Man­jin­der Singh Sirsa is on a Mis­sion Mis­in­for­ma­tion float­ing false­hood, tall claims and sin­is­ter de­signs. He needs to be stopped says WSN ed­i­tor Jag­mo­han Singh in an Open Let­ter to him. He chas­tises him say­ing that he is part of the dirty tricks de­part­ment which works over­time when­ever it is a joy­ous oc­ca­sion for Sikhs. Know­ing fully well that Sikhs in Pak­istan, In­dia and across the world will be cel­e­brat­ing the mo­men­tous oc­ca­sion of the open­ing of the Kar­tarpur Cor­ri­dor, a cross-sec­tion of the In­dia me­dia, led by jour­nal­ists in In­dia-based in­ter­na­tional me­dia, DS­GMC pres­i­dent Man­jin­der Singh Sirsa has set in mo­tion bla­tant lies through tweets, video posts and a mis­di­rected cam­paign to the In­dian Min­istry of Ex­ter­nal Af­fairs.

DEAR MAN­JIN­DER SINGH SIRSA: WA­HE­GURU JI KA KHALSA WA­HE­GURU JI KI FATEH!  I con­grat­u­late you and the Sikh world on the mo­men­tous oc­ca­sion of the first an­niver­sary of the open­ing of the Kar­tarpur Peace Cor­ri­dor, which en­ables thou­sands of Sikh pil­grims from In­dia to pay obei­sance at the his­toric Gur­d­wara Kar­tarpur Sahib, where the founder of the Sikh faith -Guru Nanak spent the last years of his worldly jour­ney.

Your re­cent state­ments and video mes­sages have caused cause acute pain to the Sikhs world­wide, es­pe­cially to those liv­ing in Pak­istan. I have no doubt that you are part of the dirty tricks de­part­ment which leads a well-or­ches­trated cam­paign when­ever Sikhs want to feel happy about his­toric de­vel­op­ments.

At the time, when the work for the ren­o­va­tion and ex­pan­sion of the Gur­d­wara Kar­tarpur Sahib was on and at the time of the in­au­gu­ra­tion of the peace cor­ri­dor, the Chief Min­is­ter of Pun­jab -Cap­tain Amarinder Singh over­stepped his brief as a State chief min­is­ter and in tan­dem with a pli­ant sec­tion of the me­dia and the In­dian Min­istry of Ex­ter­nal Af­fairs un­der­mined the sig­nif­i­cance and im­por­tance of the Kar­tarpur Cor­ri­dor by cast­ing as­per­sions about its ob­jec­tives. Fur­ther­more, there was a sin­is­ter move to float un­sub­stan­ti­ated fears re­gard­ing mis­use of the pil­grim­age through tweets by the Po­lice Chief of Pun­jab.

You are ex­actly up to the same mis­chief again.

Your re­cent state­ment of the ETPB- Evac­uee Trust Prop­erty Board usurp­ing Sikh re­li­gious shrine Gur­d­wara Kar­tarpur Sahib is down­right il­log­i­cal, un­sub­stan­ti­ated and pure mis­chief to mar the an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tions and to give a han­dle to the gov­ern­ment of In­dia to ex­tend the em­bargo on the open­ing of the Kar­tarpur Cor­ri­dor.

Do you know that the en­tire stretch of 4.7 kilo­me­tres of the Gur­d­wara Kar­tarpur Sahib was de­vel­oped by Mus­lim labour and de­vout till its com­ple­tion un­der the man­age­ment of the ETPB?

Do you know that the en­tire stretch of 4.7 kilo­me­tres of the Gur­d­wara Kar­tarpur Sahib was de­vel­oped by Mus­lim labour and de­vout till its com­ple­tion un­der the man­age­ment of the ETPB?

Last year, when I was there when the works were on, I saw no more than 2 Sikhs -one Granthi Singh and one young Se­wadar as the only Sikhs who were there to over­see the gi­gan­tic mon­u­men­tal work and to up­keep and main­tain Sikh tra­di­tions within the sanc­tum sanc­to­rum.  This is ex­actly the same way in which the Kar Sewa in Delhi and Pun­jab Gur­d­waras is over­seen by Sikhs but the works are car­ried out by labour and ex­perts of other faiths.

Did you read the ETPB or­der be­fore you jumped the gun and cried hoarse which was lapped up by the In­dian me­dia as fish takes to wa­ter? No jour­nal­is­tic ethics, no norms, no ver­i­fi­ca­tion of facts, just plain twist­ing and dis­tor­tion to pur­sue a line of mis­chief-mon­ger­ing.

You have easy ac­cess to the In­dian Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs but you can­not reach out to the lead­er­ship of the Pak­istan Sikh Gur­d­wara Par­band­hak Com­mit­tee to cross-check your facts be­fore blurt­ing out painful out­bursts in­im­i­cal to Sikhs in­ter­ests in Pak­istan and world­wide.

In 6 months from now, once the DS­GMC elec­tions are held, your fate in Sikh re­li­gious af­fairs would be known to the Sikhs of Delhi and the world. Your par­ent party Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal is silent on such af­fairs. Your party has di­vorced from the Bharatiya Janta Party but it is ev­i­dent that you are prepar­ing your­self for a po­lit­i­cal role.

I fear that your Mis­sion Mis­in­for­ma­tion will con­tinue.  The least that should im­me­di­ately hap­pen is that you should stop us­ing the au­gust plat­form of the DS­GMC to prof­fer lies, mis­lead the Sikh San­gat and ma­lign Sikh his­tor­i­cal achieve­ments.

In view of the state­ments by the PS­GPC Pres­i­dent Sat­want Singh and Gen­eral Sec­re­tary Amir Singh, you should with­draw your ac­cu­sa­tion state­ment and show large-heart­ed­ness in ac­cept­ing a mis­take.

I doubt whether you will be mag­nan­i­mous to ac­cept your mis­take and re­frain from such di­a­tribes in fu­ture. I fear that your Mis­sion Mis­in­for­ma­tion will con­tinue.  The least that should im­me­di­ately hap­pen is that you should stop us­ing the au­gust plat­form of the DS­GMC to prof­fer lies, mis­lead the Sikh San­gat and ma­lign Sikh his­tor­i­cal achieve­ments.

Sin­cerely

Jag­mo­han Singh
Ed­i­tor, The World Sikh News