Pannun, a Khalistani ideologue in the United States, has threatened
Delhi’s sitting chief minister Arvind Kejriwal of dire consequences for not
having released Khalistani terrorists from Tihar Jail and his party leader and
chief minister of Punjab, Bhagwant Mann, having some of them arrested. On
Indian soil, an Indian military veteran who served our Indian nation and who
happens to be a Sikh, in fact, a scholar of Sikhism having authored a book
on the beautiful creed of Sikhism, was brutally beaten up and
his car vandalised by Khalistani goons in
January 2024, for opposing a gurudwara bearing a poster of theofascist Jarnail
Singh Bhindranwale. The house of a Hindu temple priest in Canada, who had been
receiving threats from Khalistani terrorists, was attacked
in December 2023, and several other Canadian Hindus of Indian origin are also
getting threats from Khalistani terrorists, some even of an extortionist nature.
Meanwhile, the India-Canada standoff continues, with the Canadian government accusing the Indian
government of interference in Canadian elections,
a charge vehemently denied as baseless by
the Indian government. Trudeau claims his
stand of the Indian government being involved in the assassination of Canadian
Khalistani ideologue Nijjar has been vindicated
by the American government’s indictment of Indian officials in the plot to
assassinate Pannun, the American indictment also carrying a clear reference to
an Indian intelligence official having learnt of Nijjar’s killing within hours
of it having happened, and if there is indeed some truth to the American
allegations meant to be presented in court based on evidence (and there seems
to be some merit in the same given what the Indian state has admitted,
discussed subsequently), our government has been rather shoddy with some of
these intelligence operations, leaving clear trails of evidence, even complicating Indo-US
defence relations, with Indo-US relations
otherwise doing quite well under Biden, as you can see here,
here
and here,
and Biden also having defied Erdagon’s Islamist government of America’s NATO
ally Turkey (which was initially soft on the ISIS
- such a shame given Turkey’s secular history since the 1920s) by recognising the
Armenian Genocide. Trump was never a great
friend of India’s. He didn't let many talented Indian professionals work in the
US and send back remittances, having mocked and attacked Indians in his
campaign trail (as you can see here and here), mocked India for only constructing a library in
Afghanistan (though India’s aid in Afghanistan has been at much
deeper levels and amounting to a lot, lot more than that) and started a mini-trade war with India.
And even in
the fight against Muslim extremism, Trump let India down in Afghanistan, as you
can see here and here, a disastrous policy continued by Biden
(as much as the Afghan Taliban is no longer the Pakistani deep state’s friend,
the moderate, democratic Afghan state was an ally of India’s, which the Afghan Taliban
can never be). The white supremacists Trump
emboldened by his acts of commission and omission (examples of his emboldening
white supremacists can be seen here,
here,
here
and here)
are, in very many cases, no friends of Indians and Indian-origin people,
whatever their religion, either, as you can see here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here
and here.
Sadly, the controversies surrounding Nijjar and Pannun have led to RAW putting its
shutters on its North American offices
for the first time since 1968, which is unfortunately not in line with the Modi
government claiming it has improved India’s global clout, nor is the
governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand supporting Trudeau’s
claim, several Global South countries helping Pakistan beat India at a UNESCO
vote 38-18, there being no country willing to conduct international oil trade in
Indian rupees (Russia preferring Chinese yuan) nor is the
Maldivian government expelling Indian troops, disallowing India to conduct a hydrographic survey in that country and skipping a security dialogue
involving India. Given Hindu rightists hold Pew Research Centre surveys to be
credible, citing their surveys about the extent of regressiveness in several
Muslim societies globally, interestingly, the same Pew Research
Centre’s recent findings indicate that Modi has overall
decreased, not increased, India’s prestige globally. While I am glad about
India getting the G20 presidency in 2023, which all member countries get by
rotation, the other events mentioned in this paragraph are far more noteworthy.
In fact, the Modi government has conceded that supposedly rogue RAW
operatives were involved in Pannun’s assassination plot, which brings further
shame to India, confessing that our
government and intelligence agency can’t control their own operatives!
I won’t even discuss in this article how I do believe that Modi has indeed
undermined democratically transparency and accountability in our country, which
has contributed to lowering our nation’s prestige.
Anyway, the Indian government, in retaliation to the
Canadian government expelling a member of our diplomatic staff, practically expelled 41
Canadian diplomats, which led the Canadian
state to request for backchannel
talks to settle the public standoff, one
that’s entirely been of Trudeau’s own making, that too rather openly in their
parliament. I agree with those who say that the Indian state must insist that
the Canadian state ought to publicly act against Khalistani terrorists and
hate-mongers as a precursor to any behind-the-scenes dialogue. Indeed, since
the outset of this 21st century with the IT boom and the rise of more and more
talented entrepreneurs, thanks to the liberalisation ushered in by Narasimha
Rao and Manmohan Singh in the 1990s (further built on by subsequent prime
ministers like AB Vajpayee, and even Manmohan Singh on becoming prime minister
in 2004), India has been punching more and more in the global arena, as the
then British prime minister Tony Blair acknowledged
back in 2008 and commentator Fareed Zakaria too noted in his acclaimed book The Post-American World dating to the
same year. In 2009 too, the American intelligentsia was acknowledging
India as the rising power of the 21st century, India by then having become the
fifth largest economy in terms of purchasing power parity. And when under the
UPA government with Dr. Manmohan Singh as our prime minister, India had a diplomatic standoff
with the United States (a country more powerful and significant than Canada)
over our diplomat Devyani Khobragade’s arrest,
our then government had also expelled American
diplomats and even removed concrete
security barriers outside
the US Embassy in New Delhi. Indeed, the Indian state has largely never been a
pusillanimous entity even under Congress governments, not in 1961 when Indian
troops marched into and integrated Goa taking on a European power Portugal, not
in 1965 when our army marched into Lahore and beyond, not in 1967 when a Chinese
incursion in Sikkim was fully repulsed
(wish our soldiers had
been equipped to do the same even more recently in the
Galwan valley in 2020, and even in 1962,
contrary to what is popularly believed in India, the Indian state was not naive
to trust the Chinese state with closed eyes but misled by
our intelligence into taking an overly provocative approach, believing that it
could unilaterally impose its perspective on the Sino-Indian border dispute, a
British colonial legacy, and militarily vanquish the Chinese state if
challenged, and no, as I see it, the Indian state did not commit any blunder by
drawing the Line of Control in 1948 or by not annexing the whole of POK
thereafter, which can be the subject of another article altogether), not in
1971 when the Indian state, guided by its intelligence and security wings,
broke Pakistan into two, not after 26/11 when our forces carried out six
surgical strikes that were then not
publicly revealed (a retired Indian Army officer, who is a Kargil war veteran,
in fact, told me privately that Indian Army men crossing the LoC and targeting
Pakistani counterparts in retaliation to cross-LoC firing and shelling has not
at all been very rare even before 2014).
As Indian citizens who feel strongly against any terrorism, who believe that
the whole of India belongs to all Indians and who reject theocratic governance
models for all of or any part of India, we cannot turn a blind eye to the
Canadian state harbouring and pandering to elements inciting and even
coordinating Khalistani violence on Indian soil (as much as Sikh journalist
Tavleen Singh has strangely contended that we should focus on neutralising
Islamist terrorists on Pakistani soil but not focus on neutralising Khalistani
terrorists on Canadian soil coordinating their violence in India, though to be
fair, she has strongly condemned Khalistani terrorism, but still argued that
some Sikhs willingly took to Bhindranwale’s path of Khalistani terror in the
late 1970s and early 1980s “out of a sense of injustice that has too long a
history” to discuss in that column!). While I would not, even for a moment,
suggest stereotyping all or even most members of any religious grouping in our
country or elsewhere as terrorists or supporters of terrorism (which would be
counterproductive to fighting terrorism other than being grossly unfair, as
I’ve discussed at length in the context of Muslims here,
emphasising how criticism of the Islamic scriptures by ex-Muslims or others
doesn’t validate bigotry towards Muslims or even practising Muslims as people,
lies on the social media and spins from the godi
media ought not to be taken on face value and how the Modi sarkar does not
particularly have a great track record at financial transparency or managing
the economy or even resolving Hindu grievances, and I would strongly urge those
with anti-Muslim attitudes to very carefully read that piece with an open mind),
and that caveat needs to be applied loud and clear (indeed, the brutal
anti-Sikh carnage in 1984 boosted, rather than checked, Khalistani terrorism,
the insurgency remaining a huge threat till the mid-1990s), the real threat of
terrorism also should not be glossed over for reasons of political correctness.
