“Patient of toil, Serene amidst alarms Inflexible in faith, Invincible in arms.”

We Sikhs are a proud people united by our religion, history and culture. The history of our fathers and mothers the traditions of our martyrs our past renown, our present pride, our future hope, and destiny, are our watchwords. In our egalitarian society we acknowledge the sovereignty of the people and practice gender equality and free speech. Our daily prayer, “Sarbat Da Bhala” (universal wellbeing) and “Raj Karayga Khalsa” are to us truly a proclamation of amoral imperative not a pompous affirmation of hypocrisy. We Sikhs are one nation, one people, dedicated to one Creator Wahe Guru. Under the eternal guidance of Guru Granth Sahib, we Sikhs are shaping our destiny let India not erect barriers amongst us, or against us.

 The Sikhs now numbering over 20 million (nearly one million in N. America) were “captured” in the map of India, in 1 947, as a result of British Colonial mapmaking. For nearly 47 years the Sikhs have survived, despite policies of the Indian government which are meant to inculcate a psychology of. Submission to break the spirit, the political will, and the economic strength of a beleaguered, but defiant, people who will not accept a fascist social order which calls for a caste system as a fundamental pillar of society in which the Brahmin caste is the ruling elite. In June 1984, the Indian government put teeth into its Machiavellian policies and ordered a simultaneous armed assault, by the regular Indian Army, on the paramount seat of the spiritual and temporal authority of the Sikh religion Sri Akal Takht Sahib and 37 other historical Sikh shrines in which attack thousands of innocent Sikhs were massacred. In November 1984 a bloody pogrom followed in Delhi, and other urban areas. For a decade thereafter, a systematic “hunt” of Sikhs took place in which nearly 100,000 were murdered in staged “encounters” by the police, which activity was encouraged by the government as an acceptable means of combatting political dissent.

 Since 1947, India has used state sponsored terror as an instrument of policy, in different forms in Occupied Punjab, Khalistan, and other restless areas like Kashmir, in contravention of the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, by resorting to police intimidation, torture, gang rape, kidnapping and extra judicial killings. The recently released Human Rights Watch World Report 1996 has confirmed that “Punjab police have resorted to torture and murder.” The report has also confirmed that Punjab Human Rights activist, Jaswant Singh Khalra (about whom President Bill Clinton showed his concern recently) was indeed “arrested and disappeared after his office filed a legal petition claiming that the Punjab police had killed and cremated hundreds.”

 In view of the above is it conceivable that the government, and the magnificent people of these United States the land of Thomas Jefferson whose motto, found after his death, reads: “Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God” are not appalled and offended by the continued kidnappings, disappearances and murders even after the official “conclusion” of a decade long night of state sponsored terror in occupied Punjab, Khalistan? No, it is unthinkable as the United States, has, throughout its history, always transacted its external affairs guided by the principle, laid down by President Thomas Jefferson in his second inaugural Address on March 4, 1805, that we are firmly convinced, and we act on that conviction, that with nations as with individuals our interests soundly calculated will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties.” This appeal is are minder to the great American people that United States external policy must be inspired by noble moral purpose, and that US short-term economic interests, in underdeveloped areas like South Asia, should never prevail over the moral duty prescribed, so eloquently, by the great Jefferson nearly 190 years ago.

Sponsored by:

 United States The Sikh Cultural Society, Richmond Hill, NY; Sant Baba Prem Singh Cultural Society, NY; Sri Guru Singh Sabha Inc., Glen Rock, NJ; Golden State Sikh Association, Bridge Water, NJ; Guru Nanak Sikh Society of DV Dept. Ford, NJ; Sikh Society of Michigan, Madison Heights, MI; Sikh Religious Society, Palatine, Chicago, TL; Sikh Center of the Gulf Coast, Houston, TX: Gurdwara Singh Sabha, Balch Springs, TX; Guru Gobind Singh Foundation, MD; Sikh Gurdwara, San Jose, CA; Sikh Sangat of Livingston, Modesto, CA; Sikh Temple, Sacramento, CA; Guru Nanak Sikh Temples, Bough Rd, Yuba City, CA Shri Guru Singh Sabha Inc, Alhambra, CA; Sikh Youth of America, Yuba City, CA; World Sikh Organization, New York, NY; Canada Khalsa Diwan Society, Vancouver, B.C. Guru Nanak Sikh Temple, Surrey, BC; Dashmesh Culture Center, Calgary, Alberta; ‘Sri Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara, Edmonton, AB Sikh Society, Calgary, Alberta; International Sikh Youth Federation, Toronto.

Contact: Khalistan Affairs Center, National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045

Tel: 2026379210 FAX: 20-637-9211.

Article extracted from this publication >> December 22, 1995