Dal Khalsa feels elated at the recog­ni­tion of Vaisakhi by the US Con­gress and the ac­cep­tance of 1984 killings of Sikhs as “geno­cide” by On­tario State Par­lia­ment.

Dal Khalsa has greeted Sikh Amer­i­cans for suc­cess in their en­deav­our to gain of­fi­cial state recog­ni­tion in the US Con­gress of Vaisakhi -the Khalsa Sajna Di­was as the fes­ti­val of the Sikh peo­ple.

Dal Khalsa Pres­i­dent Harpal Singh Cheema hopes that this ac­cep­tance will help in stop­ping the con­tin­u­ing ha­rass­ment and killings of Sikhs in hate crimes across the US. 

Con­grat­u­lat­ing the 100-plus Gur­d­waras and in­sti­tu­tions led by the Sikh Co­or­di­na­tion Com­mit­tee, the Amer­i­can Gur­d­wara Par­band­hak Com­mit­tee and the US Sikh Cau­cus, the leader said that, “This was a land­mark in the Sikh jour­ney to­wards of­fi­cial ac­cep­tance of the dis­tinc­tive­ness of the Sikh peo­ple.”

The pass­ing of a mo­tion in the On­tario state par­lia­ment call­ing the mass killings of Sikhs in 1984 as geno­cide is an over­due wel­come step, he said.  “I see it as a be­gin­ning of ac­cep­tance that there is some se­ri­ous con­flict be­tween the Sikhs and In­dia.”

Hail­ing the ef­forts made by MPP Harinder Kaur Malhi and MPP Jag­meet Singh, they said the adop­tion of mo­tion and ac­cep­tance of mass killings as geno­cide fi­nally nails the lie that the mass killings were “ri­ots”.

Dal Khalsa strongly con­demned In­dia-spon­sored NGO namely ‘Canada In­dia Foun­da­tion’ that un­suc­cess­fully at­tempted to cre­ate hur­dles in mov­ing the above mo­tion by dub­bing the mo­tion as “ill-con­ceived and di­vi­sive”.