Equally, out of sheer confirmation bias in
favour of birth-based identity, one ought not to shy away from
acknowledging and unequivocally condemning ghastly crimes committed in the name
of one’s own identity, instead taking refuge in bizarre and baseless conspiracy
theories.* The Khalistani threat subsided to a great extent by the mid-1990s
(thanks to the sacrifices of the mostly also Sikh personnel of the Punjab
Police, as much as the excesses against innocent civilians by rogues among
them, again often themselves Sikhs, were rather tragic and sometimes even
malicious for promotions**), but always persisted on Indian soil, even if in a
much, much milder form, such as a cinema hall in
Ludhiana packed with Bihari and UPite Hindu labourers being bombed in 2007.
After the revamp of
intelligence agencies by the UPA-II government
following numerous major large-scale jihadist terrorist activities like the IC
814 hijacking in 1999, the parliament attack in 2001 (these two happened in the
Vajpayee tenure) and 26/11 Mumbai attacks in 2008, a
planned Khalistani attack in Delhi on Diwali in 2011
was thankfully averted (and while the life of every innocent person on Indian
soil is precious, ever since the intelligence revamping by the UPA-II
government, high-intensity terrorist attacks since 2009 have been relatively
few, the one in Pathankot, Punjab, in 2016 by Pakistani jihadist terrorists
after Narendra Modi became PM unfortunately being one of those few that have
taken place; it must be noted that the reduction in high-intensity terrorist
attacks in India is a phenomenon dating back to 2009 with the onset of the
UPA-II government and not 2014 with the onset of the Modi government). However,
as I have discussed at some length in this Twitter thread
(worth perusing in full), since 2016, there has been a pattern of Khalistani
terror strikes on Indian soil (even if low-intensity), taking Indian citizens’
lives (no, not just some diaspora verbal diarrhoea), other than Amritpal
Singh’s followers (many of whom, by the way, got arms licenses from
the BJP government-appointed LG’s administration in J&K,
which took very long in revoking them as well) having stormed a police station
in Punjab to until then have terrorists released and physical attacks on our
embassies and consulates as also on Hindu temples overseas, also because of the
appeasement and thus emboldenment of Sikh communalism by the Modi sarkar (as
against its firm denunciation by Manmohan Singh, as pointed out in the Twitter
thread). The Twitter thread cited also gives clear examples of the appeasement
of Sikh communalism by the Modi sarkar, such as declaring non-Khalsa Sikhs (who
have been brutally targeted by Khalistani terrorists) as being ineligible to
vote in gurudwara elections, seeking to commute the death sentence of a
Khalistani terrorist Balwant Singh Rajoana and openly declaring that the PM has
a special relationship with the Sikhs (over other Indian citizens - imagine the
reaction had a Hindu leader from the Congress brought out such a book vis-a-vis
Muslims or even Christians!).
Also,
the way the BJP pushed the farm laws, which, at least in part, clearly favoured
cronyists, gave an opening to the Khalistanis to push their agenda on Indian
soil (in which unfortunately, the Khalistanis did not entirely fail) and the
manner in which some from the BJP and some prominent personalities from its
support-base sought to, in a baseless fashion, demonise all the protesting
farmers as Khalistani terrorists and/or agents of belligerent foreign powers,
as you can see here, here, here, here
and here
[and some BJP-leaning Twitterati have repeated the pattern with the Minimum
Support Price (MSP) protests, other than in another context, a BJP politician
slurred a Sikh policeman with whom he had some disagreement as ‘Khalistani’, as
you can see here,
though there was also fake news
of another such incident], or the fatally mowing down
of four Sikh farmers in Lakhimpur Kheri in UP by a BJP minister’s son
did not help matters either, and may have won the Khalistan movement some new
recruits. There
were genuine concerns with the farm laws, such as a
clause about not allowing farmers to raise their grievances in
civil courts, but allowing a bureaucrat, not necessarily following formal legal
procedures, to exercise his/her discretion to adjudicate disputes between
farmers and big corporations and the very definition of 'farmer' including big
corporations, other than there being a dearth of enough vegetable-market
infrastructure for farmers to directly access on their own terms, concerns articulated with nuance even by
the Swadeshi Jagran Manch of the RSS, and inserting such problematic clauses
and pushing these laws without
proper parliamentary debate clouded any objective discussion
about the merits, if any, in the other provisions of these controversial laws.
Also, steps similar to these farm laws had been tried but
failed to deliver in Bihar. Many poor
farmers died of the cold in the protests against the farm
laws in 2020-2021, thus invalidating the contention that those protesting
against these laws were only rich middlemen in the agrarian sector, and farmers
from not only Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh but also other parts of India,
like Gujarat, Maharashtra and Tamil
Nadu, across religious lines did participate in the protests
against the farm laws. While it is indeed very problematic that the proponents
of the Khalistan movement also infiltrated the protests (see, for example, this and this) as also that some
Sikh protesters (including even some who may not have necessarily been
supporters of the Khalistan movement) unnecessarily made
a show of religious identity over non-religious legislations for the whole of
India and resorted to unlawful modes of protest, that does not mean
that there were no genuine grievances or that all or even most of the
protesters were anti-India. While very many of the protesters were Hindus, it
should also be acknowledged that very many Sikhs themselves are vocal
critics of the Khalistan movement (indeed, many Sikhs
have had a
stellar track record in our Indian security forces, even against Khalistani terrorists), such Sikhs even
having been its targets (as you can see, for example, here, here, here and here), and many Sikhs in
the farmers’ agitation too very
openly distanced themselves from the Khalistan movement.
Indeed, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while withdrawing the laws, himself conceded that the farmers of
India as a whole largely did not support the controversial farm laws, which
makes sense, for if they did, they constitute a far greater number of voters
than some agrarian middlemen or some extremists from a minority religious
grouping, and the laws would not have had to be withdrawn. So, sections of the
BJP ecosystem having demonised all protesters, many Sikhs among whom were also
Indian military veterans, may have also definitely contributed to a spike in
Khalistani sentiment in Punjab (something the BJP ecosystem should be careful
about as farmers again protest for Minimum Support Price guarantees), which has
also been seen by the
hype given to some pro-Khalistan Punjabi language singers and a
Golden Temple guard having the gall to refuse
entry to a woman with a tricolour painted on her cheek, saying
that Punjab is not a part of India! It is also noteworthy that shamefully, the
Shiromani Gurudwara Prabhandhak Committee (SGPC), running very many gurudwaras
nationally, has erected
a museum in Amritsar hailing Khalistani terrorists as martyrs, and Simranjit Singh Mann, a
Member of the Indian Parliament elected in 2022 from Sangrur, Punjab, is an
open votary of Khalistan! It is, however, also true that even many of
those Sikhs who are not strongly opposed to the Khalistan movement on
ideological grounds also realise that taking up arms against the Indian state
and facing the backlash of the same would not be worth it, not at all to deny
that there are Sikh brothers and sisters indeed vehemently opposed to the very
idea of Khalistan, and dehumanising Sikh, or even Muslim, fellow citizens, even
those with problematic views, and taking the law in one’s hands is most
inappropriate, paving the way for a breakdown of the rule of law, the very
edifice of a successful society and economy.
