Author: Simranjit Singh Mann*
Yesterday, 2 October 2016 our party men and I toured the villages on the Indo-Pakistan border in the Punjab. This border of the Punjab runs 553 kms from the North to the South of the Punjab. It is barricaded with a barbed wire fencing which is patrolled day and night by the Para-military Border Security Force, which is directly under the charge of the Union government in Delhi. It is much like the dreaded Berlin wall.
We visited village Mehidipur Village, which strangely is surrounded on all three sides by Pakistan. The paddy crop is ripe and fit to be harvested by combines. But the combines cannot go to such a village which is geographically surrounded by Pakistan. The state government, run by Parkash Singh Badal and his coalition with the traders and shopkeepers party, the BJP-RSS is not keen to help the farmers out of this economic dilemma they face. If the paddy crop is harvested the farmers who are neck deep in debt will benefit along with the poor labourers who depend on the produce of the farmers.
Coincidentally, yesterday while we were in this village Chief Minister Badal who supports Narinder Modi’s jingoistic policies was also scheduled to arrive a little later to address the rural inhabitants. We learnt that it was difficult for Badal to answer their questions as to why they had to suffer for the policies formulated in Delhi. After we had left this village Chief Minister came visiting. He did not receive a warm reception. The villagers shouted down Badal crying and yelling-“Badal Murdabad”, “Indian Army Go Back”, and “Khalistan Zindabad”. At the time of writing this report the Punjab police, wicked for its repression of human rights is making raids on the houses of those it identified for shouting slogans against Badal, the Army and Hindu India.
Badal was also asked why first in 1947 the Sikh’s saw the upheavals of partition which led to the ethnic cleansing of the entire Sikh population in West Punjab which is now in Pakistan. In 1962 mother’s had to give their sons to fight the Chinese in the higher Himalayas. Many sons did not come back and no effort was made by the Hindu state to find their bodies.
Soon after this the border villages of the Punjab were again evacuated as the Hindu state declared war on Islamic Pakistan in 1965. The civil Sikh population helped the army pull out their heavy guns from the marches with their newly acquired tractors. Then too their crops and means of livelihood were destroyed. Delhi was parsimonious with its relief and compensation to the farmers and the poor landless rural people. The villagers debts kept mounting, which are resulting in suicides almost daily in the Punjab. In contrast Modi has scratched and waived off debts of his Hindu rich and wealthy businessmen, amounting to Rs.43,000 crores.
In 1971 the Sikh’s suffered again when the Hindu state went war with Islamic Pakistan. Punjab and the Sikh’s suffered heavy losses in lives and the economy.
In 1984 the Hindu state in conjunction with the British and Soviet forces attacked the holiest Sikh shrine the Darbar Sahib (Golden Temple) and soon after this abominable, inhuman and criminal act the genocide of the Sikh’s by the Hindu state began. We have never forgotten these acts of barbarism and never forgiven them either.
We visited more villages on the border and at Khemkaran, a famous battle field of the 1965 war, we met many Hindu shopkeepers who were weary of another war, which this time may upgrade into a nuclear war, spearing none but the top BJP-RSS brass and Modi who has built himself a strong bunker much like Hitlers in his last days. The Premier will probably survive a nuclear holocaust. We wish him and his top BJP-RSS brass good luck.
The Sikh’s are opposed to war brought upon us by a Hindu majority, time and again. The Sikh’s have no participation in such decision making. The Sikh race will be completely annihilated if it comes to such a war. It is this reason that our party stands for a buffer independent and sovereign state for the Sikh’s which will separate three nuclear armed states, Islamic Pakistan to our West, Hindu India to our East and Communist China to the North.
It is ironic and sad that we can’t turn to America in appeal as its foreign policy had a rich legacy of democracy and safeguard of human rights. Right now it stands shoulder to shoulder in a defence security pact with THIS(Theocratic Hindu Indian State), the cause of all the troubles and our tribulations in South Asia.
Last not least we ask the UN and the International Society of the Red Cross to establish camps in our border areas and supervise orderly relief operations. For that human gesture we will forever be grateful.
* Author is former Indian parliamentarian and president of Shiromani Akali Dal Amritsar (Mann).