Summary Of Events - Divide And Conquer

[mskcan]

Interesting summary of events, concise and simplified...

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There is wisdom in brevity. But there is also a tendency to oversimplify. Often, this happens due to unfamiliarity, a constricted view or, a biased view, and then we can not understand why there is all that hoopla.

Events of 1984 were horrendous but they were just a symptom of deep problems and a congenitally inherited survival struggle of the Sikhs, starting, possibly, with the envious acts from the non-Sikh (Hindu) Indians that, lead to the martyrdom of Guru Arjan, the Fifth Guru.

Let me try to enumerate at few salient items in a hurry, to the best of my knowledge. They may not be in a correct order because I am not a historian:

Sikhs have been always treated like a foreign body under the skin because of their distinct and different appearance. People in Punjab have envied the Sikhs for their prosperity and their simple manners leading to an enviably happy life.

The Sikhs saved India from becoming entirely converted into a Muslim Kingdom. Within a century after Tenth Guru, the Sikhs drove the Moguls, who were converting the Hindus in India to Islam by force, out of the Indus valley. The Sikh kingdom bordered on Afghanistan on the west, China on the north and Delhi on the southeast.

Then the British started to gather control. They shrewdly weakened the Sikhs by creating internal conflict and factions among the heirs of the Sikh empire. This resulted in smaller kingdoms that were easily butted against each other.

The Sikhs were further weakened by dividing them into Jatt and non-Jatt with their separate laws and slowly, the Sikh kingdom was taken away from Sikhs until only a few independent kings, only the puppets of the British, in a small area of Punjab, were left.

At the time of Independence of India from the British in 1947, Punjab was further divided through the middle, half in India and half in Pakistan. This resulted in forced migration and uprooting of 99% of the Sikhs from West Pakistan and uprooting of many Muslims from Punjab. It is interesting that many Muslim communities remained in Punjab (as well as the rest of India) and continued to thrive while no Sikhs were tolerated in Pakistan after the partition.

This division of Punjab was accompanied by various promises made to the Sikhs assuring that Sikhs will be treated equitably and will be politically compensated for this devastation and loss of their autonomy. None of these promises were kept by the Congress party that came in power after the Independence of India.

Punjab is a land of many resources particularly the agriculture which, depends on the rivers that cross the land of Punjab (Punjab means the land of five rivers.) India cannot afford to lose control of these rivers. Besides, Punjab is a territorial state. The entire India was divided into various states. This division was based on the language spoken in that particular state. But Punjab was left with no language to call its own because the government did not have the courage to let it be called Punjab (a Punjabi speaking state.)

The Sikhs soon realized that they have been given the short end of the stick and they have no place to call their own with their own language. They demanded the right to have Punjabi in Punjab. The entire sequence of events is given in the SGPC white paper in the link I gave before.

In short, the Non-Sikhs of Punjab disowned their mother tongue, Punjabi. Punjab was divided into several parts with a very small Punjab. The rest of Punjab was divided into Himachal, Haryana, and union territory. This division of Punjab was based on the census showing where the Punjabi speaking people were a majority. The only problem is that for the census, all the Punjabi speaking non Sikhs (Hindu) declared their language to be Hindi even though they did not know a word of Hindi.

They did this because of fear created by the Arya Smaaj (a Hindu party) that if Punjab was large, only the Sikhs will have greater power. Thus, in the end, Sikhs were the only ones who pushed for their mother tongue, and the area declared as Punjabi speaking (Punjab) is about 1/10th of the original Punjab. The Punjabi speaking Muslims in Pakistan have also faced a similar discrimination at the hands of the non-Punjabi Muslims.

After this terrible division of Punjab, disproportionate amount of water from the rivers in Punjab continues to be diverted to other states. This has created uproar among the farmers in Punjab. As a result, there was a treaty between the central government and Punjab, which, was never implemented. The electricity produced in Punjab, by the waters of Punjab is rationed, controlled and supplied to Punjab from outside Punjab. Most of industry is diverted out of Punjab. These are just a few examples of the central government (read Hindu) mistrust of Punjab.

