The in­ci­dent of vi­o­lence in Ra­jasansi in Am­rit­sar has once again gen­er­ated in­ter­est in who are the Ni­rankaris and what are their roots. The In­dian me­dia is again pub­lish­ing rub­bish on the sub­ject. WSN  res­ur­rected the White Pa­per -They Mas­sacre Sikhs, writ­ten by Sir­dar Ka­pur Singh af­ter the Baisakhi killings of Sikhs on 13 April 1978. WSN ed­i­tor Jag­mo­han Singh pro­vides a per­sonal in­sight into the pub­li­ca­tion of this White Pa­per and SG­PC’s de­ceit. 

Story af­ter story on the Ra­jasansi killings both in the print me­dia, on the in­ter­net and on TV are de­scrib­ing the Ni­rankaris in a rather shoddy man­ner. Nei­ther the re­porters, nor the an­chors or the ed­i­tors have put their re­searchers to task to learn more about this sec­tion of the In­dian pop­u­la­tion, which con­ve­niently goes as “a group of spir­i­tual seek­ers” but as you can see on­line in the In­dian Ex­press or the In­dian To­day story, soon af­ter the first few paras, it be­comes a “sect”. It is clearly im­plied that it is a sect of Sikhism and this be­comes fos­tered be­cause of the faces of the fol­low­ers but it is left un­said. The In­dian me­dia will do well to do re­spon­si­ble re­port­ing and not rub salt on the wounds of the Sikhs again and al­low old wounds to fes­ter.

It can only be de­scribed as a con­scious and de­lib­er­ate mis­chief by the In­dian me­dia as it is more than clear from the doc­u­ment They Mas­sacre Sikhs by Sir­dar Ka­pur Singh that the pre­sent-day Ni­rankaris are not a sect, but an ap­pendage of the In­dian state to ma­lign and den­i­grate every­thing that Sikhs love and re­spect. There is no ques­tion that there is a huge mis­chief and there is a mis­chief in this mad­ness. What ap­plies to the me­dia, ap­plies to the In­dian state, “those who do not learn from his­tory are des­tined to re­peat it.”

“I had a spe­cial as­so­ci­a­tion with the White Pa­per.”

Af­ter the 13 April 1978 killings of Sikhs at the hands of the Ni­rankaris in broad day­light in the heart of Am­rit­sar city, the SGPC com­mis­sioned Sir­dar Ka­pur Singh to write a White Pa­per. I man­aged to re­trace the White Pa­per. Brows­ing the doc­u­ment brought back bit­ter mem­o­ries of how Sir­dar Ka­pur Singh, who had re­luc­tantly penned the doc­u­ment at the in­stance of SGPC, was cheated as he had been many a times by the SGPC and the Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal.   

I had a spe­cial as­so­ci­a­tion with the White Pa­per.  As a leader of the Sikh Stu­dents Fed­er­a­tion Ma­ha­rash­tra, I learnt that the SGPC pub­lished the doc­u­ment, some fifty thou­sand copies, and then un­der pres­sure from the Jan Sangh, pos­si­bly Atal Bi­hari Va­j­payee, de­stroyed them all.  The Sikh Stu­dents Fed­er­a­tion re­quested Bhai Sahib for pub­li­ca­tion and he gra­ciously agreed. Be­fore we could gar­ner funds and pub­lish it, Cap­tain Bhag Singh of The Sikh Re­view, Kolkata pub­lished it and saved the day for the Sikh peo­ple and for Bhai Sahib Ka­pur Singh.

Bhai Sahib Sir­dar Ka­pur Singh, in the White Pa­per cat­e­gor­i­cally states that, “The is­sue be­tween the Sikhs and Gur­bachan Singh and his cau­cus is three-fold. (1) The main thrust and the real salience of this move­ment is anti-Sikhism, and its per­mis­sive­ness and promis­cu­ity is sec­ondary. (2) Its method­ol­ogy is den­i­gra­tion and coarse ridicule of Sikh doc­trines and prac­tices and ma­li­cious out­rag­ing of Sikh re­li­gious sen­ti­ments, and in­sult­ing Sikh re­li­gious be­liefs. (3) Its dy­namism is pol­i­tics, pro­moted and prompted by po­lit­i­cal power that aims at de­grad­ing and de­mor­al­is­ing the Sikh peo­ple per­ma­nently, to de­prive them of the con­trol of their own his­tory and their spir­i­tual po­ten­tial and thus re­duc­ing them into sec­ondary cit­i­zens and camp- fol­low­ers, so as, even­tu­ally, to di­vest them of their liv­ing sep­a­rate­ness, shrink­ing them into a foot­note in His­tory.”

“Mat­syanyaya –Fish Jus­tice is a fa­mil­iar fa­ble for Sikhs in In­dia. They have ex­pe­ri­enced it far too long and con­tinue to do so. We are see­ing ev­i­dence of this again in the In­dian me­dia. It is per­haps time for the Sikhs to search the id­iom and logic to counter this con­tin­uum. ”

Ex­plain­ing the phe­nom­e­non, its po­lit­i­cal roots in In­dira Gand­hi’s di­vide and rule pol­icy, the Sikh Na­tional Pro­fes­sor of Sikhism says, “This phe­nom­e­non, in which Sikh re­li­gious sen­si­bil­ity is cal­cu­lat­edly out­raged and their hu­man dig­nity cru­elly in­jured, has its his­tor­i­cal an­tecedents in this part of the world.”

