Editorial
ਹਮ ਰੁਲਤੇ ਫਿਰਤੇ ਕੋਈ ਬਾਤ ਨ ਪੂਛਤਾ
I
The richest word in Indian lexicon as well as in majority of Indian languages is Amrit. It stands for a miraculous, wholesome, liquid which is believed to immortalize the mortal, rejuvenate the degenerate, energize the powerless and turn demons into angels. Its administration to individuals and communities, nations and their body politic is supposed to usher in an age of the highest virtues of universal goodwill, co-existence, equality, fraternity, justice and complete absence of hatred, violence, and aggressive domination of the powerful over the marginalized and the weak. But, such is the curse of the modern age and times in India that this richest word Amrit has been turned on its head and made to combine with the modern era of Indian political history to call it as ‘Amrit Kaal ka Mahotsav”, which it actually is not. Like the double speak, catch phrases and slogans employed in George Orwell’s (June 25, 1903 – January 21, 1950) two famous dystopian novels “Animal Farm” (1945) and “Nineteen eighty four” (1949) about the totalitarian regimes, some of the terminology employed by the present ruling majoritarian regime in India does not mean what it actually says. The duplicity, hollowness and aggressiveness and hatred towards certain communities and icons of Indian freedom struggle and earlier ruling dispensations though sugar-coated in deeply meaningful and rich verbiage such as “Sab ka Sath sab ka Vikas, Sab ka Vishvas” actually reeks of Orwellian contempt of constitutional democracy and democratic values enshrined in Indian constitution. The immediate victims of this vindictiveness, disguised as justice and equality are the Indian minorities and, the marginalized sections of society. It would be interesting to go through some of the double speak quotable quotes from the two above mentioned novels of George Orwell and find a striking parallel between the Orwellian portrayals of totalitarian regime and the present Indian dictatorial / autocratic Indian regime disguised as democratic governance. Here is a sample of ten Orwellian double speaks quotes:
1. War is peace. Freedom is slavery, Ignorance is strength.
2. All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
3. They had come to a time when no one dare to speak his mind, when fierce, growling-dogs roamed everywhere, and when you had to watch your comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes.
4. If liberty means anything at all, it means that right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
5. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever.
6. Double think means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both.
7. If you kept the small rules, you could break the big ones.
8. The best books are those that tell you what you know already.
9. Four legs good, two legs bad.
10. Who controls the past controls the future, who control the present controls the past.
It is this kind of Orwellian totalitarian regime because of its brute majority in the two houses of parliament presided over by the biased and discriminating presiding officers which governs India at present. According to one of the most widely read and learned columnist, political analyst and contributing editor Partap Bhanu Mehta, “India’s political system is veering towards a full-blown tyranny. The targeting of Opposition leaders leading to the farcical disqualification of Rahul Gandhi, the hounding of civil society and research organisations, censorship of information, the suppression of protest, are harbingers of a full-blown system of rule where all the interlocking parts add up to the one objective of tyrannical rule: To create pervasive fear.” (The Indian Express, March 28, 2023)
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II
This is the prevailing situation in India. What prevails in the State of Punjab is more dismal and frustrating though due to slightly different reasons. So let us now analyze Punjab scenario. The fact is that Punjab and its majority community has been receiving a raw deal since independence, It is still being discriminated and victimized under the new political dispensation at the centre. After briefly cataloguing a long series of the betrayal of promises, injustices and excesses committed against Punjab and the Sikhs in the past in post-independence India, we shall Endeavour to highlight its (Punjab’s) present economic distress, political paralysis religious degradation, social and cultural degeneration and existential alienation. After making the highest number of sacrifices during the struggle for independence as per their numerical strength in comparison to the bigger Indian minority community and the biggest majority community, the Sikhs could not attain any independent country of their own as the other bigger minority which got their own sovereign country namely Pakistan and the biggest community which got India or Bharatvarsh or Hindustan at the time of India’s Partition. The Sikhs remained bereft of their independent nation and country partially due to their minuscule numerical strength which could not qualify them for their independent nation and partly due to the tall promises made by the biggest majority to the Sikhs to get a region carved for the Sikhs within an independent India where the Sikh could “feel the glow of independence” and partly due to the paternal patriarchal and cultural roots which the Sikhs shared with the biggest majority.