In the battle of narratives, we, Indians, need to put up a united front and
bust the fallacious propaganda of the Khalistani lobby seeking validation from
politicians and civil society activists globally.*** I cannot agree with Shekhar Gupta saying
that because all or most Sikhs on Indian soil are not violent extremists or not
particularly cheering violent extremism (which is indeed true for most people
of every religious grouping), the Indian society should not discuss the issue
of Khalistan at all, and by that benchmark, no extremism from any community
should ever be discussed! And then, which problem has been eliminated by
refusing to acknowledge it, and why are voters not meant to discuss issues
involving the nation in a democracy?! Also, given that there has been a pattern
of Khalistani terror strikes, even if low-intensity, taking lives on Indian
soil since 2016, I cannot also buy Tavleen Singh’s
narrative that Khalistani terror on Indian soil is some myth created by Prime
Minister Narendra Modi (whatever
other issues I do have with the prime minister) and the public Modi-Trudeau
standoff was of Trudeau’s making, in which Modi had to respond; so, why blame
Modi on this score? Radiagate-tainted journalist Vir Sanghvi has written a
similar article,
in a baseless fashion, calling the Khalistani threat “imaginary” and blaming
Modi for playing it up, though neither Modi, nor, to be fair, anyone else in
the BJP has said in the wake of Trudeau’s allegations that Indian Sikhs in
general are secessionists, though again, in all fairness, Sanghvi has indeed
also been critical of
Trudeau, saying Trudeau is making a fool of
himself! To give an unbiased account, I must also mention that BJP leader
Sandeep Dayma, in an election rally in Tijara, Rajasthan, did talk of uprooting
mosques and gurudwaras, but later apologised
saying ‘gurudwaras’ was a slip of tongue and he meant ‘madrasas’ instead, not
apologising for having talked of uprooting our Muslim fellow citizens’ places
of worship, which is despicable, and for those with very caricatured ideas of
madrasas in India largely being terror factories, they are requested to see this,
but it is interesting to see how even Hindu rightist politicians weaponsing
bigotry are aware that in the current scenario, hate-mongering against Sikhs to
Hindu audiences will not really help fetch Hindu votes but can, in fact,
backfire, and the same BJP, which took no action against Ramesh Bidhuri for
using horrible anti-Muslim slurs in parliament while in session, expelled Dayma,
obviously because of what Dayma said against gurudwaras, even if it was a slip
of tongue. The fact is that many left-liberals, even those who are not in
active politics, desist from a honest conversation about Khalistani terrorism
owing to their overt sympathy for communities that are minorities at the Indian
national level, while many Hindu rightists also indeed desist from the same,
owing to them (rightly) seeing Sikhism as an offshoot of Hinduism, but the
question arises why that should mean that Khalistani terrorists’ atrocities
should be forgotten by those who love obsessing over centuries-old hate crimes
against Hindus by Muslim and Portuguese Christian invaders. These Hindu
rightists romanticise Sikhs for having fought Muslim invaders and in an intellectually
dishonest fashion, do not want to acknowledge that the anti-Sikh carnage in
1984, for which they rightly blame the Congress (but wrongly misusing that carnage for
whataboutism when confronted about violence against innocent Muslim and
Christian fellow citizens by Hindu extremists), had a years-long provocation
beyond two Sikh bodyguards assassinating Indira Gandhi, given Khalistani
terrorists had been brutally killing regular Hindu civilians, not just one
senior Congress politician.**** These particular Hindu rightists shy away from
mentioning Khalistani atrocities, for these very people do invoke wrongdoings
by some Muslims and Christians to rationalise, and in many cases, even
disgustingly justify, Hindu extremist violence against Muslim and Christian
men, women and children; then, by their inhuman, morally warped benchmark, why
would anti-Sikh violence by Congress members in 1984 be indefensible in the
wake of Khalistani terror?! Thus, very many people across the ideological
spectrum remain tight-lipped about Khalistani atrocities.
And this brings me to a highly controversial but still, in my view, very
pertinent point, and I apologise in advance to readers if this point will make
them uncomfortable or worse still, offend them. And that point is that while I
am vehemently opposed to the negative stereotyping of any community, it is
equally wrong to overly romanticise any community and feed into it a
superiority complex, which obviously also contributes to communal sentiment in
that community. Sikhs
as a community are overhyped by too many Hindus as being brave (no doubt, many
Sikhs are brave, but many are not, such as Khalistani propagandist Amritpal
Singh on Indian soil who, after making audacious statements of challenging the
administration and fearing no one, ran like a
coward screaming on seeing the police when it came to arrest him
in 2023, nor is there any dearth of brave Hindus, our security forces obviously
mostly comprising Hindus, and for that matter, Sikh
civilians are as vulnerable to armed bloodthirsty murderers as anyone else, as
the brutal carnage in 1984 also demonstrated, in the wake of which many of our
Sikh fellow citizens tragically fled for their lives,
as thousands of Sikhs, like Hindus and Muslims, did even during the horrendous
partition riots!),
disciplined, honest (the otherwise excellent Bollywood film Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year had
an unnecessary dialogue of a Hindu shopkeeper saying he had never heard of a
Sikh engaging in theft), altruistic, jovial and deeply patriotic towards India.
In reality, however, while the prevalence of almost no turbaned Sikh beggars
and the tradition of langar at
gurudwaras are laudable and one Sikh NGO, Khalsa Aid International, has done
exceptional work for humans across religious lines globally, not all Sikhs,
including many drug-addicts (as do undoubtedly exist in sizable numbers in all
other major religious groupings globally), have a great social consciousness,
and as an aggregate whole, Sikhs are like every other community, with their
gems, no doubt, but also corrupt scoundrels (even among those managing
gurudwaras, as you can see here, here and here), criminal thugs (as you can see here and here, and noted Sikh singer Daler Mahendi was convicted for human trafficking, and interestingly, it is
sad but unsurprising that he has been welcomed into the BJP!), violent maniacs (as you
can see here and here) and fanatics, including those
mercilessly killing people, including mentally unsound ones, on blasphemy grounds, not very different from
the terrorists who killed the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists. A large number of the
Sikh fanatics are out-and-out anti-India, even engaging in violence against
unarmed civilians, and many others doling out apologia, whataboutism and conspiracy
theories of denial as regards the same. Like many places of worship of other
religious groupings in our country, many gurudwaras too cause much noise
pollution (and by the way, there are several Indian Muslims who have consciously battled noise pollution from
mosques). There are other communities like the Gorkhas, Garhwalis, Kodavas and
Ladakhis as well with a rich history of contributing to the Indian Army. Also,
there are a good many Muslims in India doing social work even without any religious
conversion angle, as you can see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here, and that is true for many of our
Christian fellow citizens without any religious conversion angle too, as you
can see here, here, here and here, and Hindu religious organisations like
the Ramakrishna Mission and Akshay Patra also do much social work. Indeed, as
much as Bhagat Singh and Kartar Singh Sarabha were indeed great freedom
struggle martyrs, so were Ashfaqullah Khan and Abdul Khader, and many Sikhs
acted as agents of the British Raj too, Sikhs, like Rajputs, having largely
sided with the British in 1857. Punjab wouldn't have been a dope-haven if Sikhs
in general were so disciplined and Sikh cops in general so honest, nor would we
have had Sikh sellouts to the ISI like policeman Davinder Singh, nor would all the Sikhs you have encountered
personally be actually very jovial or even altruistic by nature. And
historically, many Hindu rulers resisted Muslim rulers successfully even before
Sikhism emerged as a belief system. Back in the 8th century, when Arabs managed
to invade Sindh, they were unable to expand their empire in India beyond that
because they were repulsed by Hindu kings like Lalitaditya of Kashmir,
Yashovarman of Kannauj, Nagabhata I of Ujjain and Pulakesi of Gujarat, and this
is many centuries before Baba Nanak. Hindus have had a military history dating
to the times when the Ramayan and Mahabharat were written. Even if we don't
take those epics as literally true, it can be established that there was
expertise in military strategy when they were penned, with ideas like
'chakravyuh' conceptualised. Even later, Chandragupta Maurya, a Hindu, made Alexander's
general Selecus Nicator subservient to himself because of the former’s superior
military capability. Hinduism survived for over 300
years of the pre-Mughal Delhi Sultanate period (from the Mamluks to the Lodis)
from the 1200s onwards, owing to resistance. One prominent instance of Hindu
resistance can be Hakka and Bukka setting up the Vijaynagar empire challenging
the Delhi Sultans with Bhakti saint Vidyaranya's support and another example
can be the Gorkha Hindus of Nepal who successfully managed to not be ruled by
Muslim invaders for any long stretch. All of this materialised before Sikhism
emerged and also, Sikhs weren't even a militant cult to start with. During the
Mughal period starting from the 1500s, which, Akbar onwards, was certainly much
more tolerant for Hindus than the Delhi Sultanate period, with Hindus at high
positions in the military and bureaucracy, as much as Aurangzeb was indeed a bigot (some Muslims and
intellectually elitist non-Muslims seeking to whitewash his crimes, and many
gullible people falling for that propaganda, notwithstanding), the Maratha
resistance to Mughal rule initiated by Chhatrapati Shivaji and even Ahom
resistance in Assam were no less than Sikh resistance. And Sarmad, Dara Shikoh
and Shah Inayat were also great martyrs
for the cause of Hindus’ religious freedom during Aurangzeb’s reign like Guru
Teg Bahadur, and while the Modi-led BJP has started Veer Bal Diwas to
commemorate the martyrdom of two of Guru Govind Singh’s sons (who interestingly
had Persian names) to the cause of religious freedom at Islamist hands, the role of tolerant Punjabi Muslims at that very point of
time in history who stood up to Aurangzeb is being glossed over by
the Modi-led BJP, unsurprisingly so. Also, while Sikhs
resisted Muslim invasions and Muslim fanaticism historically, Sikhism, while
drawing much from Hinduism*****, also draws much from Islam
(with Sikh Gurus having moderate practising Muslims as followers and even
military allies); so, if bigotry towards
Muslims in general and/or everything in the Islamic scriptures (the
controversial content of which is shared with the Judeo-Christian scriptures,
and the moderate majority of Jews, Christians and Muslims interpret the
controversial content contextually) is only or primarily why some Hindu reader
adores Sikhs, for Sikhs having, in his/her worldview, “fought Muslims”, then
he/she has much to think about, and I would again urge him/her to read this
with an open mind. Also, with all due respect to the religious sentiments of
our Sikh brothers and sisters, and in fact, all those who revere the Sikh
Gurus, it is worth noting that objectively, for those not sharing their
religious sensibilities, Sikh Gurus can be seen as regular monarchs of Punjab
who were also involved in political conflicts (such as Guru Arjan supporting
Jahangir’s son Khusrau in his battle of succession******) and military
endeavours. Guru Govind Singh had fought military battles not only against the
Mughals but also Hindu kingdoms in the Himalayas, like Kahlur, Kangra and
Guler.