When I re-read the thought pro­vok­ing, well-re­searched ar­ti­cle, en­ti­tled, They Mas­sacre Sikhs, writ­ten by the Sikh na­tion’s Na­tional Pro­fes­sor of Sikhism in his typ­i­cal inim­itable style, the sound and im­age of the words of Ka­pur Singh in­still a sense of awe and re­spect for his eru­dite lan­guage and depth of knowl­edge and also build the nec­es­sary angst which a think­ing Sikh mind should de­velop. The im­pact of Ka­pur Singh is quiet ever­last­ing and young Sikh minds, hav­ing the good of the Khalsa Panth at heart, should par­take of this flavour in Me Ju­dice, Sachi Sakhi and Prasharprasna.    

Read: They Mas­sacre Sikhs – A re­port by Sikh Par­lia­ment SGPC – Sir­dar Ka­pur Singh

The reader will do well to down­load the en­tire doc­u­ment and un­der­stand the real is­sue and the ra­tio­nale he builds to ex­plain his hy­poth­e­sis.  Mat­syanyaya –Fish Jus­tice is a fa­mil­iar fa­ble for Sikhs in In­dia.  They have ex­pe­ri­enced it far too long and con­tinue to do so. We are see­ing ev­i­dence of this again in the In­dian me­dia. It is per­haps time for the Sikhs to search the id­iom and logic to counter this con­tin­uum.  

“The neo-Ni­rankaris, since their in­cep­tion post-1947 are what can be de­scribed by the In­dian state’s anti-Sikh net­work. It is upto the gov­ern­ment of In­dia and the Ni­rankaris to prove it oth­er­wise. So far, they have not been able to do so.”

The dis­cern­ing reader will find sim­i­lar­i­ties be­tween the role of the neo-Ni­rankari move­ment and that of the Sauda dera in pre­sent times.  Sadly, he will find a lot of com­mon­al­ity be­tween the kind of re­sponse gen­er­ated and de­liv­ered by the main­stream Sikh re­li­gious and po­lit­i­cal par­ties –then and now. As at that time and now, the man­tle of protest and de­sign­ing and de­liv­er­ing a re­sponse mech­a­nism fell on the shoul­ders of fringe par­ties. Sig­nif­i­cantly, in 1978 and in 2008 and now in 2018, these small or­gan­i­sa­tions and groups have de­liv­ered what was ex­pected of them, but is a long way to go.

For the record, there ex­ists a Hukam­nama of the Akal Takht Sahib for all Sikhs against the neo-Ni­rankaris, is­sued on 10 June 1978 un­der the seal of Jathedar Sadhu Singh Bhaura, which dic­tates Sikhs to sever all so­cial re­la­tion­ship with the pseudo-Ni­rankaris. 

Though, in the last three decades, there has been no in­ci­dence of vi­o­lence be­tween the two, the neo-Ni­rankaris, ex­cept for a half-at­tempted by for­mer chief Baba Hardev Singh, no se­ri­ous and clear-cut de­mar­ca­tion was brought out. That by it­self is an­other story, which we will take up in fu­ture.

“Wounds of 40 years should not be al­lowed to fes­ter. Both sides need a clo­sure. The ear­lier the bet­ter.”

Suf­fice it is to say that no at­tempt has been made ei­ther by the Sikh lead­er­ship, the Ni­rankari lead­er­ship or the gov­ern­ment of In­dia to  re­solve this com­plex re­la­tion­ship. Do the Ni­rankaris still mock the Sikh doc­trine? We do not know for sure. Does the gov­ern­ment of In­dia con­tinue to pa­tro­n­ise them? Go to Delhi dur­ing their an­nual event and you will find am­ple ev­i­dence to sup­port this. Has the Akali Dal or the SGPC done any­thing af­ter the Hukam­nama? They are only in­ter­ested in the elec­toral side of things. Does the Sikh San­gat still see them as en­e­mies of the Panth? They do see them as such on ide­o­log­i­cal grounds but their pro­lif­er­a­tion in Pun­jab and else­where con­tin­ues unchecked with­out a whim­per of protest.  

The neo-Ni­rankaris, since their in­cep­tion post-1947 are what can be de­scribed as the In­dian state’s anti-Sikh net­work. It is upto the gov­ern­ment of In­dia and the Ni­rankaris to prove it oth­er­wise. So far, they have not been able to do so.

The In­dian me­dia con­tin­ues to harp on the il­lu­sion­ary ref­er­ence that they are a “sect” with­out telling us which re­li­gion’s sect they are be­cause the Ni­rankaris os­ten­si­bly do not want to be as­so­ci­ated with any re­li­gion, but they too would not re­fute this. 

Au­thor­i­ta­tively, nei­ther the Ni­rankaris nor the gov­ern­ment of In­dia nor the SGPC and Akali lead­er­ship has ever re­sponded to Ka­pur Singh’s White Pa­per on the Ni­rankaris. Till they ob­jec­tively and truth­fully do that, re­solv­ing the Sikh-neo-Ni­rankari re­la­tion­ship will re­main a dis­tant dream and as the Ni­rankari Mis­sion has said to­day, “they have been tar­geted per­haps be­cause they are a soft tar­get. We have no en­mity with the Sikhs.”

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Wounds of 40 years should not be al­lowed to fes­ter. Both sides need a clo­sure. The ear­lier the bet­ter.