In my opinion, the central government cannot sleep well unless the Sikhs were so weak that they would stop making these silly demands. But weakening the Sikhs has not been easy. So, there has been a long term plan to destroy them slowly. Alcohol consumption is promoted in Punjab. Sikhs are being destroyed morally by ridiculing them in the media and in the movies, by altering their history in the text books, destroying the original manuscripts, causing internal conflicts with cleverly written articles and books arousing a new controversy everyday, and by using the “Bin Laden” strategy, viz., elevate and support some charismatic people who can be then used, to ignite internal strife.

When this did not succeed very well, people from other sects like, the Nirankari, were given a free reign to tease and desecrate the Sikh ethos, with full and open police support, to create violent upheaval among the Sikhs. This allowed the police to come down on the Sikhs with a heavy hand and to further demoralize them. Alas the Sikhs were still strong and they continued to make demands for their rights.

The conspiracy finally succeeded in creating a greater conflict among the Sikhs. Sikh anger resulting from unchecked acts of the Nirankaris and the Hindus became strong enough to justify retaliation (using the army) at a scale that would cripple the Sikhs completely. Sikhs can never be crippled completely, but the events of 1984 were the result of this well orchestrated conspiracy of the Indian government combined with the stupidity of the Sikh leaders who took the bait and misjudged the minority strength of the Sikhs in India.

There was a pre planned simultaneous attack on all the Sikh shrines, throughout India, on a day of a major religious martyrdom day celebration when, most Sikhs would be visiting these places of worship. There is no justification for such heinous crime by the government of India and no apology will be ever enough. As I said before, add to this the stupidity of Sikh leaders and crimes that are inevitably, committed by both sides during such circumstances. No press was allowed in Punjab during this operation. This allowed manipulation of news. Sikh crimes (if any) were highlighted to justify the genocide of Sikhs.

Since then, many commissions have come and gone to pacify the Sikhs but nothing concrete is done and nothing will be done. Everyone is hoping that once the present generation, along with all its witnesses, is dead. Everything will be forgotten. Sikhs in India look at their neighbors who seemingly, do not harbor any enmity, are nice and friendly for all practical purposes. Little do they care to know that their fathers disowned their own mother tongue, shot themselves in the foot and stabbed the Sikhs in the back, just to make sure that the Sikhs cannot be strong politically.

But all this angers the Sikhs who think, and who know the truth. The solution, in my opinion, is not separation from India but to be strong where the strength is important, i.e. spiritual, intellectual, and technological strength. The weapon of today is the keyboard and peaceful action, educating others regarding Sikhi and the fate of Sikhs in India. We need to stop brandishing the swords and we need to break away from the image of violence. In other words, stop acting like clowns.

We need leaders who would put Panth first and personal preferences last. Almost half of the India belonged to Sikhs in the past. Why do we want to give it up for a very small and a non viable piece of land? Guru has always uprooted the Sikhs for a purpose. We need to realize that, even though Punjab, the land of the gurus is always close to our heart, the entire world is Sikh country.

The real Punjab is now long gone. We must never forget, but we need to stop licking our wounds and we need to work on bringing the utopian 'kingdom of heaven' the "Halemi Raj" (74:4) into this world, as well as in Punjab, where everyone can be true to God while following one’s own path or religion. We need to become activists, to nurture peace and justice, in the entire world. The world has no choice but to become the United Nations of the World, where all the resources will be shared one day. I have a dream too, to see the same old Punjab as united in the near future. I have a dream to see a united Punjab in a united India. - Y Singh

Here are some more links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikh_Confederacy

http://www.panjabilok.net/faith/sikh/sikh_period.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Blue_Star

http://www.sikh-history.com/sikhhist/ev ... ck841.html

[HSD*^]

err, yeah ok sounds good. so whats the plan then?