Lt. Gen. Ata Hasnain (Retd.), a gem among Indian military
veterans (hear it from across the ideological spectrum here
and here)
who valiantly fought jihadist terrorists, who has been a steadfast critic of
Muslim extremism and whom I have the honour and pleasure of knowing personally,
notwithstanding the fact that we obviously do not entirely agree on everything,
has also pointed to a potential threat of Khalistani militancy in J&K,
given that Jammu borders Punjab. He, while having very positive things to
say about most of our Sikh fellow citizens
(in my humble opinion, amounting to over-romanticisation), has pointed
to the possibility of “Sikh militancy”
being “co-opted” as the “ISI attempts to create a continuum in the border belts
from Punjab to Jammu” and that, to protect Jammuite Hindus from Khalistani
terrorists, “we must ensure effective surveillance of the Hindu-dominated belt
along the Jammu border”. This is not at all baseless, given that some Sikhs in
Jammu do indeed support the Khalistani cause. In fact, it would be
interesting to note that the Pakistani deep state was trying very hard to
radicalise Kashmiri Muslims to take up arms against the Indian state since at
least 1965, but it didn’t meet with any substantial success******* until after the
controversial elections of 1987, and though Kashmir had seen some degree of
disturbances after what locals felt was undemocratic behaviour on the Indian
state’s part ever since the early 1950s when relations between Sheikh Abdullah
(who had, until before that, consistently
supported Kashmir joining India rather than Pakistan and had a huge
following among local Kashmiris across religious lines) and Pandit Nehru
soured, but the Pakistani deep state succeeded in sponsoring a full-fledged
insurgency without any very meaningful grievances among Sikhs before it could
among Kashmiri Muslims. Also, while the Hindus were (and are) a much larger
minority in Punjab than in Kashmir and so, could not be driven out of Punjab
very quickly, in Punjab, the phenomenon
of terrorists targeting Hindus, leading very many then to tragically flee the state, in as many as tens of thousands (though some Punjabi
Hindus also illegally picked up arms to fight Sikhs, Punjabi
Hindus being much larger in number than Kashmiri Hindus), terrorists gunning
down their co-religionists critical of the militancy or not living by their (the terrorists’) religious policing
diktats and forcing
newspapers to publish their propaganda, terrorists committing rapes, the law-and-order machinery being on the verge of collapse with Bhindranwale using the Golden Temple as his military head office - these obviously served as
an inspiration for those radicalised among Kashmiri Muslims in the late 1980s
and early 1990s to repeat this pattern when all of this was still ongoing in
Punjab. Also, while in both Punjab and Kashmir, the socio-economically backward
Sikhs and Muslims respectively may have been drawn to radicalisation more than
the elite couched in the comforts of life, in neither case can calling these
movements economic class struggles explain why Hindus across socioeconomic
strata and not rich Sikhs and Kashmiri Muslims were killed en masse, even if
some rich Sikhs and Kashmiri Muslims may have been victims of extortions and
extortion-related killings by militants in some cases but they were not at all
subjected to genocidal treatment.
The Khalistani propaganda talking points, such as
their imaginary claims of Gandhi and Nehru having promised the Sikhs a
sovereign country and of Hindus in Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s successors’ army
having betrayed the Sikhs, the myth of no FIR ever
having been lodged against Bhindranwale
[it is sad that some Hindu rightist commentators like Subramanian Swamy, only
to score some points over the Congress, have sought to underplay that man’s monstrosity,
Swamy even calling him by the honourific ‘santji’ (respected saint), and while
Bhindranwale himself may not have explicitly called for Khalistan, he had no
qualms in being surrounded by his own followers who had picked up arms to that
end, nor did he himself shy away from threatening massacres
of Hindus; it’s not just about Swamy, a
Tamilian Hindu, but several Punjabi Hindus born in the late 1980s or
thereafter, who were very small when or born after terror had engulfed Punjab,
who have also fallen for these distortions of facts fed to them by some of their
Sikh friends] and fabrications by Western Khalistani propagandists about Sikhs
being denied religious freedom in the Indian Republic, need to be busted. The
truth is that very many Punjabi, Sindhi, Himachali and other Hindus pray and
sometimes even get married in gurudwaras. The truth is that very many Sikhs are
respected public figures in all walks of life in India, be it music, sports,
acting (think the Deols, Jaspal Bhatti and Diljeet Dosanjh), scriptwriting
(think Gulzar), academia and what not, not even facing the considerable housing
discrimination our Muslim fellow citizens, the vast majority of whom are also
no terrorists or even criminals, unfortunately face! The truth is that the
Congress was voted back to power in 2009 with Manmohan Singh, a Sikh, as its
PM-face. The truth is that some Hindu loonies on the social media provoked by
loud Khalistani propagandists, especially since 2020 (and some of those undue
provocations from the Khalistani side were indeed very ugly),
aside, there has been no anti-Sikh bigotry from the Hindu side on the ground in
India worth speaking of in the last three decades or so, nor prior to
Khalistani terrorism picking up in the late 1970s, with Sikhs, quite the
contrary, then and now often overly romanticised as being brave, altruistic,
trustworthy, disciplined and jovial. The truth is that before
the Khalistan insurgency, the Indian state per se never consciously
discriminated against Sikhs - in fact, Punjab was chosen for the Green Revolution
in the 1960s, making very many Sikhs much more prosperous.
Yes, there was the issue of the official language of Punjab, and
I would not deny that many (not all) Punjabi Arya Samaji Hindus erred by not
accepting Punjabi as their mother tongue but instead stating it to be Hindi in
the censuses of 1951 and 1961. Yes, there were Sikhs with a legitimate aspiration
of seeking to carve out a smaller state with the Punjabi Suba movement aimed at
separating the Punjabi-majority regions from what also included Haryana and
parts of what is now Himachal Pradesh, and such demands have also existed in
several other parts of India (think Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand,
Telangana). Yes, there were Sikhs demanding river water-sharing in favour of
Punjab, as the Akali Dal’s lengthy Anandpur Resolution of 1973, much touted
even today by Khalistan-sympathisers, demanded, among other things, including
bizarre ones like nominations of Sikhs to government service, local bodies and state
legislatures in states other than Punjab (then, should Parsis be nominated to
all these in Punjab?), and river water-sharing issues have existed between
Karnataka and Tamil Nadu and between other states as well. Such issues exist in any pluralistic country, but contrary to
what Tavleen Singh may claim was some long history of injustice that couldn’t
find space in her column, nothing in
the late 1970s involving Sikhs was such a grave problem unique to them that
made reasonably understandable many of them demanding secession from India and
worse still, engaging in violence against innocent civilians to that end! Hindu
readers who grew up in the 1990s, even in Punjab itself, when the memories of
bloodshed by Khalistanis logically ought to have been fresh, would hardly
recall even any casual antipathy towards the Sikhs being expressed by any
Hindus around them, affectionate jokes about the Sikhs as simpletons, like
there are about Polish people or blondes in the West, notwithstanding. Those
suggesting that the “12 o’ clock” jokes about Sikhs are rooted in Hindu
ingratitude, mocking Sikhs, who had, centuries ago, rescued Hindu women from
Muslim invaders at 12 midnight, preventing them from becoming sex-slaves, are
citing something baseless, as much as it is indeed true that many Muslim
invaders did take Hindu women as sex-slaves (and even Kashmiri Sikh women were
taken as sex-slaves by Pathan Muslim tribal raiders in 1947, and for that
matter, as mentioned earlier, unarmed Sikh male civilians are as vulnerable to
armed bloodthirsty murderers as anyone else, as the brutal carnage in 1984 and
the partition riots also demonstrated). The jokes about Sikhs can’t all be
meant to be taking place at 12 midnight, when most people are asleep but rather
at 12 noon when the unbearable heat, as per this affectionately humorous and
not at all hateful line of reasoning, apparently makes turbaned Sikhs, sweating
in their hair, disoriented. A Sikh writer like Khushwant Singh, in good spirit,
himself penned many Santa-Banta jokes. Also, Sikh-themed jokes, while extremely
popular in India for several decades, have considerably waned in popularity now
and are not so frequently heard.
