In a satirical Open Letter to India’s Home Minister Amit Shah, WSN Editor Jagmohan Singh ridicules the BJP government’s deafening silence in the case of police brutality on Sarabjit Singh -a Delhi Sikh auto driver and his minor son Balwant Singh and chastises the Home Minister saying that ignoring by default is the classic and consistent human rights policy of India.

DEAR AMIT SHAH:  JAI SHRI RAM!  The last week has been a traumatic one, viewing multiple times the Delhi police brutality on social media and wondering what kind of homo-sapiens we are. Delhi witnessed your silence, that of your MPs and your government during this period.  Consistent with India’s human rights policy, it must be really comfortable for you, as the Home Minister of India, to maintain a studied silence when a hard-working Sikh and his teenage son is brutally assaulted in Mukherjee Nagar in Delhi? After all, Mukherjee Nagar is so far from the corridors of power.

You are obviously delving in the praise that elements in the country are heaping upon you for ignoring the inhuman attack on an auto driver because as Home Minister running the country is definitely a top priority for you. Auto drivers get regularly beaten by the police all over the country. What is so new about it?

Sikhs are naïve that they are worried about a strike of lathis by a ‘police gang’ of 15 Delhi police personnel of -armed with pistols and guns.  Your tweet on the surgical strike in the cricket match which India won against Pakistan, is more important, timely and appropriate.

You must drive the point home that as in elections, even in daily life, nationalism is more important than torture.  After all, this is the default policy of the BJP’s India.

Sarabjit Singh and his teenage son Balwant Singh were wrong. They should have quietly bribed the Assistant Sub-inspector. How can the police in India survive without bribes? After all, they also need unaccountable money to run their lives, in the same way as politicians need unaccounted wealth to win elections through electoral bonds.  Democracy should be fair and square.

The Delhi police need one Sarabjit Singh every day to practice their art of torture. They also need a 14-year old Balwant Singh to be publicly beaten up so that they convert citizens into zombies. In Mukherjee Nagar, Delhi, when gun-toting and lathi-wielding police were carrying out their attack, there were scores of zombies on the street and in nearby shops, who did not attempt to stop the police or even mildly intervene.

If people do not fear the police in uniform, people will learn to resist wrong actions and policies. Somebody will start to dissent and disagree. Ordinary citizens will get ideas, that will put nationalism in danger.

You are not only politically correct but wise in ignoring regular police brutality on the streets of Delhi, rapes in Yogi Adityanath’s Uttar Pradesh, the arrest of a freelance journalist in Uttar Pradesh, the lynching of a Muslim in Jharkhand and the death of more than 150-plus babies in Bihar due to an encephalitis epidemic. These are minor aberrations for the biggest democracy in the world.

Why are Sikhs expecting justice from your government? You need to convey through your partner Shiromani Akali Dal’s Sukhbir Singh Badal that Sikhs must realise that such small incidents will keep happening in the world’s biggest democracy and the Sikhs should always be willing to sacrifice their life. After all your party’s philosophy is that “Sikhs came into this world only to protect the larger majority community.”

Your mentor -the RSS has told the Sikhs so many times that per se Sikhs do not have the right to exist. They are only  ‘the sword arm of the Hindus,’ the ‘cannon fodder for India whenever it chooses to go to war with Pakistan’ and ‘dispensable soldiers to be sent to Sri Lanka and the northeast of India as and when it fancies India to dominate its neighbourhood’.

Make your life simpler and that of others by declaring it as a state policy that Sikhs, Muslims, Dalits and other minorities, nationalistic identities and regional identities are second-class citizens in India. This will unburden you and your government of so many problems.

Your party people are again baying for Sikh blood.   A fear psychosis must grip minorities for remarkable nationalistic results.  When is your government starting a crash course to teach lessons to minorities from time to time?

The Delhi High Court, while taking up the public interest litigation remarked that the kind of brutality that was seen in Mukherjee Nagar, the faith of society in the police would come into question. You must direct the Delhi police to tell the court through an affidavit that the morale of the police and the protection of the police is more important than restoring citizens’ faith in the police

I hope you are not worrying about the rap on the knuckles of your Delhi Police by the Delhi High Court. You have no cause for worry. This has happened so many times in the past. The custodial death of Jaspal Singh in Faridkot did not elicit a response from the State or the Union government. Who cares? Notwithstanding the clear evidence on social media in this case and in hundreds upon thousands of other cases across the country, every year India gives a report to the United Nations that there is no torture in India and that there are no custodial deaths.

Indian courts, Indian political parties and the Indian government customarily endorse this in a routine manner. The world body and India’s partners -from Russia to the USA, from the UK to Australia and from Sri Lanka to Myanmar very easily buy this ‘alternative truth’.  After all, they have to run their economies and maintain a relationship with peaceful Gandhian India.

Believe me, you have nothing to fear.  Why should the United States or the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom tell India to be more secular and narrate incidents of hate? It is enshrined in the Constitution of India that India is a secular republic. It is not necessary to practice what is written. India is such a big country.

During this last traumatic week, like my community, I went through bouts of anger and distraughtness. As if the public torture of Sarabjit Singh was not enough, your government immediately provided other classic examples of your human rights policy. The Punjab governor and Chief Minister Punjab prematurely released 4 guilty police personnel responsible for extrajudicial killings after ordering a state pardon. The unofficial spokesperson of your government -the Chief Minister of Punjab Captain Amarinder Singh is pushing anti-Canada hatred with imaginary fears.

Mr Home Minister, you must continue to tweet about cricket, the BJP Members of Parliament chanting Jai Shri Ram and Vande Mataram slogans in the country so that the Sikhs and others know to whom India belongs to.

Your government should contemplate passing laws to restrict the use of Twitter and Facebook only for stories which bring electoral benefits to your government. The use of social media for creating awareness and bringing video evidence of police brutality and illegal acts must be banned. After all, you have to run the biggest democracy in the world and such distractions are a big hindrance.

The Home department must consciously ignore the Sikh campaigners for justice because it is against India’s state policy.

Running the country is a bigger priority than bothering about the bruises to a poor auto driver. The life of a poor Sikh auto driver should be of no significance. After all, he was only a poor auto driver and there are thousands like these.

With best wishes for converting India into One country with one election, citizens to practice one religion with one language and a political dictatorship of one political party.

Jagmohan Singh
Editor, The World Sikh News