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RSS TO SET
PUNJAB ABLAZE?
By
I. K. Shukla
True to its commitment to destroy national diversity and thus to destroy India, RSS has
fired its first salvo in Punjab, and with quite a bang. In the Chandigarh meet presided over
by K.S. Sudarshan, the new Chief of RSS, on Sunday 30 April 2000, the RSS has thrown the
gauntlet to the Sikhs. The Sikhs have responded to it, as was expected of them, by taking it up. Eighteen Sikh organizations protested this onslaught on and affront to their identity by taking out a 7- kilometer long march to the RSS huddle heavily protected by the police which banned any public protest within 500 meters.
The affront was galling, it was vocal, brazen, and deliberate. It was wilfully
The Chief declared Khalsa Panth to be part of Hinduism. Just as Dalits can't claim a separate
identity in order to escape the iniquity and indignity of the caste system, and must be coerced
into silence, thus becoming subsumed within the glorious appellation Hindu, so too Sikhs must
be co-opted or coerced into submission towards the same end. Vote bank politics (the ladder to
power), again to the fore, is now a bloody addiction. It is nakedly communal, patently criminal.
This means turning history on its head. And, that is what saffron brigade has been busy doing
all over. Another invidious spectacle of "coming back home" to be staged by the RSS storm
troopers by muscle power. Sikhs would respond in kind. They were never known to be lacking in
it. Nor are they known to flinch in the face of bullies and blackguards. However, what they lack
at the moment is the state monopoly of terrorism, presently the exclusive preserve of the bhagwa
brigands.
Undeterred by the minatory police force and rag-tag bhagwa brigade what the leaders and
spokesmen of Sikhs have said is worth recalling and recording in that their reaction is instant,
loud and clear. The General Secretary of theAkali Dal, Amritsar Chapter, Jag Mohan Singh Toni,
warned against disruption of the Sikh community, and pledged to take on this communal menace
peacefully as long as possible, and eventually to undo it by resort to arms in accord with the
teachings of the tenth guru, Guru Govind Singh. He also appealed to every member of Sikh
community to specify in his will that his last rites be not performed in the cremation grounds
marked for Hindus. This is just the beginning, and tempers are running too high for comfort
already. Seeds of evil have been sown. They threaten to sprout soon in the colors of blood and
fire.
However, Kanwar Pal Singh, of the Dal Khalsa, put his warning in the broader parameters of
ancient Indian identity when he said that he envisaged a long drawn struggle between the forces
seeking a centrist, monolithic society and those committed to a multichrome and pluralistic one.
Despite this conceptual leaven redeeming the imminent clash and raising it to a higher level
in the context of holistic India, there is no doubt that the die is cast. Aided and abetted
by the militaristic mayhem of the state (New Delhi in particular), and the abundant funds at
the disposal of the Hindu fanatics, their aggressive drive can be counted on to engulf Punjab
once again in blood and fire. Khalistan would prove to have been a pygmy in terms of its havoc
in Punjab. The faux Hindus seem poised to plunge Punjab once again in incomparably greater
turmoil, longer travail, and bloodier flames.
If
Punjab is allowed to suffer rupture, its example can snowball. What Sikhs are objecting to
is schismatic divide stamped with blood. Their intra-sect quarrels need not detain us here. And
the Indian state or polity will only spread the malaise and make it incurable by siding with
any one of them. But, the RSS is posing a far graver danger to the Sikh fabric of
Punjab. It
is threatening to rend the social cohesion built on communitarian practice over several
centuries. Sikhs have felt free to choose any political ideology, or party based thereon, as
others in India have been, at least until lately. But forcibly to bundle and tar them as Hindu
is both an injury and an insult. Centuries ago they determined their religious identity. It
to be distinctive. It was. It parted company with Hinduism that was rooted in degrading caste
stratification and inhuman mores. Now to tell them they were wrong, that they must "come back"
to an iniquitous and ungodly system of humiliation and deprivation, is an open invitation to
massive civil strife.
And this, on our sensitive border with Pakistan makes it more heinous, and unforgivably
treasonable. This treason must be punished ruthlessly and soon by the people, and not only
of Punjab. Fostering treason , spreading disaffection, splitting the nation along communal
lines, endangering its security by repression of minorities, disparaging our freedom fighters,
installing fiction as history, denigrating and denying the contributions of various
communities, poisoning the bureaucracy-military-police with the communal venom, inviting
aliens to open their espionage offices in Delhi, secretly entering into deals with
corporations without taking the Parliament in confidence and thus defying popular will,
compromising economic and political sovereignty and selling off national resources for a song,
hurling abuses at the Constitution and defying all laws of the land, the saffron brigade will
do what it does best: wreck the nation, kill the citizens in thousands in wave after calculated
wave of pogroms, waste the resources of the nation through malfeasance and fraud, swelling
personal fortunes and party coffers. This authoritarian and recidivist roller coaster must be
stopped.
These crimes, this corruption, have gone on unbearably long. Unless a people's front
dislodges it from power soon, it will have done the society and polity irreparable
It hasn't forgiven V.P.Singh for redressing a historical wrong to the Dalits, for letting them
stand with dignity and claim their share in the national wealth that mostly they produced.
Similarly, it will not forgive Sikhs if they insist on self-assertion, self-esteem, and
communitarian solidarity cemented by history and sanctified by a philosophical distinction.
And that would mean a clash of arms.
Does India afford that? Let not Bharat soak
Punjab in flames , and turn India to ashes. We
need India alive, not Punjab dead. It is time secular and democratic forces sat up and took
note of the imminent threat to Punjab. Minimizing it would just be a cover for their sloth
smugness. The bloody bull dozer of Toyota Yatras can be stopped in its tracks before it begins
its death roll laying Punjab to waste, as it has done quite successfully all over India, and
gone unpunished for its crimes in any court of law, its preceptors and perpetrators instead of
landing in slammer, lording it over India. Violence should not be allowed to win again. Hatred
should not be allowed to drive a stake in the heart of Punjab.Those defying the
calling for its abolition, and ever prone to defying all norms of civility, must not be
allowed to hold the nation hostage to their brigandage.
Source:
truthindia Dated:
May 2, 2000
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