As the ground sit­u­a­tion in Jammu and Kash­mir be­comes clear and facts and truth per­co­lates down, Sikh voices are in­creas­ingly op­pos­ing the re­cent di­a­tribe of the DS­GMC lead­er­ship in the last few days, car­ried out in a co­er­cive and swift op­er­a­tion as part of the BJP pro­gram of di­vide and rule.  In a state­ment re­leased to­day to the me­dia, Dal Khalsa has ex­horted both -Kash­miri Sikhs and Kash­miri Mus­lims to main­tain re­spect for each other, keep the hard-earned unity in­tact and bond­ing safe and strong.

SIKH PO­LIT­I­CAL BODY DAL KHALSA, in a hard-hit­ting and un­equiv­o­cal state­ment,  has stated that the  Kash­miri Sikh girls’ mar­riages out of faith were a per­sonal and so­ci­etal is­sue and that they strongly op­pose the stri­dent role of Delhi Sikh leader Man­jin­der Singh Sirsa for play­ing BJP’s di­vi­sive pol­i­tics of di­vid­ing the two com­mu­ni­ties in Jammu and Kash­mir.

Rul­ing out the scope for po­lit­i­cal in­ter­ven­tion in such mat­ters, the state­ment says, “Sikh-Kash­miri Mus­lim bonds can­not be dam­aged or de­stroyed by iso­lated in­ci­dents. There may be scope for per­sonal and so­ci­etal in­ter­ven­tion but there is ab­solutely no scope for po­lit­i­cal med­dling in such cases.

“The or­ga­ni­za­tion op­poses forced con­ver­sions and forced mar­riages, ir­re­spec­tive of gen­der.”

Speak­ing to World Sikh News, Dal Khalsa Pres­i­dent Harpa Singh Cheema said, “It is dif­fi­cult times for all mi­nori­ties and na­tion­al­i­ties, es­pe­cially Kash­miris, whose thou­sands of ac­tivists and even or­di­nary Kash­miris are in prison for the last many years. The pro-free­dom lead­er­ship is be­hind bars and the pro-In­dia po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship is vac­il­lat­ing in the po­lit­i­cal role that it wants to play.”

Ac­cus­ing the BJP of us­ing DS­GMC leader Man­jin­der Singh Sirsa to fur­ther their po­lit­i­cal agenda in Kash­mir, Cheema said, “We firmly be­lieve that in or­der to force a new nar­ra­tive of ‘trou­ble in Kash­mir’ to per­pet­u­ate its agenda of de­lim­i­ta­tion and elec­tions, this en­tire drama is be­ing played out in pub­lic through re­mote con­trol by the Bharatiya Janata Party.”

A mi­nus­cule mi­nor­ity among the Sikhs in Jammu raised slo­gans in­im­i­cal to Is­lam and friend­ship be­tween the two com­mu­ni­ties.  Con­demn­ing them, Dal Khalsa state­ment said,  “We strongly con­demn the ut­ter­ances of a sec­tion of the Sikhs in Jammu and Kash­mir against the tenets of Is­lam and the pa­tro­n­is­ing at­ti­tude to­wards Kash­miri girls and women. Foul and ir­rev­er­ent slo­ga­neer­ing by the youth is a shame­ful act, un­be­com­ing of any Sikh, what­ever the cir­cum­stances maybe.”

Stat­ing that two wrongs do not make a right, the re­leased ap­pealed to Kash­miri Mus­lim ac­tivists not to fall into the trap of the BJP-led es­tab­lish­ment. It said, “Mus­lim youth should also re­frain from rais­ing foul lan­guage against Sikh re­li­gion and tenets. The hard-earned Sikh-Kash­miri Mus­lim unity must be main­tained at all costs with­out adding to the fren­zied pitch of the di­a­logues.”

Dal Khalsa spokesper­son Kan­war Pal Singh, while rub­bish­ing the nomen­cla­ture of “Love Ji­had” coined by Hin­dutva el­e­ments to tar­get Mus­lims, urged “Sikhs and Mus­lims of Kash­mir not to al­low Delhi to have a field day and sow the seeds of mis­trust among both the com­mu­ni­ties.”