Sant Jarnail Singh ji

[Simran9]

J.S.T.: What about the statements that suggest that Sikhs are kes-dhari [sporting unshorn hair]Hindus? You yourself wrote in The Wall Street Journal (Oct. 12, 2001) that Sikhism is a branch of Hinduism.

K.S.: That is correct. Sikhs are kes-dhari Hindus. Their religious source is Hinduism. Sikhism is a tradition developed within Hinduism. Guru Granth Sahib reflects Vedantic philosophy and Japji Sahib is based on the Upanishads.

J.S.T.: Those are loaded statements. You could be accused of blasphemy and summoned to the Akal Takht.

K.S.: They don't have the guts to summon me. They only go after the weak and the timid...

What are your opinions on this?

I wish I could kick this guy @ @

[Guest mehtab]

i actually laughed at his statement They don't have the guts to summon me. They only go after the weak and the timid...

its like they say in Punjabi 'shota bachha dharminder di acting karda aa"

[Balwinder Singh]

J.S.T.: What about the statements that suggest that Sikhs are kes-dhari [sporting unshorn hair] Hindus? You yourself wrote in The Wall Street Journal (Oct. 12, 2001) that Sikhism is a branch of Hinduism.

K.S.: That is correct. Sikhs are kes-dhari Hindus. Their religious source is Hinduism. Sikhism is a tradition developed within Hinduism. Guru Granth Sahib reflects Vedantic philosophy and Japji Sahib is based on the Upanishads.

J.S.T.: Those are loaded statements. You could be accused of blasphemy and summoned to the Akal Takht.

K.S.: They don't have the guts to summon me. They only go after the weak and the timid...

What are your opinions on this?

I wish I could kick this guy @ @

This clearly reflects that he doesn't have any understanding of Sikhism.He s

tudied too much regarding sikh history but fails to get an iota of the very philosphy of Sikhism.As I said he also mentioned Guru Gobind Singh(who gave new shape to Sikhism) a "Hindu" warrior.

But as I said he did give up his rank at Indian parliament and gave the following speech in parliament:

1984 Assault on Amritsar

Sardar Khuswant Singh's protest in the Indian Parliament

Source: The Sikh Review, June 2001

"I have many unpalatable truths to tell. Bear with me till I have finished;

thereafter you will be more then welcome to refute them if you can. Although

I am only a nominated Member of this House, I make bold to assert that I

speak on behalf of 14 million of your fellow citizens known as Sikhs. I go

further: what you have heard, and may hear from other Sikh members of the

Ruling Congress party does not echo the sentiment of the community.

We have had six hours of debate during which we have heard discourses on

Punjab politics, Akali factionalism, and a lot of recrimination between

parties. There was total lack of a sense of gravity of the situation facing

the country, which is on brink of an abyss, total absence of realization

that the country is breaking up, a total absence of any viable suggestion of

what we should do.

My heart is very full, but I will be as unemotional and objective as I can.

All I will say about the army action is that it was a tragic error of

judgment, a grievous mistake and miscalculation, which will cover many pages

in the history of India, Punjab and the Sikhs. I will dwell in greater

detail on how to retrieve the situation.

Perhaps the best of examining the thesis of the White paper placed before us

is to go backwards, to see the situation today, and go back to the genesis

of the sorry business. The situation today is that the religious

susceptibility of every Sikh has been deeply wounded. 99 percent of these

Sikhs had nothing whatsoever

to do with Bhindranwale, Akalis, the government

or politics of any sort. This action has humiliated the pride of a very

proud people. A proud people do not forget or forgive very easily.

You have divided Hindus and Sikhs: the wedge was driven by Akalis, widened

by Bhindranwale and made unbridgeable by you. Sikhs who. Till yesterday,

regarded themselves as more than first-class citizens are now treated worse

than third-class citizens. Discrimination against them continues at airports

and check points on rails and roads. It has created a sense of isolation and

alienation among them. They are beginning to ask themselves: "Do Indians

still regard us one of them?"

This being the tradition, ask yourselves two questions. One, could any

action which alienated the feelings of 14 million fellow citizens, who form

the backbone of our defense services, provide more than half the food for

the country and live on the most sensitive border facing Pakistan be ever

justified? Second, is it really true, as maintained in the government's

White Paper, that it had no choice except to mount a military invasion on

the Golden Temple?

My answer to both these questions is a categorical "No".