Also,
I am glad that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, my criticism of him on many other
scores being another matter, did condemn the manner in
which Operation Bluestar was conducted on Guru Arjan’s martyrdom anniversary
in which many innocent worshippers unduly died in the cross-fire (something
also condemned by Congress
leader Shashi Tharoor in his personal
capacity, but it must be remembered that while the way the operation was
carried out definitely boosted Khalistani sentiment, it was the emergence of
Khalistani terrorism in the first place that led to Operation Bluestar,
and we should not fundamentally invert cause and effect), and that Prime
Minister Narendra Modi has also condemned the
horrendous anti-Sikh carnage in 1984
(captured in a very balanced fashion, also acknowledging the Hindus who
protected Sikhs at personal risk and the ghastliness of Khalistani terror, in
the film 31st October, scripted and
produced by Sikh gentleman Harry Sachdeva, and the web series Grahan, both viewable on the streaming
platform Hotstar).
I wholeheartedly support acknowledging and condemning the horrendous anti-Sikh
carnage in 1984 in which Congress leaders, members and supporters (Muslims
included) played an active role, as also how the Congress successfully weaponised suspicion
bordering on bigotry towards Sikhs
in the national elections in 1984, for example, with advertisements in Delhi
subtly asking whether one would trust a Sikh taxi driver, which sadly even
manifested itself in handsome electoral victories for leaders fanning anti-Sikh
violence when they contested from the localities where the violence took place
(even a staunch BJP-critic like Ramachandra Guha, who is not at all a fan of
the democratic Left parties nor a Maoism-supporter like Arunadhati Roy either,
has acknowledged
that Rajiv Gandhi used "the riots to polarise majority voters in (his)
favour, riding to electoral victory on the backs of dead bodies", saying
the same for Narendra Modi vis-a-vis anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat in 2002,
and how he weaonised the same to remain CM of Gujarat), though the sweeping
Congress victory nationally was overall out of a sympathy wave for Rajiv Gandhi
having lost his mother and not about anti-Sikh bias, the sentiment of bigotry
or suspicion bordering on bigotry towards Sikhs that did exist among some
Hindus in parts of North India also largely having died out very quickly after
the national elections in 1984, especially as Sikh policemen exhibited amazing
gallantry in fighting Khalistani militants. Equally, however, our Sikh fellow
citizens and everyone else in our country must acknowledge the ISI-backed
Khalistani terrorists’ bloodletting of tens of
thousands of
Hindus (the
roots of the Khalistan insurgency, as late anti-Khalistan Sikh journalist
Khushwant Singh pointed out in many of his writings, lay in the Sikh
ultra-orthodox elements resenting Hindu-Sikh intermarriages and what was, in
their view, dilution of the Khalsa Sikh identity, in which they rejected other
sects of Sikhism as also being deviant, and Hindu-Sikh couples are still their targets,
though historically, in Aurangzeb’s times, several Punjabi Hindus gave the eldest son in their family to serve in the Khalsa,
ordained as a Sikh), Nirankari and Namdhari
Sikhs, Sikhs of other non-mainstream sects and liberal and moderate Khalsa
Sikhs went on since 1978 (hence, the police, on the instructions of the then
Congress government, wrongly exhibited
bigotry or suspicion bordering on bigotry towards Sikhs in general to ensure
security in the Asian Games in 1982 in Delhi), and that the Khalistanis had
openly made calls for the genocide of Hindus
even before the carnage in 1984 too needs to be highlighted, that carnage,
while horrendous and not in the least morally defensible, having some degree of
public support at the time not only because of the assassination of Indira
Gandhi but also, as the late Khushwant Singh has also recorded, because of the
brutal killings of Hindus by Khalistani terrorists over the then past several
years, something the otherwise excellent Netflix web series The Railway Men********, possibly only
to vilify the Congress, completely glosses over, other than falsely showing
anti-Sikh violence in central India in December 1984, when the carnage had been
on only from 31st October
to 4th November 1984. Also, it must be
emphasised that overreactions by the state and society to terror threats, while
wrong, are a global phenomenon and unless the overreaction has been of the
likes of the Pakistani Army’s systematic genocide in the erstwhile East
Pakistan in 1971 for weeks together (though Mujibur Rahman’s followers were,
even until before the Pakistani overreaction, not at all bombing civilians),
that does not necessarily validate the agenda of the violent rebels, who, in
the Khalistani context, were themselves theofascist, targeting intra-Sikh
sectarian minorities and the Hindu minority of Punjab. Indeed, several of the
perpetrators of the anti-Sikh carnage in 1984, including senior Congress
leaders, have been punished (and contrary to
Amit Shah’s claims, it is not as though all these convictions happened only
after Narendra Modi became prime minister), with more convictions underway as
the trials continue. Also, while some of the police personnel engaging in fake
encounters of innocent Sikh civilians, branding them as Khalistani terrorists,
have been convicted, as you can see here
and here,
convictions of security personnel for excesses against civilians remain
remarkably low globally, including the developed world (and practically
military-ruled countries like Pakistan don’t even merit discussion in this
regard), as you can see here, here, here, here, here
and here,
and Sikhs today absolutely enjoy equal rights as citizens of India. Speaking of
the carnage in 1984, Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh and Rahul Gandhi have also apologised for the same on behalf of the
Congress, the Congress not at all now sustaining its politics based on
antipathy to Sikhs and even having been voted to power by the mostly Sikh
electorate in Punjab on several occasions after 1984, and the Congress, on being
voted to power nationally, gave Dr. Manmohan Singh, a Sikh gentleman from a humble rural
background, the position of the
prime minister of India for two terms (no, our current prime minister isn’t the
first one to hail from a very humble background; not only his immediate
predecessor but others like Lal Bahadur Shastri and Morarji Desai
too hailed from humble backgrounds). On the other hand, the BJP unfortunately
has sustained, in fact intensified, much of its politics of antipathy towards
Muslims, as you can see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here, and Christians,
as you can see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
and here,
and while it is true that the Congress has unfortunately appeased communal and
regressive sections of Muslims and Christians from time to time (though again,
there have, on this score, also been too many lies on the social media and
spins from the godi media, which
ought not to be taken on face value), it thankfully seems to be changing track
on that score, taking action
against its members doing so, and caste being a sociological reality in India,
it has factored in the politics of not just the Congress but the BJP as well,
as you can see here, here, here, here, here, here, here
and here.
