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