The White paper has much to say about the Akali intransigence, its

constantly changing stance, making new demands and going back on points on

which agreements had been reached under pressure of extremists. It says

nothing on government's own shifting positions and resiling from solemnly

given under takings. I will never go over them again, but it must be

recorded that every breakdown of discussions, the Prime Minister came out

with the stock reply that some matters concerned neighboring states which

had to be consulted. Apparently, in two years such consultations were not

concluded.

The White Paper also makes no mention of the Home Minister's repeated

statements in both the Houses of Parliament

, and the PM's assurances outside

Parliament that the government had no intention to move the army into the

Golden Temple. Nor does it tell us in any convincing detail how many men

there were with Bhindranwale and how they came by the kinds of weapons the

government now alleges they had with them.

The major question, which is left unanswered, is whether or not the

government had any alternative other than sending in the army into the

Golden Temple. I can suggest two, neither of which has been mentioned in the

White Paper. First, was a commando action, men in plainclothes, designed

only to take Bhindranwale and his men alive or dead. This would have spared

us the loss of innocent lives as well as the massive destruction of scared

property.

The second was for the army to cordon off the Golden Temple complex, occupy

the Guru ka Langer, cut off the supply of food, fuel and electricity and

force Bhindranwales' men to come out of the Akal Takhat and on the Parikarma

to fight.

The result would have been quite different. However, neither of these

alternatives was given serious consideration and, instead we had six army

divisions moved into the Punjab (more then we had with three wars with

Pakistan), a force led by a Lt. General and two Major Generals, equipped

with armored personnel carriers, tanks, mountain guns - all to flush out no

more than 50-100 men armed with nothing more than sophisticated Light

Machine Guns, antiquated 303 rifles, some hand grenades and a rusty bazooka.

I visited the Golden Temple a month after the army action, interviewed many

people who were in the complex at the time and saw the damage done with my

own eyes. Let me tell you, and through you, the rest of country, that this

White Paper has grossly underestimated the number of lives lost, over looked

mentioning that the dead include hundreds of totally innocent men, women and

children. The government spokesme

n have repeated ad nauseam that no damage

was caused to the Harmandir; as a matter of fact, it stills bears fresh

bullet marks by the score; a hand written copy of the Granth pierced by a

bullet; a blind raagi, Amreek Singh was killed inside while doing kirtan;

the Akal Takhat is a total wreck and, besides, the entire archives

consisting of nearly 1000 manuscript copies of the Granth Sahib and

innumerable Hukumnamas bearing signatures of our Gurus have gone up in

flames. What is more painful about this vandalism is that it took place

after resistance has been overcome.

Now we are talking of the healing touch. The place of 'honour' in inverted

commas should go to the government controlled media - All India Radio and

Doordarshan, and an abjectly subservient national press. For days on end TV

screen showed the Harmandir Sahib at a distance so that no damage to it

could be seen: and the destroyed Akal Takhat was carefully kept out of view.

At first the press told us that 13 women had been killed, then no women had

been killed, then that they had been killed by a grenade thrown by an

extremist. That Bhindranwale had committed suicide, he had been killed by

his own men, and ultimately that he had been fallen in the battle; that

hashish, opium and heroin had been found - then that this was found outside

the Temple; that women of loose character were with the extremists, some of

them pregnant. How more pregnant with lies can anyone's imagination be? It

is evident what you have done; you have not broken the back of terrorism.

---------

The infamous army assault on the holiest of Sikh shrines in June 1984 marks

a watershed in the history of post-Partition India. The trauma has burnished

deep into the psyche of the Sikhs and has forever become part of the Punjabi

folklore, wherein Sant Bhindranwale, retd General Shahbeg Singh, Beant

Singh, Satwant Singh and Kehar Singh, Jinda and Sukha s

tand tall as

hero-martyrs of the modern era.

The agony of the Sikhs is all the more hurtful because in June 1984 leaders

of other communities maintained deafening silence; many even expressed

jubilation. Majoritarian press routinely labeled Bhindranwale as a terrorist

and praised Indira Gandhi. One wonders how the deeply religious people of

India could suffer such paralysis under hypnotic - if meretricious -

propaganda of Indira Gandhi's government

Parliament was significantly insensitive. The lone voice of the protest came

from the redoubtable historian, Sardar Khushwant Singh, then a member of

Rajya Sabha.

- Editor Sikh Review