Since the first at­tack on poor Sikhs in 2018 in Shil­long, when an at­tempt was made to torch their houses and over­awe them, fol­lowed by con­certed me­dia bad­ger­ing of Sikhs by lo­cal lead­ers, un­der state pa­tron­age of the BJP-coali­tion gov­ern­ment, the World Sikh News has been ex­hort­ing Sikh lead­er­ship across the board to take keen and con­sis­tent in­ter­est to save the be­lea­guered Sikh res­i­dents, who made Shil­long their home more than two cen­turies ago in the now-named Pun­jabi Lane area, still shame­lessly of­fi­cially called the Sweep­er­er’s Colony road. WSN ed­i­tor Jag­mo­han Singh re­peats the plea of wide-rang­ing Pan­thic par­tic­i­pa­tion and protest across In­dia to save the habi­tat of the Shil­long Sikhs.

After a spate of High court or­ders re­it­er­at­ing the po­si­tion of the Sikh res­i­dents of Pun­jabi Lane, Shil­long, the Megha­laya gov­ern­ment which was ly­ing low dur­ing the Covid19 times, has sud­denly gone over­board, with the cab­i­net tak­ing de­ci­sions to take over the prop­erty of the area dis­puted by them, forcible evic­tion of gov­ern­ment em­ploy­ees and oth­ers by re­lo­cat­ing them else­where as per the will of the gov­ern­ment.

Even though the mat­ter of the re­lo­ca­tion of the Shil­long Sikhs is pend­ing in the Supreme Court and the Megha­laya High Court at Shil­long, even though there are sta­tus quo and non-re­lo­ca­tion or­ders by the Na­tional Com­mis­sion for Mi­nori­ties, Na­tional Hu­man Rights Com­mis­sion and the Na­tional Com­mis­sion for Safai Karam­charis, the Megha­laya gov­ern­ment is re­sort­ing to stron­garm tac­tics. 

The full re­port of the so-called High-Level Com­mit­tee has not yet been made pub­lic. 

Mi­nor­ity Sikhs of Megha­laya won’t tol­er­ate forced re­lo­ca­tion from Pun­jabi Lane at Bara Bazar, Shil­long by High Level Com­mit­tee
HLC is work­ing in bi­ased man­ner & we won’t al­low this in­jus­tice
This ac­tion will have world­wide re­ac­tion
Urg­ing @Sang­ma­Con­rad Ji to main­tain sta­tus quo pic.twit­ter.com/​vQOMVOS­dLA

— Man­jin­der Singh Sirsa (@mssirsa) Oc­to­ber 7, 2021

Since 2018, the Delhi Sikh Gur­d­wara Par­band­hak Com­mit­tee, United Sikhs, the gov­ern­ment of Pun­jab, the Shi­ro­mani Gur­d­wara Par­band­hak Com­mit­tee have taken a keen in­ter­est in the af­fairs of the poor Sikhs there.  

DS­GMC has pro­vided all le­gal help and even last night, DS­GMC pres­i­dent Man­jin­der Singh Sirsa coun­tered the tweet of Megha­laya Chief Min­is­ter Con­rad Sangma.  The del­e­ga­tions of the SGPC and the Pun­jab gov­ern­ment, on more than a cou­ple of oc­ca­sions in the past, have pro­vided suc­cour and sup­port.  

Once again, now with the Megha­laya gov­ern­ment vow­ing to force change within a week, it is im­per­a­tive for the Pun­jab gov­ern­ment, the SGPC and the DS­GMC to send del­e­ga­tions to meet the be­lea­guered Sikhs there. 

Pun­jab Chief Min­is­ter Cha­ran­jit Singh Channi and Navjot Singh Sidhu must make Shil­long their next stop. Deputy Chief Min­is­ter Rand­hawa has vis­ited Shil­long twice and it will be in the fit­ness of things that he takes over from there. 

Sikhs across In­dia must protest out­side of­fices of the Megha­laya gov­ern­ment, es­pe­cially in Delhi. 

Sikhs across In­dia must protest out­side of­fices of the Megha­laya gov­ern­ment, es­pe­cially in Delhi.

While the Sikhs in Shil­long are pe­ti­tion­ing Na­tional Com­mis­sion for Mi­nori­ties, other bod­ies must also take this up with the NCM.

In a mes­sage to the me­dia, Gur­jit Singh, the sec­re­tary of the Har­i­jan Pan­chayat Com­mit­tee, has warned, “We will fight for our rights till our last breath. We will die for our land and will not al­low any il­le­gal, un­law­ful, un­eth­i­cal and un­just ac­tion by the Megha­laya gov­ern­ment.” 

WSN ap­peals to the Sikh world to rise to the oc­ca­sion as we do not want any more in­jus­tice against Sikhs in far-flung ar­eas.