As you can see here
and here,
the Congress is rightly being vocal for Indian national interests and speaking
out against Khalistani theofascists (who had, in fact, killed their stalwart
Indira Gandhi, though ironically, the Congress of Indira Gandhi is rightly
criticised for, in the 1970s, having given a free run to Bhindranwale and his
communal Sikh followers for vote-bank considerations before they turned
separatist, as documented in the bestseller The Silent Coup: A History of India's Deep State by eminent journalist Josy Joseph), not ceding
this space entirely to those biased to varying degrees against Muslims and
Christians or indifferent to their genuine concerns, and more and more Muslims,
Sikhs and Christians, rather than seeking shelter in their own communal
politics or being very sympathetic to, even if not supportive of, violent
extremist movements rejecting the good idea of the
Indian nation-state premised on religious and linguistic pluralism,
should very vocally stand for the pluralistic idea of India for all Indians,
endorsing constitutional, rather than anarchic, modes of resolution to resist
the Hindu majoritarianism from sections of the RSS-BJP ecosystem*********,
failing which they shall be falling into the polarisation trap of the Modi-led
BJP, and some intellectually elitist ‘liberals’ from the Hindu community doing
apologia for minority communalism by way of melodramatic narratives
of perennial minority victimhood
deserve to be rejected as public figures as much as Muslims and Christians
doing apologia for the BJP. More of our Muslim and Christian fellow citizens
would do well to address their own gender-related and other social evils than
seeking to derive cheap thrills by overhyping Hindu social evils like casteism,
which has, in fact, been declining
(nor is casteism among South Asian Muslims only a Hindu influence, but also draws from early Arab
juristic writings, even if one argues that
those writings are contrary to the letter and spirit of the Quran), and no, if
we rightly argue that our country belongs to citizens of all communities
equally, irrespective of which one is in majority, reform in line with human
rights values is also equally important for all communities, irrespective of
which one is in majority, and those not very vocal on Indian foreign policy and
national security concerns and larger economic, law-and-order and civic amenity
issues affecting Indian citizens across identitarian lines are hardly fooling
anyone when they claim they are being good Indians only by loudly raising
issues that embarrass the Indian security forces or the Hindu majority. And
while the Adi Granth is indeed a very noble and egalitarian text, more of our
Sikh fellow citizens should also take cognizance of the practice of
untouchability prevalent within their religious grouping (which can be very
brutal, as you can see here)
as also female foeticide
and combat them. And people of all communities need to confront facts about
evil acts committed in the name of their identity against those of other
communities and condemn them without trying to give apologia or conspiracy
theory spins owing to confirmation bias. Our Sikh brothers and sisters would
also do well to remember, as many already do, that very many people from their
religious grouping also reside in parts of India other than Punjab, and any
attempt to create Khalistan could put such people in the radar of suspicion and
reviving militancy on a big scale would halt Punjab’s own economic development.
The creation of a theocratic state of Pakistan could not give its people better
civil liberties, security of life and property or economic prospects, and it is
worth noting for those yearning for a sovereign Sikh theocratic framework in
Punjab or a Hindu theocratic framework for India as a whole that the track
record of non-Abrahamic theocracies like Sri Lanka and Myanmar and while it was
a theocracy, Nepal has not been much better vis-a-vis democratic accountability
of governments, nor have Myanmar and Sri Lanka been great at managing their
economies, nor have incentivised conversions by some Christian missionaries
succeeded in making India Christian-majority, and in any case, laws regulating
financially incentivised conversions have been introduced, which can be invoked
without unlawful violence.
*Conspiracy theories denying terrorism in the name of jihad have been busted here, here, here
and here,
and those questioning the existence and ghastliness of jihadist terrorism (the
ideology of jihadism not necessarily to be equated with the Quranic concept of
jihad) would do well to interact with
moderate Syrian and Afghan Muslim refugees in our country, who witnessed and
escaped ISIS and Taliban tyranny respectively.
**The excesses by unscrupulous elements in the Punjab Police have been
pointed out in the classic film Machis,
penned by Gulzar, viewable on Amazon Prime, and the critically acclaimed slow
Punjabi art film Chauthi Koot,
viewable here,
the latter also scripted by Sikh gentlemen Gurvinder Singh and Waryam Singh Sandhu, and to the
duo’s credit, not glossing over the tyrannical nature of the Khalistani
terrorists.
***The Khalistani lobby has, for example, convinced Minority Rights Group
International, which, to be fair, has been fairly critical of the Pakistani
state (as you can see here
and here),
to club,
in the Indian context, Punjab, Kashmir and Nagaland with Tamil Nadu, and
suggest that the democratic and completely peaceful means used to silence the
secessionism of the Dravidstan movement in Tamil Nadu ought to have been used
by the Indian state in Punjab, Kashmir and Nagaland, without acknowledging the
violence by armed rebels in these three regions unlike Tamil Nadu. Also, that
organisation has contended
that democracy has been stifled in Punjab and Sikhs denied political
representation there, which is completely untrue. And strangely, back in 2006,
when Article 370 had not been read down, it asked for J&K to be given Tamil
Nadu-like autonomy when it then enjoyed far greater autonomy than Tamil Nadu!
****Interestingly, RSS members were also targeted
by Khalistani terrorists, as were many Congress members
even other than Indira Gandhi and CPI and CPI-M members, including Sikhs like Comrade Satyapal Dang and
more recently, Comrade Balwinder Sandhu. And yes, all those calling the CPI-M anti-national,
anti-Hinduism, pro-Chinese state, pro-Naxalite, pro-Islamist, pro-secessionist
or even always anti-entrepreneurship should see this and this.
The democratic Left parties are in the constitutional framework and
interestingly, the CPI-M was the first party which raised the
issue of the safety of the Kashmiri Pandits through party MLA Mohammed Yusuf in the J&K Legislative Assembly!
Even the RSS has conceded being influenced by economic leftist ideas.
*****To start with, the guru-shishya parampara, with the greatest figures of Sikhism being
called gurus and the word 'Sikh' being derived from the Sanskrit word 'shishya', is from Hinduism! The idea of
charity is also
far from alien to the Hindu scriptures. For
more on Sikhism drawing on Hinduism (including, very importantly, Puranic lore
with all its metaphorical imageries of the Almighty), check the Twitter handle of the very courageous, vehemently
anti-Khalistan Sikh activist Puneet Sahani,
who has busted SGPC distortions of Sikhism severing it completely from
Hinduism, as much as I respectfully disagree with him on his overall
endorsement of Trump and Modi, though he has also strongly critiqued Modi for
appeasing Sikh communalism and is not at all bigoted towards Muslims in
general.
******Those generalising Muslims as cruel, slimy, backstabbing and aggressive,
citing family feuds or even royal family feuds with patricide or fratricide as
a Muslim monopoly, are requested to see this.
*******After the alleged
rigging of elections in J&K in 1987 (not the first time it was felt that
democracy was being subverted there by the central government) and brutal
suppression of peaceful protests against the same by what was seen by many
Kashmiri Muslims as the "Hindu" Indian state, the
innocent Kashmiri Pandits undoubtedly and undeservedly suffered a colossal
tragedy in 1990 (when we had a BJP-supported coalition government at the
centre) as they were specifically targeted by jihadist terrorists and their
over-ground supporters for their religious identity and driven out of their
homeland (those offering conspiracy theories of denial or economic class
rationalisations as regards the same are requested to see this),
and indeed, many Hindu temples have also been destroyed or damaged in Kashmir
over the decades (none of which should be trivialised and the perpetrators must
be legally punished, though some in the BJP have grossly
exaggerated figures to fuel
divisiveness), but even in those dark days of 1989-1990, many Kashmiri Muslims,
including some with separatist views, helped protect
their Kashmiri Pandit neighbours and colleagues and helped them escape safely
(something a hateful film like Kashmir
Files completely glosses over), just as some Muslims helped protect my
Sindhi Hindu relatives from the paternal side and Punjabi Hindu relatives from
the maternal side during the partition riots, and indeed, there are reports of
Hindus and Muslims protecting each other in almost every riot that has taken
place in our country. Some Kashmiri Pandits never left the
valley in or after 1989-1990 (I have actually even interacted with one such
gentleman still residing in the valley alongside his Muslim friends) and some
returned for their Muslim neighbours made them feel secure
(which is not to deny the genuine insecurity generated by terrorists and their
over-ground supporters in most parts of the valley), and in many cases, their
neighbours indeed lived up to their assurances (as you can see here, here, here and here).
Four Kashmiri Muslim policemen were even martyred
protecting Kashmiri Pandits in Shopian in 2018, and indeed, over the decades,
several tens of thousands of Kashmiri Muslim civilians have also been killed by
terrorists, often brutally, for a variety of reasons, including opposing
separatism (as you can see here and here), a
phenomenon that was ongoing
even when Kashmiri Pandits were being targeted en masse in 1989-1990. Some
Kashmiri Muslims, including possibly those with separatist views, have helped
protect and preserve Hindu temples (as you can see here and here).
Equally, many Kashmiri Pandits, even among those displaced, to their credit,
have not been lacking in humanitarian empathy for regular Kashmiri Muslims
either (as you can see here, here and here).
