Dal Khalsa chas­tises In­dian gov­ern­ment for al­low­ing or rather tac­itly forc­ing the In­dian army chief to crit­i­cize stu­dents protest­ing against CAA and NRC in ex­change of the plum post of Chief of De­fence Ser­vices. The party calls the move dan­ger­ous for mi­nori­ties as this would en­able the army and the se­cu­rity es­tab­lish­ment to op­press peo­ple, es­pe­cially mi­nori­ties, na­tion­al­i­ties and po­lit­i­cal dis­senters with more im­punity than what it al­ready has, with­out fear of the po­lit­i­cal sys­tem of the coun­try.

I N A SWIFT RE­AC­TION TO THE AP­POINT­MENT of Gen­eral Bipin Rawat as the Chief of De­fence Ser­vices of In­dia on the penul­ti­mate day of his ser­vice as army chief, Pun­jab po­lit­i­cal party Dal Khalsa launched a scathing at­tack on the Naren­dra Modi-led Bhar­tiya Janata Party gov­ern­ment for us­ing the armed forces to jus­tify their wrong de­ci­sions.

In a state­ment is­sued here in Am­rit­sar, Dal Khalsa said the ap­point­ment of out­go­ing army chief Gen­eral Bipin Rawat as first Chief of De­fence Staff was much an­tic­i­pated, tak­ing into ac­count the man­ner in which the Gen­eral slammed stu­dents hit­ting the streets in the bit­ing cold of Delhi to protest the CAA and NRC. The quid pro quo is too ap­par­ent to be missed by any­one.

Dal Khalsa pres­i­dent Harpal Singh Cheema said the Modi dis­pen­sa­tion has al­lowed the army chief to en­ter into civil and po­lit­i­cal do­main only to jus­tify the gov­ern­men­t’s au­to­cratic de­ci­sions. In No­vem­ber 2018 too, the Gen­eral gen­er­ated con­tro­versy when he raised the bo­gey of the re­vival of Sikh mil­i­tancy de­spite mil­i­tar­ily be­ing as­signed no duty or role in con­tain­ing the mil­i­tancy in Pun­jab.

“We are con­vinced that Gen­eral Rawat was pushed to crit­i­cise the protest­ing and dis­sent­ing peo­ple, who feel the CAA and NRC would di­vide the coun­try on a com­mu­nal ba­sis and pave the way for BJP’s march to­wards Hindu Rash­tra,” said Cheema, speak­ing on the phone line to WSN.

Terming the gov­ern­men­t’s po­lit­i­cal affin­ity with armed forces as dan­ger­ous for mi­nori­ties and op­pressed na­tions, he said ear­lier it was done un­der some guise or the other, but now the BJP has come out brazenly and bla­tantly.

Rolling out a bal­ance sheet for the out­go­ing year 2019, the Dal Khalsa state­ment read that the Modi dis­pen­sa­tion took three dras­tic and di­vi­sive steps in 2019 -strip­ping Jammu and Kash­mir of its spe­cial sta­tus, craftily en­gi­neer­ing the court ver­dict in Ram Mandir’s favour and amend­ing the Cit­i­zen­ship Act.

“All de­ci­sions were aimed to ter­ror­ize and mar­gin­al­ize the Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion and make head­way to build In­dia a Hindu coun­try. Even RSS chief Mo­han Bhag­wat’s re­peated ser­mons that “all 130 bil­lion In­di­ans are Hin­dus’ leaves no doubt about the real dri­ving force be­hind the BJP gov­ern­men­t’s de­ci­sions,” said party chief Cheema.

He added that the Modi-Shah duo has ditched the Sikhs too by back­track­ing on the re­lease of Sikh pris­on­ers.

Dal Khalsa re­leased a poster reaf­firm­ing the re­solve of Dal Khalsa and Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal (Am­rit­sar) for 2020 to fight for free­dom to dis­sent and hold the in­de­pen­dent be­lief and op­pose and re­sist CAA, NRC and Hindu Rash­tra move tooth and nail.

Cheema re­minded that in 2018, Gen­eral Rawat had not only con­doned but ap­plauded the act of Ma­jor Lee­tul Gogoi who had tied a Kash­miri res­i­dent to the bon­net of a ve­hi­cle and sub­ject­ing him to a hu­mil­i­at­ing ride through var­i­ous vil­lages in the Kash­mir val­ley.

“Pun­jab won’t be part of Hindu Rash­tra, come what may,” de­clared the party in a loud dis­sent against the In­dian gov­ern­men­t’s move.