Soon after the partition of the country, all the promises made to the Sikhs and assurances given to the Sikhs by the majority community were forgotten or implemented more in breach than in their earnest fulfillment. Not only Punjab State, the last to be reorganized on the linguistic basis in 1966 like the other States of India reorganized earlier and that too after a long saga of sacrifices made by the Sikhs, its size and territory was also reduced to the minimum possible due to the betrayal of the bigger community which refused to own their mother tongue and accept Punjabi as their State language. This was the first betrayal which resulted in snatching the newly built city beautiful Chandigarh built specially as Punjab’s Capital to compensate for the loss of Lahore after partition. It was followed by a string of other discriminatory measures such as State’s loss of complete control of Punjab over its river waters in gross violation of the established international Riparian principles governing the management of river waters and its governing body, Bhakra Beas Management Board (BBMB) keeping away of several contiguous Punjabi speaking areas of Punjab, not allotting any heavy industry to Punjab for revenue and employment generation, and not granting financial assistance to the State to effectively guard its long porus border with inimical Pakistan against intrusion of terrorists, smugglers, drugs in Punjab and India, not to mention any kind of recognition of Punjab’s contribution of producing record quantity of food grains and turning India from a food deficient country to a food surplus state.
Now partly due to the continuous discrimination of the central Government against Punjab and partly due to the extreme opportunism, expediency, self aggrandizing character, lining their own pockets and misappropriating public funds from the State exchequer and not providing required health care and educational facilities to the citizen of Punjab by the ruling politicians of both the majority political parties which have been ruling Punjab almost alternatively, Punjab State and its hard working citizens especially farmers, the state of Punjab has been burdened with the seemingly insurmountable debt of around 3,12,758 crores. After compulsory debt servicing by way of paying monthly interest on this mountain of debt and meeting committed liabilities like payment of salaries, pensions, very little part of its annual budget is left for the development of the State. With very modest revenue generation without any new taxes and stoppage of GST cess payment by the centre to states after the end of promised five years period by the centre.
Whatever concessions and facilities to the people are being provided to the people like free electricity upto 300 units, free education and health care and employment to around twenty seven thousand hundred people, free travel to women passengers in State owned buses – all these facilities are being provided by borrowing more and more rather than through generation of State’s own revenue by the newly formed State Government from its own sources. All this messing up with the public funds by the corrupt political leadership of the past and continuous borrowing by the present seemingly clean ruling dispensation, Punjab is falling deeper and deeper into the debt trap. With the hostile government at the centre, frequent vagaries of nature resulting in loss of crops and declining water table, mounting expenses of maintaining law and order and rising inflation, flight of productive young human resource and capital to foreign lands, the economic scenario in the present state of Punjab is alarmingly horrifying, There seems to be no silver lining at the end of the deeply dark tunnel of economic profligacy. After all these acts of omission and commission, the present government’s dream of building a Rangla Punjab seems more of romantic pipe dream rather than making an economically viable State.