Some Kashmiri Muslims have helped protect (sometimes even at the cost of their
lives) and assist not only Kashmiri Pandits but even non-Kashmiri Indians
across religious lines, including Amarnath pilgrims, as you can see here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. In
fact, a lot of regular Kashmiri Muslims helped the
local Kashmiri Muslim policemen in nailing down those terrorists who targeted
innocent Amarnath pilgrims in 2017. Equally, many non-Kashmiri Indian Hindus
helped cash-starved Kashmiri Muslim students studying outside the valley in
other parts of India with money during the communication blackout in the
valley, as you can see, for example, here and here,
and also helped Kashmiri Muslims outside the valley with accommodation when
they were feeling insecure in the wake of the ridiculous attacks on innocent
Kashmiri Muslims after the tragic Pulwama attack, as you can see, for example, here and here. A
Kashmiri Pandit lady won the election to become the sarpanch (village
chieftain) of a Muslim-majority village in Kashmir beating her
Muslim rival in 2011, and yet another Kashmiri Pandit, Ajay Pandita, was
elected sarpanch in a Muslim-majority village in Kashmir in 2020 (though he was
unfortunately killed in
cold blood by separatist terrorists, like many Kashmiri Muslims also are for
voting and contesting under the Indian constitutional setup – see, for example, news of
Wasim Ahmad Khanday, a Kashmiri Muslim sarpanch, killed after Ajay Pandita; in
fact, over half a score of sarpanches in Kashmir, mostly Muslims, have been killed by
terrorists since 2011), as have several others, just as Muslims have also been
elected sarpanch in some Hindu-majority villages in other parts of India, even
in recent years, as you can see here and here,
something also seen in municipal elections, as you can see here and
here. In
fact, Kashmiri Pandits have been elected not only sarpanch but even MLA from Muslim-majority
constituencies in Kashmir, the Habba Kadal
constituency in Srinagar having elected a Kashmiri Pandit as MLA at least five
times over, just as Muslims have also been elected MLAs from Hindu-majority
regions in mainland India, such as recently in Rajasthan’s Ramgarh constituency.
Even elsewhere in the Islamic world, in Iraq, Ammar Francis Boutros, a
Christian, won a
parliamentary seat representing the Muslim-majority province of Wasit (Al-Kut)
southeast of Baghdad where the number of Christian families can be counted on
one's fingertips, and the Iraqi judiciary has awarded the
death penalty to an ISIS terrorist for having raped a woman from Iraq’s
non-Muslim Yazidi minority. There are also several Muslim-majority
constitutional secular democracies like Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Burkina Faso (in
fact, only about half the
Muslim-majority countries are Islamic theocracies) -
this is worth noting for those wrongly suggesting that a Muslim majority
inevitably means a hardline theocracy, as the trailer of a hateful film promoted by the
BJP, The
Diary of West Bengal, explicitly claims, even further suggesting, as Hitler
claimed, that democracy is not good enough to deal with ‘anti-national’
minorities (so, should we have fascism in India? - how important retaining
democracy is, is explained by the authoritarian Chinese state’s suppressing news of the coronavirus
pandemic showed how Chinese citizens and the rest of humanity had to pay a very
heavy price for lack of democratic accountability there).
In Senegal, one such Muslim-majority (Senegal is over 95% Muslim)
constitutional secular democracy,
their first ever
elected president was Leopold Sedar Senghor,
a Christian. Janet Michael, a Palestinian Christian lady, was elected
mayor of Ramallah, Palestine, and Alees Thomas, also an Arab Christian lady, chaired
Bahrain's upper house of parliament. Non-Muslim Chinese-origin people like Henk Ngangtung and Basuki Tjahaja
have been elected governors of Jakarta in Indonesia. These facts are also worth
noting for those unduly bashing Londoners for having elected a Muslim mayor
(wrongly saying that non-Muslims can never get elected from Muslim-majority
constituencies), though that mayor, in fact,
demonstrated no extremist tendencies but their very opposite,
but some people have quoted him out of context to wrongly impute otherwise.
There are indeed many Hindus who reside with security of life and property in
Muslim-majority countries like the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Oman, Bahrain,
Qatar and Malaysia. In most Arab countries (though not including Saudi Arabia),
Indian expatriates have legally set up Hindu and Sikh temples, as you can see,
for example, here, here, here, here and here
(and no, the Hindu temple inaugurated by Narendra Modi in Abu Dhabi is NOT the
first ever Hindu temple even in the UAE, as you can see here, here, here and here,
and the late Sultan Qaboos of Oman, an Indophile who had pursued college in
India and who deepened strategic ties between Oman and India, personally took keen interest in
the upkeep of Hindu temples in his country) while they have indeed rightly disallowed
even their local Muslims to pray on the roadside (even in India, both Hindus and Muslims
have rightly been punished from time to time for prayer congregations while
obstructing public passage, and if some law-enforcers in India have gone soft
on such people, whatever their religious identity, as has happened often for
whatever reason, that is indeed wrong), and Middle Eastern and North African
governments have indeed often promptly taken action in cases of religious
vandalism or bigoted speech by Muslim extremists, as you can see, for example, here, here and here, with moderate Egyptian Muslims having
died protecting their Christian fellow citizens from Muslim extremists being conferred a
‘martyr’ status by the government,
for example. In fact, a column in
the Jerusalem Post, an Israeli newspaper seen widely as a Jewish right-leaning,
acknowledges that Jews are now safer in much of the Arab world (the column
specifically mentions Jews being a very well-integrated minority in Tunisia)
than many parts of the West, where Christian extremists and some
Nazism-influenced white locals continue to commit terrorist attacks and other
hate crimes against Jews (of which you can see some examples here, here, here, here, here and here,
and such elements have targeted Indian-origin Hindus too, as has been discussed
earlier). In Muslim-majority Malaysia, the state has come down very
hard on forced conversions of Hindu children
to Islam, arrested
Muslims engaging in anti-Hindu hate
speech and barred
notorious preacher Zakir Naik from addressing public gatherings when he made
bigoted utterances there. Malaysian Hindus have legally created a pilgrimage shrine at
the Batu Caves primarily dedicated to Lord Murugan, and the government of
Malaysia has, on bearing burial costs, buried
deceased Muslims and non-Muslim Bateks still following the indigenous faith
based on their respective customs. In Muslim-majority Bangladesh, whenever the
Awami League, seen as a relatively secular political party in that country (it
has been proactive in taking action in instances of violence or threats to
liberal Muslims and religious minorities, including Hindus, as you can see, for
example, here, here, here, here and here,
with the Hindu population there recently growing, something
accepted even by the BJP, and Awami League leaders
have even been on jihadist terrorists’ hit-lists),
has been in power, it has worked with India at checking jihadist
terrorism as also secessionist
insurgencies in Northeast India.
Not to deny that Muslim-majority countries, including Bangladesh and Malaysia,
do have Muslim politicians taking to ugly religion-based politics and pandering
to extremists, and some Muslim-majority countries too have locals subjecting
those of other religions to communal slurs and even Muslims of other
ethnicities to racial slurs, but the picture is not entirely as negative as
portrayed by some, and India also does unfortunately see hate crimes against
Dalits, intra-gotra couples and
so on, other than those from religious and racial minorities (such as from
Northeast India) facing sporadic slurs, and even Western countries do see hate
crimes on grounds of ethnicity and other factors, be it Canada (as you can see here and here), Sweden or
even New Zealand or Iceland;
so, it would not be appropriate to only look at Muslim-majority countries or
regions from the angle of extremism or to negatively stereotype all or most
Muslims (as much as much reform is certainly also required in the Islamic
world), and many Muslim-majority countries like the UAE, Qatar, Oman and
Malaysia have been much more peaceful and stable than several
Christian-majority countries in Africa and Latin America, or even a
Buddhist-majority country like Myanmar. Groups like Al Qaeda, the Taliban and
the ISIS, not elected by Muslims and dictatorially seeking to impose their
writ, are, no doubt, barbaric but it may be noted that they have killed more
liberal and moderate Muslims than non-Muslims, as you can see here, here, here and here,
and those in Muslim-majority countries fighting them on the ground risking
their lives, even protecting non-Muslims from them, have predominantly been
moderate Muslims, as you can see here, here, here and
here!
