In an Open Let­ter to Cana­dian Prime Min­is­ter Justin Trudeau, World Sikh News ed­i­tor Jag­mo­han Singh ex­presses deep grat­i­tude for his kind and timely in­ter­ven­tion stand­ing up for the rights of the farm­ers of Pun­jab and In­dia. He writes that “It is heart­en­ing that de­spite In­di­a’s diplo­matic um­brage, the Cana­dian Prime Min­is­ter has stuck to his guns and re­it­er­ated his stand for stand­ing with peo­ple who protest in a peace­ful and de­mo­c­ra­tic man­ner for their rights.” This is the be­gin­ning of a new era of in­ter­na­tional in­ter­ven­tion in In­dian af­fairs es­pe­cially those re­lat­ing to de­nial and sup­pres­sion of hu­man rights, civil and po­lit­i­cal rights, eco­nomic, so­cial and cul­tural rights of mi­nori­ties, eth­nic na­tion­al­i­ties and re­gional iden­ti­ties.

HON’BLE JUSTIN TRUDEAU: WA­HE­GURU JI KA KHALSA WA­HE­GURU JI KI FATEH! GREET­INGS FROM HOME­LAND PUN­JAB! THANK YOU. THANK YOU VERY MUCH. THANK YOU SO MUCH. THANK YOU IN­DEED! 

Thank you for lead­ing the in­ter­na­tional com­mu­nity in rais­ing the con­scious­ness of the world to the tri­als and tribu­la­tions of the farm­ers of Pun­jab and other parts of In­dia protest­ing new farm laws which spell their death-knell at the hands of the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party-led In­dian gov­ern­ment. Your ex­pres­sion of sol­i­dar­ity with those whose de­mo­c­ra­tic rights are be­ing tram­pled in Pun­jab has ush­ered in a new era of in­ter­na­tional re­frain and con­dem­na­tion of In­dia -the so-called world’s largest democ­racy.

All these years, In­dia has had a huge, larger than life im­age -an in­vin­ci­ble pseudo im­age. The vi­o­lence of the eu­phemisti­cally called land of Gandhi has not en­tered the nar­ra­tive of the world com­mu­nity and the United Na­tions. The false and far­ci­cal Gand­hism has over­shad­owed the re­pres­sion of the In­dian state for the last five decades and more.

For the last 40 years, as a po­lit­i­cal and hu­man rights ac­tivist, I have writ­ten hun­dreds of doc­u­ments, press re­leases, news sto­ries and opin­ion pieces seek­ing in­ter­na­tional in­ter­ven­tion by the in­ter­na­tional com­mu­nity. The doc­u­men­ta­tion ru­ing the fact that the fact-find­ing teams of the United Na­tions, Amnesty In­ter­na­tional, United States Com­mis­sion on In­ter­na­tional Re­li­gious Free­dom, Hu­man Rights Watch and many other in­ter­na­tion­ally re­spected hu­man rights bod­ies are not al­lowed into Kash­mir, Pun­jab and the North-East did not elicit the due re­sponse from in­ter­na­tional fo­rums.

The gar­gan­tuan im­age of In­dia stands smashed with your one-minute speech ex­press­ing con­cern about the safety and rights of Pun­jab farm­ers.

The pres­ence of the in­ter­na­tional Sikh Di­as­pora, the par­tic­i­pa­tion of Sikh Amer­i­cans, Sikh Cana­di­ans, Sikh British­ers, Sikh Aus­tralians, Sikh Eu­ro­peans in the lo­cal, re­gional and na­tional af­fairs of the coun­tries that they have adopted as their sec­ond homes, the self­less ser­vice to hu­mankind by scores of Sikh or­gan­i­sa­tions, Gur­d­waras and in­di­vid­u­als dur­ing the cur­rent Coro­n­avirus pan­demic and dur­ing other tragedies and events through food, med­i­cine and lo­gis­ti­cal help has stood them in good stead. The Sikhs have lived up to their daily sup­pli­ca­tion of Sar­bat da Bhala -Wel­fare of all hu­man­ity.

The gar­gan­tuan im­age of In­dia stands smashed with your two-minute speech ex­press­ing con­cern about the safety and rights of Pun­jab farm­ers. The speeches of Cana­dian Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment and Mem­bers of Provin­cial par­lia­ments have not only as­suaged the feel­ings of the Pun­jabi farm­ers hurt by the wa­ter can­nons and tear gas of the In­dian gov­ern­ment forces, but en­cour­aged them to con­tinue their re­lent­less strug­gle and take the bat­tle into the heart of In­di­a’s na­tional cap­i­tal Delhi and into the draw­ing rooms of the pow­ers that be.

The in­ter­ven­tion through tweets and speeches by scores of po­lit­i­cal lead­ers in the United King­dom, the USA, Aus­tralia and many other re­gions has rightly put the In­dian gov­ern­ment to shame. In­dia which never re­sponded to UN con­cerns now finds it­self on the back­foot with the spokesper­son of the UN Sec­re­tary-Gen­eral en­dors­ing the right to protest by every­one. This un­think­able has been achieved due to the soft diplo­macy of the Sikh Di­as­pora and of those Sikh or­gan­i­sa­tions and ac­tivists in Pun­jab who have been pe­ti­tion­ing re­spec­tive gov­ern­ments and the UN all these years.

The In­dian re­ac­tion to your in­ter­ven­tion is on ex­pected lines. In the past, there have been in­ci­dents when Canada has back­tracked un­der the pres­sure of In­dia. You do not need to worry. The vast mar­ket of Pun­jab may not be up to the size of In­dia, but the love for Canada of the Pun­jabis will more than com­pen­sate for that. This will be the be­gin­ning of a new era of co­op­er­a­tion.

We await a grand ges­ture from you and your gov­ern­ment on the ques­tion of refugee rights of the Sikh Afghans pend­ing with your gov­ern­ment for the last many years.

I ex­pect that you and mul­ti­cul­tural Canada will not stop here. I hope you will take all pos­si­ble cases of de­nial of hu­man rights of Sikhs and the peo­ple of Pun­jab. We await a grand ges­ture from you and your gov­ern­ment on the ques­tion of refugee rights of the Sikh Afghans pend­ing with your gov­ern­ment for the last many years.

May God Almighty bless you, your fam­ily, your col­leagues, your gov­ern­ment and the peo­ple of Canada a very Happy Christ­mas and a Happy New Year 2021. Sikhs con­tinue to cher­ish the im­ages and videos of your visit to Am­rit­sar two years ago.

May the New Year 2021 usher in a world with­out fear of Covid19. Your brave and bold stand will surely be the har­bin­ger of a new chap­ter in Sikh-Canada re­la­tions.

Yours sin­cerely

Jag­mo­han Singh
Ed­i­tor, The World Sikh News