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III
On the political front, Punjab and its people, primarily the Sikhs have been the victims of a less than mediocre, inefficient, indiscrete and unscrupulous political leadership so far barring a few exceptions. After initial few years of progress, prosperity and surplus budgets and commendable progress, there has been a dearth of visionary, iconic and imaginative leadership which could realize the implications of Sikhs being a minority community in the independent India and the prospect of its being always ruled by a majority community. With the employment of accepted tools of deft diplomacy cooperative co-existence in the light of its harmonious relationship with the majority community during their historical past and its active participation and phenomenal contribution to the national development, it could seek and receive maximum benefits for the progress and welfare of its own people and Punjab State, instead of their continuous confrontation with the central government resulting in senseless violence and damage to the Sikhs. While the congress leadership, remained ridden with factionalism and individual rivalries among them, the Akali leadership, being too naïve and too selfish and self centred, kept ruling on the basis of stoking the religious sentiments of the Sikhs. Despite their realization of impossibility and futility of ever attaining an independent, sovereign State of Khalistan in independent India, the Akali leadership adopted an Ostrich like attitude burying it head in the sand, when a fringe section among the Sikhs took over the Sikh leadership during the dark decade of 1980s. Moreover, this leadership became extremely selfish and corrupt much to the damage to its population by failing to generate adequate employment through promotion of small scale industries. The net result of these lapses on the part of Punjab leadership is the emergence of a political vacuum. Pushing aside these two representative political parties of Punjab, a completely new political dispensation has emerged as the ruling party in Punjab with an overwhelming majority. It would be too early and immature to evaluate its working, though its leadership’s intentions and performance so far seems to be satisfactory.
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IV
Apart from the deterioration in economic and political sphere in Punjab the biggest fall and degeneration in Punjab and among the Sikhs has been in the religious sphere. And the biggest failure within this field has been their inability in the maintenance of Sikh identity, especially among the Sikh youth. A random survey, in all probability, is likely to show that more than six out of every ten Sikh youth have shed their Sikh identity and become apostate. Sikh identity with keeping bread, unshorn hair and wearing a turban has been an instinctive and religious / natural bulkwark against smoking, consumption of drugs and indulgence in some other social evils. With the shedding of Sikh identity has gone all these inhibitions, moral checks and balances which Sikhi and Sikh way of life had imposed on those born in Sikh families and to Sikh parents. Equally distressing has been the role or indifference and helplessness of Sikh parents and religious leaders, preachers and religious bodies who have failed to curb the evil of apostasy among the Sikh youth and inculcate Sikh values and Sikh way of life among the Sikh youth. Sikhi is a discipline and a way of life adopted instinctively and voluntarily and inculcated by one’s parents, peers and religious icons which has been practiced hereditarily and voluntarily and through its propagation by religious preachers. With the unprecedented bombardment of undesirable content through the audio-visual electronic social media including television, internet and other social platforms and exposure to alternate ways of life and failure of traditional ways of Sikhi propagation, the Sikh youth feels suddenly liberated and free to indulege in every undesirable activity from which he had hitherto been morally inhibited due to his / her birth in a Sikh family. Combined with lack of opportunities to find a meaningful employment either in agriculture with shrinking land holdings and getting largerly mechanized and lack of dignified jobs as per their hereditary aspirations in the existing very little industry in Punjab, the Sikh youth feels completely alienated and frustrated. With easy availability of highly damaging drugs due to a close politician – drug smuggler nexus, the modern liberated and unemployed Sikh youth have become the greatest victims to drug addiction, petty crime bordering on gangsterism and desperate flight to foreign shores without any clear destination or skill to get employed. It has become an existential dilemma for both the unemployment Sikh youth and their parents.
