On India’s Republic Day, Dal Khalsa sends memo to PM Dr Manmohan Singh describing 'India as a land of injustice' and an 'opportunistic state'
Respected Prime Minister, As Punjab goes to the polls on Jan 30, the political landscape of the state is devoid of issues and concerns. All parties in a fray are resorting to populism of the worst kind, mocking the population of the state. A proud Punjabi people, believing in “Kirat” –honestly doing one’s duty to earn a living, have been reduced to holding the begging bowl for freebies and largesse from a state whose fiscal policies are teetering on creating and fostering systems of inequitable distribution of wealth, loot of natural resources and more expenditure on defence than health and education.
Below is the full text of the memo:
Respected Dr. Manmohan Singh
Prime Minister of India
Sardar Sahib jio,
Waheguru ji ka Khalsa. Waheguru ji ki Fateh.
We congratulate “you” and “your people” on “your country’s” Republic Day (26th January). Two years from now, you will go down in history as the Prime Minister of India who has had two tenures in a row, a Prime Minister of impeccable honesty and personal integrity and in some eyes a Prime Minister who was tied down by personal loyalty to Congress president Mrs. Sonia Gandhi and the politics of a lame-duck coalition government.
You are a Prime Minister who has a Sikh face, who visits Darbar Sahib, Amritsar on New Year day to seek Waheguru’s blessings, and who became Prime Minister notwithstanding the fact that the Sikhs in India and the Diaspora, even in their wildest dreams would not have thought of a Sikh as a Prime Minister. However, their “celebration” of a Sikh Prime Minister began and ended there.
While you unfurl the Indian tricolour on the ramparts of the Red Fort, we cannot but recall that the Sikh nation, under the leadership of Dal Khalsa chieftain Baba Baghel Singh had unfurled the Sikh National Flag from the same spot in 1783. We cherish that legacy.
Today, India as a land of injustice, a land which for the last 65 years has left no stone unturned to let the Sikhs know that they are only a small tiny minority and nothing more.
Chapter after chapter can be written about the alienating role of the Indian state. Constitutionally, Sikhism is not even a separate religion; leave alone the recognition of Sikhs as a nation. Legally, we have to marry, adopt and own property as members of Hindu religion under ‘Hindu Marriage Act’; Sikhs do not have their own personal laws.
Since 1966, you and your party could not give Punjab its capital or a High Court. The land rights of the people of Punjab have been left unresolved.
For decades, in violation of the riparian principle there is a continuous loot of our water wealth. The river waters dispute is still unresolved and now the State wants to either abrogate water rights to the Union of India or give it to multi-national companies. In the last many years, we have been burnt alive on the streets of this country without recourse to justice. Our human rights have been violated with impunity.
Religiously, our Gurdwaras are administered under the provisions of an Act, which is deliberately allowed to have flaws, so that the state can play with it as it deems fit –do you know that the elections to the SGPC were concluded in September 2010 and the house has not yet been constituted?
As Punjab goes to the polls on Jan 30, the political landscape of Punjab is devoid of issues and concerns. All parties in a fray are resorting to populism of the worst kind, mocking the population of the state. A proud Punjabi people, believing in “Kirat” –honestly doing one’s duty to earn a living, have been reduced to holding the begging bowl for freebies and largesse from a state whose fiscal policies are teetering on creating and fostering systems of inequitable distribution of wealth, loot of natural resources and more expenditure on defence than health and education.
Sikhs, who adore you or even oppose you, would have thought that you will do enough to stop the denigration of the Sikh image. On the contrary, we are still a butt of ‘Irish jokes’ and on the international front too your government has failed to resolve the problems related to Sikh identity.
India today is an opportunistic state, whose secularism has been sacrificed many a time at the altar of the needs of the political parties and their leaders. Our sensitivity and sensibilities are under attack all the time. We see no real future for our people.
We reinforce and reiterate that the Sikhs are a sovereign people. We are wedded to the ideal, “A Sikh is either a sovereign or a rebel.” Dal Khalsa will continue its work for fulfillment of the rightful political aspirations of the Sikh people through the right to self-determination.
With best wishes
Kanwar Pal Singh
Secretary, Political Affairs
Dal Khalsa
Amritsar
Ph-098149-07055
Dated- 26 Jan 2012
