Notwith­stand­ing the red alerts sounded by the Pun­jab gov­ern­ment re­gard­ing Kash­miri mil­i­tants hav­ing been “sighted”in Pun­jab, Dal Khalsa in a state­ment to the me­dia chided the In­dian army chief Bipin Rawat for tak­ing on a po­lit­i­cal role and mak­ing sin­is­ter at­tempts to cre­ate a bo­gus hype and in­still fear among the elected gov­ern­ment of Pun­jab to start an­other round of ha­rass­ment to Sikh ac­tivists in par­tic­u­lar and Sikhs in gen­eral.

Join­ing is­sue with In­dian army chief Bipin Rawat re­gard­ing his state­ment on “at­tempts” to re­vive in­sur­gency in Pun­jab through “ex­ter­nal link­ages”, Dal Khalsa spokesper­son Kan­warpal Singh re­futed his threat­en­ing call and  and asked him to look into the in­ter­nal link­ages that sur­faced in the Maur Bomb blast case, which lead to the Dera Sauda in Sirsa. He said, “the foot­prints of the Maur blast are likely to reach Delhi via Sirsa.”

It is not the army chief’s busi­ness to say that “it would be too late” if In­dia does not act soon to stop the at­tempts to re­vive ter­ror­ism in Pun­jab.”

Even the blind will tell you that there is no ter­ror­ism in the Pun­jab. The pro-free­dom group leader cat­e­gor­i­cally stated that “there’s no ter­ror­ism in Pun­jab. New Delhi must ac­cept that the case of Pun­jab is a po­lit­i­cal is­sue and not a law and or­der prob­lem.” No po­lice or army ac­tion is needed. “It is a po­lit­i­cal con­flict and can be re­solved through peace­ful po­lit­i­cal means.”

“The only at­tempts that are be­ing made in Pun­jab is to se­cure and pro­tect ba­sic fun­da­men­tal rights of the peo­ples in­clud­ing the right to self de­ter­mi­na­tion as per the UN char­ter to which In­dia is a sig­na­tory.”

Which law of In­dia al­lows the army chief to is­sue threats to the peace-lov­ing peo­ple of Pun­jab? Why should the peo­ple of Pun­jab be made scape­goats of In­di­a’s war mon­ger­ing with Pak­istan? 

Ex­pos­ing the dou­ble stan­dards of the In­dian gov­ern­ment, he said when the Pak­istan army chief speaks on po­lit­i­cal and for­eign pol­icy mat­ters, In­dia cries foul, but on the other hand, the pre­sent dis­pen­sa­tion un­der Naren­dra Modi is al­low­ing its own army chief to is­sue po­lit­i­cal state­ments whether it re­lates to Pun­jab, Kash­mir or As­sam. 

In vi­o­la­tion of the law of the land, Pun­jab has de­tained ac­tivists up­hold­ing the cause of ref­er­en­dum in Pun­jab, which per­haps is the thorn which is prick­ing the In­dian army chief. Talk­ing about this, Kan­warpal Singh told the World Sikh News that, “Dal Khalsa does not hold any brief for Sikhs for Jus­tice as we dis­agree with their method­ol­ogy and ut­ter­ances.” “How­ever, I strongly con­demn the il­le­gal ar­rest of SFJ ac­tivists who were peace­fully putting up posters for ref­er­en­dum. 

It may be noted that the Supreme Court of In­dia per­mits peace­ful prop­a­ga­tion of any po­lit­i­cal move­ment up­holds the right to speak and put up posters for self de­ter­mi­na­tion and even for a sep­a­rate Sikh state.

Nev­er­the­less, the Dal Khalsa spokesper­son re­it­er­ated his party stand that SFJ’s ref­er­en­dum is a mere sur­vey to know the will of the peo­ple of Pun­jab.

 If you like our sto­ries, do fol­low WSN on Face­book.

The Dal Khalsa state­ment clearly stated that, “talk­ing about ref­er­en­dum in a de­mo­c­ra­tic man­ner is not an anti-In­dia move but a pro-peo­ple and pro-rights move­ment.”

Am­rit­sar, 16 No­vem­ber 2018, WSN News Bu­reau