’s release from the only Non-Congress (Janta Party) government of India in the late 1970’s; assassination of Avtar Singh Atwal, Deputy Inspector General of Police, by the Research and Analysis Wing, an agency responsible to the Prime Minister (Indira Gandhi) only. Indira Gandhi compensated Mr Atwal’s widow with a residence worth of Rupees 300,000, a cash payment of Rupees one million, and a job, to keep her mouth shut regarding her husband’s death (The Sikh Question? From Constitutional Demands to Armed Conflict. 1985. Centre for Asian Studies, University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan).
In conclusion, I would like to state that in view of the facts presented in this analysis, the Sikhs are not terrorists. How can a brave community that comprises less than 2% of the population, which made more than 80% sacrifices for the independence of the so called largest democracy of the world, produces 73% of wheat and 50% of the rice that feed the hungry mouths of India, provides 26% of the gross national product be considered a terrorist group? During the imposition of Emergency (i.e., suspension of civil liberties) in 1976, the Sikhs and their political party, the Akali Dal, were the only element courageous enough to defy the Draconian maintenance of the Internal Security Act, which gave police virtually unlimited power to arrest and detain individuals without trial. The Sikhs ran a peaceful and successful agitation from their Seat of Polity, Sri Akal Takht Sahib, for the restoration of civil liberties (Dilgeer 1980. The Akal Takht; Nayyar, K. 1977. The Judgment). Their sacrifices provide ample ground to state further that they are patriots, who love freedom above anything. They have not lived like slaves and will not accept the status quo of slavery or being treated as second class citizens; because the teachings of their gurus from Guru Nanak to Guru Gobind Singh, the compiled teachings in Sri Guru Granth Sahib, and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Sikhs who chose to lay down their lives for the freedom, justice, equality of mankind, will keep on guiding them to struggle peace fully for the ‘just cause,’ which the Indian administrations, since 15 August 1947, have been denying. them. The events of 1978, and more recently since Operation Blue star of June 1984, make it perfectly clear that the Sikhs are victims of both the Kashmiri Pandits’ polluted politics and India’s state terrorism. It is noteworthy that “the judge of the Allahabad High Court observed in his judgment, which stands till today because it ‘was circumvented by retrospective legislation and not contravened, that Mrs. Gandhi lied fourteen times under oath while giving evidence: (Dharam 1984. The only option for Sikhs). The Sikhs have no faith in Indian administrations, their diplomats and/or hired hands, who disturb and disrupt their lives regardless of where they are! The Sikh nations’ problem is political one and the international community of nations will have to find a peaceful solution to the problem based on the dignity and honor characteristically of the Sikh tradition.
Article extracted from this publication >> November 24, 1989
