On 17 Oc­to­ber the US state of Penn­syl­va­nia re­solved to call the anti-Sikh vi­o­lence as geno­cide. In­dia diplo­mats are squirm­ing about like head­less chick­ens at their fail­ure to stall the move by Sikh ac­tivists.  Yes­ter­day, Press Trust of In­dia -PTI, lost pa­tience and churned out a fake story say­ing “the res­o­lu­tion has been with­drawn”. WSN ed­i­tor ex­poses the In­dian me­dia which fol­lows na­tion­al­ism as the only bench­mark for cur­rent In­dian jour­nal­ism.

To­day, 16 No­vem­ber is In­di­a’s Na­tional Press Day. On the eve of this day, In­di­a’s pre­mier news agency –the Press Trust of In­dia -PTI, gifted a fake scoop to the In­dian me­dia by cir­cu­lat­ing the news that un­der pres­sure of In­dian diplo­mats and the com­mu­nity, the US state of Penn­syl­va­nia had with­drawn the re­cently passed res­o­lu­tion de­clar­ing 1 No­vem­ber as Sikh Geno­cide Re­mem­brance Day. 

PTI has spread lies -bla­tant lies. The res­o­lu­tion to de­clare the anti-Sikh vi­o­lence as geno­cide  was passed on 17 Oc­to­ber 2018 as an un­con­tested res­o­lu­tion (190-0). 28 days later, on 13 No­vem­ber 2018 -the penul­ti­mate day of the cur­rent ses­sion of the Penn­syl­va­nia As­sem­bly, Reprre­sen­ta­tive Greg Roth­man, un­der the in­flu­ence of the pro-In­dia lobby protested be­fore the Speaker of the As­sem­bly that there should be vot­ing on the res­o­lu­tion. This was strongly con­tested by the co-spon­sor of the res­o­lu­tion Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jamie San­otra. The speaker Michael Coyne Turzai told Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Roth­man that it was too late to bring this up as he had four weeks time to reg­is­ter any protest. The speaker over­ruled the ob­jec­tion and did not al­low any vote and there­fore this res­o­lu­tion will stay on the statute as a per­ma­nent res­o­lu­tion. 

“In­dia is al­ways in a de­nial mode. The PTI story should be viewed in this con­text as a symp­tom of the malaise of de­nial by In­dia and its in­her­ent de­sire to foist “for­get­ful­ness” amongst the Sikhs. ”

Ajmer Singh, Thinker and His­to­rian

PTI could not have done bet­ter. This news agency is noth­ing but His Mas­ter’s Voice. It serves In­dia so well. In its zeal to stab the Sikhs in the back, it has stabbed In­dia in the chest, ex­pos­ing In­di­a’s cam­paign to de­bunk any­thing anti-In­dia.  This is not the first time and per­haps will not be the last time when PTI has so fla­grantly be­come the spokesper­son for In­dia, es­pe­cially be­cause all other spokesper­sons have failed.

It is a clas­sic of­fi­cial mock­ery by In­dia as In­di­a’s Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi and the op­po­si­tion Con­gress leader Rahul Gandhi in the last two days dis­cussed “how to con­trol fake news” with Twit­ter CEO Jack Dorsey.  While Twit­ter has re­sponded that it is do­ing its best to use tech­nol­ogy to con­trol such con­tent as much as pos­si­ble, In­dia con­tin­ues to cir­cu­late fake news about is­sues over which it has ei­ther no con­trol or as in the pre­sent case, all their ef­forts to con­trol it have failed.

Sikh thinker and his­to­rian Ajmer Singh, speak­ing to The World Sikh News re­sponded by say­ing, “In­dia is al­ways in a de­nial mode. The PTI story should be viewed in this con­text as a symp­tom of the malaise of de­nial by In­dia and its in­her­ent de­sire to foist “for­get­ful­ness” amongst the Sikhs.”

Read: Res­o­lu­tion passed by Penn­syl­va­nia State As­sem­bly call­ing the anti-Sikh vi­o­lence as geno­cide

In Pun­jab, the widely cir­cu­lated The Tri­bune and the Pun­jabi Daily Ajit lapped up the story and pub­lished it with­out check­ing and ver­i­fi­ca­tion, lit­tle mind­ful of the im­pact such news can have on Sikh read­ers in Pun­jab and the Di­as­pora. Out­look, The Week, Busi­ness Stan­dard and many oth­ers also lapped it up. They were so brazen that they failed to re­alise that their lies will be nailed and ex­posed within less than 24 hours of pub­li­ca­tion.

Savour this from the PTI feed pub­lished in The Tri­bune, “A res­o­lu­tion passed in the Penn­syl­va­nia State As­sem­bly in the US con­demn­ing the 1984 anti-Sikh ri­ots in In­dia has been with­drawn “as if it was not passed” fol­low­ing ef­forts by law­mak­ers and mem­bers of the In­dian-Amer­i­can com­mu­nity, sources said. Sources told PTI that about 295 res­o­lu­tions were tabled in the As­sem­bly and this par­tic­u­lar res­o­lu­tion was also “sneaked” into them and got passed. The res­o­lu­tion was with­drawn and abol­ished on Wednes­day “as if it was not passed” and not pre­sented at all, com­mu­nity leader and Founder and Chair­per­son of Asia In­dian Amer­i­cans of Cen­tral Penn­syl­va­nia Deep Gupta said.”