On the other hand, the premier Sikh religious bodies primarily the SGPC have strayed away from their assigned duties of propagation of Sikhism due to the stranglehold of politics and politicians over it. Politicians have found an easy entry into these religious bodies due to the adoption of electoral system and parliamentary, democratic, legislative system replacing the age-old faith based Gurmatta system in the management of Sikh Gurdwaras. This election system was demanded by the Sikhs themselves in the 1920s after a long spell of protests and sacrifices and accepted by the then British government. But after some success in Gurdwara management in the initial stages, this electoral remedy has proved worst than the disease. Now the politicians, some of them with a criminal past, can freely be elected both to the SGPC as well as state legislative assembly alternatively or simultaneously and some of them have even been the presidents of the SGPC. Politics and politicians have ruined this august Sikh body and has failed to perform its primary function of propagation of Sikhism. Politics and whims of its political overlords have resulted in getting Haryana Sikh shrines separated from SGPC and their failure in enactment of proposed All India Sikh Gurdwaras Act which at one stage had seemed a near possibility. It had been the brainchild of the same Sikh political leadership which stunted its passage at the most crucial stage when it suddenly dawned upon it that the enactment of such an all India Gurdwara Act would curtail its own power control over the All India Gurdwara Body after a similar election on all India basis. Moreover, this damage done by the entry of politics and politicians has not remained confined to the SGPC alone but have procolated to some other august Sikh Institutions like Sri Akal Takht and SGPC controlled educational institutions. Barring one or two incumbents, easily pliable men with less than ideal integrity and character and of mediocre intellectual calibre have been appointed as Jathedars of Sri Akal Takht and other seats of temporal power. They have been acting and behaving as per the whims and political priorities of their appointing overloads. One of them has been excommunicating, then pardoning and again excommunicating the same person, a cult figure heading an anti Sikh sect despite several representations, memoranda and resolutions by a large number of Sikh organizations to streamline the appointment of Jathedar Sri Akal Takht and setting up of a secretariat of Sikh professionals from different fields to resolve Sikh issues. Politics has remained dominant in the working of this august institution..
Finally, after the majority of the Sikhs in Punjab and all over India have clearly refused to support the demand for an independent Sikh homeland of Khalisatan after having undergone the traumatic experience of the darkest decade of 1980s and realizing the futility of opting for the formation of an unviable, land locked theocratic state, a miniscule section among the Sikhs in Punjab and a similar very small section among diaspora Sikhs in countries like UK, Canada, USA and Australia have been raising the bogey of Khalistan. The latter have been clandestinely funding, motivating, training and planting some Sikh youth in Punjab as is being witnessed recently in Punjab. All these activities bode ill for the State of Punjab as well as the Sikhs all over India. The vocal section of diaspora Sikhs demanding Khalistan and indulging in acts of vandalism at religious places of the majority community of India do not realize the serious implications and consequences of their indiscrete acts and the damage being done to the cause of Sikhism and Sikhs in India and even in the countries of their own domicile. The Sikhs have neither suffered religious persecution to the extent of Jewish persecution at the hands of Hitlerian Nazis in Europe, nor have the caliber and brilliance of Jews nor even the international support for forming an independent, sovereign Sikh State as in the case of Jews who have succeeded in carving out an independent Jewish State of Israel in the teeth of overwhelming Islamic opposition. So let sanity and introspection prevail amongst us and let peace prevail. On the other hand, a lot needs to be done to provide quality education to every Sikh child and healthcare to every Sikh citizen and raise the status of Sikh community to be a civil society.
To conclude, the entire economic, political, existential and religious scenario among the Sikhs is dismal and frustrating. Every enlightened, sensitive, and intellectually awakened and devout Sikh without exception feels highly anguished, disturbed and desperate at the present state of affairs in Punjab and world over and prays instinctively for the Divine grace to help us to set our house in order. May Waheguru listen to our prayers and enable us to realize our potential as Sikhs and set our house in order.
ਜੋ ਹਮਰੀ ਬਿਿਧ ਹੋਤੀ ਮੇਰੇ ਸਤਿਗੁਰਾ ਸਾ ਬਿਿਧ ਤੁਮ ਹਰਿ ਜਾਣਹੁ ਆਪੇ ॥
ਹਮ ਰੁਲਤੇ ਫਿਰਤੇ ਕੋਈ ਬਾਤ ਨ ਪੂਛਤਾ ਗੁਰ ਸਤਿਗੁਰ ਸੰਗਿ ਕੀਰੇ ਹਮ ਥਾਪੇ ॥
ਧੰਨੁ ਧੰਨੁ ਗੁਰੂ ਨਾਨਕ ਜਨ ਕੇਰਾ ਜਿਤੁ ਮਿਿਲਐ ਚੂਕੇ ਸਭਿ ਸੋਗ ਸੰਤਾਪੇ ॥
(Sri Guru Granth Sahib, p. 167)
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