Very many
Kashmiri Muslims have indeed been deeply patriotic Indians, as you can see here, here, here and here, as many still continue to be, some known to me
personally even battling death-threats, and no, that does not at all
necessarily mean endorsing the BJP or all its policies in Kashmir, such as the
abrogation of Article 370. Many of the Kashmiri Muslims vocally hailing the BJP
and the abrogation of Article 370 have
been propped up by the BJP and given security. Contrary to what some portrayed, Article
370 had nothing to do with regulating the extent of central government funds
being poured into Kashmir. While the constitutionality of how the abrogation
was carried out is beyond the scope of this article, the Indian state, ever
since the accession of the princely state of J&K to India on 27th October
1947, has maintained for decades that J&K is an integral part of India,
even if with some special privileges in an asymmetrical federal system agreed
upon at the time of the accession of J&K to India. Given that the
abrogation of Article 370 was accompanied by such a harsh communication
blackout, which caused much hardship to citizens [that led to adverse effects
not only on businesses but, coupled with other means of
communication being disrupted, also medical treatment (even resulting in very tragic fatalities, with ambulances not being called in
time owing to no landline, mobile or internet connectivity for some months, and doctors could not access latest information about
Covid-19), schooling, university applications, transferring money to students outside the valley, checking on ailing relatives, funerals etc. for law-abiding Kashmiris, while
mobs continued to protest violently and militants continued to strike, the militants using satellite telephones], until then the longest ever internet shutdown in any democratic
country globally, coupled with detentions of several mainstream, non-separatist
Kashmiri political leaders subscribing to the Indian constitution for no crime committed by
them but to silence their voices, the move could not end stone-pelting or militancy,
in which non-Kashmiri Indian civilians, even if Muslims, have unfortunately been targeted, nor help win over Kashmiri Muslims (in fact, the move
irked even pro-India and politically ambivalent Kashmiri Muslims, as much as,
as mentioned earlier, some pro-BJP Kashmiri Muslim faces have indeed been
propped up), nor really inspire many Kashmiri Pandits to return to Kashmir (in
fact, many from the very few still staying there have felt deeply insecure,
even considering leaving the valley after some rather tragic and reprehensible
terrorist attacks targeting them even after the abrogation) nor encourage many
non-Kashmiri Indians to settle there. And the BJP still retaining special
statuses (under Articles 371A to H of the constitution relating to Northeast
Indian states that the BJP has explicitly promised to not amend) and domicile restrictions in states of Northeast India
(even strengthening domicile restrictions on buying land in Meghalaya as well as the Bodo-majority and Karbi-majority
areas of Assam, and
domicile restrictions do exist on owning property even in other hilly regions
with fragile ecosystems like Himachal Pradesh under Section 118 of the Himachal
Pradesh Tenancy and Land Reform Act, 1972, and have been demanded by Jammuite Hindus and Ladakhi Buddhists after the abrogation of Article 370 as well) and Scheduled
Tribe areas [under the Forest Rights Act, 2006, and the Panchayat Extension to
Scheduled Areas (PESA) Act, 1996] with their own history of separatist and
Maoist terrorism that have, for many decades, actually taken more lives than in
Kashmir (as you can see here and here) and have also caused mass exoduses of civilian
populations (as you can see here, here and here), these insurgencies also having been sponsored by foreign
powers (as you can see here, here, here, here and here), only exposes the hypocrisy of the BJP, and while some
may argue that the blanket communication blackout in Kashmir for months
together would have still helped the security forces in counterterror
operations, holding the entire regular personal and professional lives of very
many law-abiding fellow citizens hostage for months together is still not
acceptable and has not been done in other conflict zones in the country. The
BJP’s divergent approaches are quite obviously because it has managed to win elections
in Northeast India and tribal areas in mainland India (the BJP won 35 out of the 47
Scheduled Tribe seats in the
Lok Sabha elections in 2019), unlike in Kashmir, and reforms like allowing
progeny of J&Kite women married to non-J&Kite men a share in property
and giving citizenship to Hindu and Sikh refugees from Pakistan Occupied
Kashmir (POK) could have been brought in by the then BJP government-appointed
Governors’ administration in J&K (Governors were running the administration
since 20th June 2018 and Lieutenant Governors since 5th
August 2019) without wholesale abrogation too, given that Article 10 of the then
J&K constitution recognised the right to equality under Article 14 of the
Indian constitution. Also, the argument that Kashmiri militants can now be
lodged in jails and tried outside Kashmir is irrelevant, for even before the
abrogation, they were often transferred to jails in the city of Jammu, overall largely free of
terrorism, and if it is argued that the city of Jammu has also seen some
terrorist attacks, so have, rather unfortunately, many cities across mainland
India, even by some Kashmiri Muslims, as you can see here, for example (and attempts of terrorist attacks outside
Punjab have been made by Khalistani terrorists too, as you can see here, for example, which does not mean that the government can
or should, in general, restrict freedom of movement of citizens from
secessionist conflict zones). Nor, I repeat, has the BJP actually had a history
of being above appeasing separatists. After making much noise over the delay in
hanging Afzal Guru convicted for involvement in the reprehensible attack on the
Indian parliament in 2001, the BJP under PM Modi, as mentioned earlier,
contributed to having commuted the death sentence of Khalistani terrorist Balwant Singh
Rajoana, and I may add, even felicitated for their courage former Mizo separatist rebels, who had
taken Chinese state support, in the presence of Chinese officials! Not only
that, they have actually given blanket amnesty to Bodo separatist terrorists under Prime
Minister Modi and even
earlier under Prime Minister Vajpayee, including to those with a track record of killing unarmed
civilians. Mentioning how the vast majority of
Kashmiri Muslims felt aggrieved by and smelled hypocrisy in the
months-long communication blackout they will never forget does not widen the
gulf between them and mainland Indians, nor does mentioning, for that matter,
how like other residents of conflict zones globally, Kashmiri Muslims have
suffered gross human rights violations at the hands of rogue elements in the
Indian security forces [these human rights violations by rogue elements in the
Indian security forces have been acknowledged even by General VP Malik who led India to the victory in the Kargil war, other
military veterans like Major Gaurav Arya, and by Prime Minister
Narendra Modi and
former BJP defence ministers (both now no more) Arun Jaitley and Manohar Parrikar], something Kashmiri Muslims are indeed themselves very
well aware of; in fact, acknowledgement of genuine grievances with empathy by
more mainland Indians would help bridge divides [an approach more and more
Kashmiri Muslims should also adopt vis-à-vis the Kashmiri Pandits, and more
mainland Indians must also realise that Hindus will feel fully safe in Kashmir
only when Kashmiri Muslims feel fully integrated in the Indian national
mainstream, given that Hindus in the valley have been targeted by terrorists
time and again even after the abrogation of
Article 370 (just as only when the vast majority of Sikhs turned their
backs to the idea of Khalistan or at least practically pursuing it did Hindus
feel safe in Punjab, which they did not prior to that when the insurgency had engulfed Punjab),
and what can and should be done to the end of integrating Kashmiri Muslims can
be the subject of another article altogether].
********The overall excellent Netflix web series The Railway Men is basically themed
around the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, showcasing how the Bhopal railway station master
Ghulam Dastagir, incidentally a Muslim gentleman and a true hero indeed, saved hundreds of lives.
*********The Indian judiciary has indeed consistently displayed a proactive
stance in ensuring justice for the common people and upholding democratic
principles, often standing firm against the state's majoritarian agenda. In
landmark judgments, the Supreme Court has condemned
the state's sluggishness in addressing hate speeches, asserting that the
government has become impotent in timely action against such incitements.
Notably, the deferment
of the verdict on the Uttar Pradesh government's decision to publicly identify
protest participants against the Citizenship Amendment Act reflects a
commitment to safeguarding individual rights. Additionally, the Supreme Court's
admonishment
of Uttarakhand over hate speech at religious events underscores its commitment
to religious harmony and tolerance. Moreover, the judiciary's reprimand
of the Uttar Pradesh government for non-compliance in the Muzaffarnagar school
slapping case exemplifies its unwavering dedication to enforcing accountability
and protecting vulnerable individuals. Furthermore, by lambasting
the central government for its lethargy in implementing crucial directives, such as
registering unorganised sector workers and implementing the one nation one
ration card scheme, the Supreme Court has demonstrated a commitment to ensuring
social welfare and equitable access to resources for all citizens, as it has with electoral bonds. Through such
strong judgments and interventions, the Indian judiciary continues to serve as
a bulwark against encroachments on fundamental rights and liberties, ensuring
justice for all, as you can see here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here
and here.
By:
Karmanye Thadani
Knowledge Council