“It is a clas­sic of­fi­cial mock­ery by In­dia as In­di­a’s Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi and the op­po­si­tion Con­gress leader Rahul Gandhi in the last two days dis­cussed “how to con­trol fake news” with Twit­ter CEO Jack Dorsey.  ”

How was this with­drawn? Was there a dis­cus­sion be­fore with­drawal? No de­tails what­so­ever. The ic­ing on the cake is the typ­i­cal In­dian pro­pa­ganda text cir­cu­lated as news, which says, “He (Deep Gupta) em­pha­sised that all the com­mu­ni­ties, whether Hin­dus or Sikhs, have been liv­ing in unity in the area for the past sev­eral decades and ex­pressed hope that this “unity among com­mu­nity” is al­ways main­tained.”

For the record, the res­o­lu­tion to ob­serve No­vem­ber 1 as “Sikh Geno­cide Re­mem­brance Day” was in­tro­duced in the State As­sem­bly of Penn­syl­va­nia on 15 Oc­to­ber by Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Alexan­der Charl­ton and Jamie San­tora and was passed as a res­o­lu­tion on 17 Oc­to­ber. The res­o­lu­tion is a suc­cess story based on the in­de­pen­dent re­search done by the rep­re­sen­ta­tives and the lob­by­ing ef­forts of the of the Sikh Co­or­di­na­tion Com­mit­tee East Coast (SC­CEC).

Paramjit Singh, ed­i­tor of Sikh Siyasat has said, “The Di­as­pora has done well to nail In­di­a’s lies.”

The Sikh Geno­cide Res­o­lu­tion reads, “The Sikh geno­cide be­gan on No­vem­ber 1, 1984, af­ter the as­sas­si­na­tion of for­mer Prime Min­is­ter In­dira Gandhi in cap­i­tal ter­ri­tory of Delhi and the states of Jhark­hand, Mad­hya Pradesh, Haryana, Ut­tarak­hand, Bi­har, Ut­tar Pradesh, West Ben­gal, Hi­machal Pradesh, Ra­jasthan, Orissa, Jammu and Kash­mir, Chhat­tis­garh, Tripura, Tamil Nadu, Gu­jarat, Andhra Pradesh, Ker­ala and Ma­ha­rash­tra. The Sikh geno­cide lasted three days and over 30,000 Sikhs were bru­tally mur­dered or died as they were hunted in their homes, where they were hacked and burnt alive.”

Paramjit Singh, ed­i­tor Sikh Siyas­sat speaks about Geno­cide and its di­men­sions

Speak­ing at a sem­i­nar in Chandi­garh re­cently, Dr Garga Chat­ter­jee, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst and speaker, Pan­jab Uni­ver­sity, Chandi­garh said, “Their –the per­pe­tra­tor’s aim is that the vic­tims for­get and if you the Sikhs can­not re­mem­ber the whole truth, but re­mem­ber only in bits and pieces, then you will con­tinue to be vic­tims. Re­mem­ber the whole truth and con­tinue to voice it loud and clear.”

When a gen­er­ally per­ceived pro-State BJP leg­is­la­tor like Man­jin­der Singh Sirsa can­not con­trol his guts and slaps Yash­pal Singh -a con­vict on his way into the court­room for his sen­tenc­ing for killing Sikhs in No­vem­ber 1984, the anger that en­velops Sikhs around this can be eas­ily un­der­stood.

“PTI and will do well to re­mem­ber that the Penn­syl­va­nia res­o­lu­tion is a fait ac­com­pli. The Sikh Di­as­pora which pi­o­neered the Re­mem­brance move­ment is not go­ing to re­lent and let that sink in with In­dia and its agen­cies –overt and covert.  ”

PTI and will do well to re­mem­ber that the Penn­syl­va­nia res­o­lu­tion is a fait ac­com­pli. The Sikh Di­as­pora which pi­o­neered the Re­mem­brance move­ment is not go­ing to re­lent and let that sink in with In­dia and its agen­cies –overt and covert.  

16 No­vem­ber is ob­served as the Na­tional Press Day as this was the day when the Press Coun­cil of In­dia was set up as a watch­dog to mon­i­tor the In­dian press. Since its in­cep­tion, the Press Coun­cil has been tooth­less. Still, in the pre­sent case, will the Press Coun­cil rep­ri­mand the PTI for spread­ing fake news re­gard­ing the Penn­syl­va­nia res­o­lu­tion?

Twit­ter CEO, Jack Dorsey speaks about Fake news

In­dia -the land of Gandhi will stand ex­posed in the an­nals of his­tory if it con­tin­ues to deny the truth. To the Sikhs, every­one, each and every one who does not recog­nise June 1984 and No­vem­ber 1984 killings as geno­cide, still nur­tures geno­ci­dal ten­den­cies and we have no choice to con­test this tooth and nail.

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Not very far in his­tory, maybe on the day to mark the 50 years the geno­cide in 2034 or per­haps ear­lier, the United Na­tions, state as­sem­blies and coun­tries too would rec­og­nize the 1984 mas­sacre as geno­cide and In­dia will “stand tall” with the likes of Sri Lanka, Syria and Yemen.