Chandi­garh-based Sikh schol­ars and ac­tivists, in a state­ment re­leased to the me­dia, have said that the case of Sikh girls’ mar­riage with Kash­miri Mus­lims has de­lib­er­ately been blown out of pro­por­tion to suit the po­lit­i­cal am­bi­tions of the right-wing BJP pur­su­ing its ‘Love Ji­had’ cam­paign. The state­ment chas­tised the Delhi Sikh lead­ers with­out tak­ing their names. WSN re­ports.

As the con­dem­na­tion of the role of the Delhi Sikh lead­ers gains mo­men­tum, a mes­sage has been con­veyed by Chandi­garh-based schol­ars and ac­tivists to the Kash­miri Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion and the Mus­lim com­mu­nity at large, as well as to Delhi-based Sikh lead­ers that re­spect and grace should not be com­pro­mised by any­one.

Mus­lim ac­tivists Taj Momhamd and Imam Shamsher Kari and Sikh lead­ers and ac­tivists  Sukhdev Singh,  Jas­pal Singh Sidhu, Gur­bachan Singh, Bhin­der Singh, Dr Kuldip Singh, Ra­jin­der Singh, Prof Man­jit Singh, Gur­preet Singh, Ra­jwinder Singh Rahi and Khush­hal Singh, in a joint state­ment is­sued to the me­dia, stated that “The Delhi Sikh lead­ers con­sciously whipped up the is­sue to de­pict the mi­nor­ity Sikhs as ag­gres­sors to in­crease their vote banks by seg­re­gat­ing them from the ma­jor­ity com­mu­nity.”

The state­ment al­leges that the Delhi Sikh lead­ers in­ten­tion­ally kicked up a re­li­gious frenzy over the Kash­miri girls is­sue.

“It is a known fact that every re­li­gious com­mu­nity in In­dia op­poses both in­ter-re­li­gious and in­ter-caste mar­riages. 

The ac­tivists in­clud­ing jour­nal­ists, teach­ers, doc­tors and busi­ness­men stated that “Re­gret­tably, the Delhi Sikh lead­ers posed as if they were rep­re­sent­ing the en­tire Sikh com­mu­nity while at­tempt­ing to push the Sikhs against an­other mi­nor­ity which is now on the hit list of the Hin­dutva forces.”

They ap­pealed to the lead­ers of the Mus­lim com­mu­nity to take proac­tive steps to re­solve such sit­u­a­tions in fu­ture. 

The state­ment ob­served that it is highly dis­turb­ing that the Delhi Sikh lead­ers failed to gauge the harm that they were do­ing by stok­ing com­mu­nal ten­sion by their ex­ag­ger­ated pro­nounce­ments for the Kash­miri Sikh pop­u­la­tion.