As the lo­cal po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship of the state of Megha­laya ups the ante against the poor Shil­long Sikhs, they ap­proach the scholar-gov­er­nor of the state -Shri Tatha­gata Roy and pre­sent him a list of their woes and seek his ur­gent in­ter­ven­tion to build the Guru Nanak school and get jus­tice by cre­ation of a cor­dial cli­mate with­out fear and threat.

Not will­ing to take it ly­ing down the di­a­tribe of Megha­laya Deputy Chief Min­is­ter Pre­stone Tyn­song and the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Af­fairs Min­is­ter Mr. Hamel­ston Dohling against the res­i­dents of the Pun­jabi lane, Bara Bazar, Shil­long, a Sikh del­e­ga­tion met Tatha­gata Roy, the gov­er­nor of Megha­laya and sought his im­me­di­ate in­ter­ven­tion to stop the Megha­laya gov­ern­ment lead­er­ship from ma­lign­ing Sikhs and cre­at­ing con­fu­sion in the minds of the lo­cal peo­ple of the re­gion.

Gur­jit Singh, speak­ing ex­clu­sively to the World Sikh News af­ter meet­ing the gov­er­nor said that the Gov­er­nor as­sured them that he would look into the mat­ter com­pas­sion­ately and make ap­pro­pri­ate rec­om­men­da­tions to the gov­ern­ment of Megha­laya.  The gov­er­nor told them that “he was happy to meet the Sikhs and praised the con­tri­bu­tion of Sikhs in all walks of life.”

Ex­press­ing their fears and hopes, the Shil­long Sikhs lead­er­ship pre­sented a five page mem­o­ran­dum to the gov­er­nor and sought his in­ter­ven­tion with the state gov­ern­ment urg­ing no ob­struc­tion in the dis­burse­ment of funds an­nounced by the Pun­jab gov­ern­ment for the Guru Nanak School, which is a Sikh mi­nor­ity in­sti­tu­tion. They told the gov­er­nor that the school be­longed to the com­mit­tee and that they had Pat­tas for the school land. They also pointed out that “hereto­fore the school has re­ceived grants un­der the MPLAD scheme, grants from MLA Scheme as well as grants from the dis­cre­tionary funds of the Chief Min­is­ter.”

The del­e­ga­tion of the Har­i­jan Pan­chayat Com­mit­tee was led by Gur­jit Singh, Pres­i­dent of City Gur­d­wara Man­age­ment Com­mit­tee and in­cluded Billu Singh, Head­man Har­i­jan Pan­chayat Com­mit­tee, Sukhwinder Singh Deputy Head­man, mem­bers –Shyam Singh and Tajin­der Singh along­with Shri Pirthi Das, Pres­i­dent of the Shiv Mandir Com­mit­tee.

The del­e­ga­tion com­plained that the gov­ern­ment-formed High level Com­mit­tee has been is­su­ing il­le­gal or­ders to the Shil­long Mu­nic­i­pal Board for sur­vey of houses of the poor Sikhs with the in­ten­tion of dis­lo­ca­tion of Sikhs.  They are mak­ing in­sin­u­a­tions against the poor Sikh res­i­dents. Gur­jit Singh said that we have sought the dis­band­ing of this com­mit­tee which has no lo­cus standi and is work­ing in a bi­ased and malafide man­ner since its in­cep­tion.

The mem­o­ran­dum has also pointed out that even ear­lier, the Na­tional Com­mis­sion for Mi­nori­ties had taken se­ri­ous note of the ut­ter­ances of the Deputy Chief Min­is­ter in this re­gard and has stayed the dis­lo­ca­tion of the Sikhs by the Megha­laya gov­ern­ment from the Pun­jabi lane, Bara Bazar area.

“Sikhs are the cit­i­zens of Megha­laya and na­tives of the land as they have be­come part and par­cel of this so­ci­ety and par­tic­i­pate in all re­li­gious and so­cial fes­ti­vals of the state. The land on which they live be­longed to the Syiem of Myl­liem and was granted to their fore­fa­thers who came from Pun­jab more than two cen­turies ago to serve the army here.”

“We seek peace and com­mu­nal har­mony”, said the del­e­ga­tion lead­ers but said that our right to live and right to hous­ing is un­der grave threat and sought the re­moval of the cli­mate of fear against them from the gov­er­nor of the state.  

It is dis­tress­ing and dis­gust­ing to note that since the last seven decades and more the area of Bara Bazar where the poor Mazhabi Sikhs and oth­ers live, that colony is of­fi­cially called the “Sweep­ers Colony”. Sikhs have protested in the past but to no avail. The Shil­long me­dia and the po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship con­tin­ues to call it so de­spite the re­cent stric­tures passed by the Na­tional Hu­man Rights Com­mis­sion and cat­e­gor­i­cal di­rec­tion to change the name with­out de­lay. The del­e­ga­tion told the gov­er­nor that this was a de­mand about which no­body should have any ob­jec­tion and that this should be done with­out de­lay.

Gur­jit Singh said be­ing the head of the state, the gov­er­nor was asked to take proac­tive steps to ask the Syiem of Myl­liem to is­sue Pat­tas to the 218 fam­i­lies which re­quest is pend­ing with the au­thor­i­ties since 2006.

Re­but­ting the out­sider ar­gu­ment of the deputy chief min­is­ter, the mem­o­ran­dum says that, “By all ac­counts they (Sikhs) are the cit­i­zens of Megha­laya and na­tives of the land as they have be­come part and par­cel of this so­ci­ety and par­tic­i­pate in all re­li­gious and so­cial fes­ti­vals of the state. The land on which they live be­longed to the Syiem of Myl­liem and was granted to their fore­fa­thers who came from Pun­jab more than two cen­turies ago to serve the army here.” Gur­jit Singh said that they were em­bold­ened to meet the Gov­er­nor af­ter read­ing that at pub­lic func­tion in Oc­to­ber this year, the gov­er­nor had openly re­marked, “there are no out­siders, we are all In­di­ans.”

Gur­jit Singh said that he was in­deed grate­ful to the gov­ern­ment of Pun­jab, the SGPC, the DS­GMC, Singh Sabha Mum­bai, United Sikhs and oth­ers who have been con­sis­tently keep­ing a watch on the sit­u­a­tion here and as­sist­ing us in all ways. “Our sur­vival is di­rectly de­pen­dent on the watch main­tained by the Sikh lead­er­ship,” he added. He woe­fully said, “Since June 2018, we have been vic­tims of veiled threats by stu­dent bod­ies, tribal non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions, un­der­ground or­ga­ni­za­tion namely HNLC and other po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship of the state.”

The mem­o­ran­dum clar­i­fied that the gov­ern­ment of Pun­jab has granted funds for the school and com­pen­sa­tion to one in­di­vid­ual whose truck was com­pletely burnt, an­other whose show­room was burnt down and a third per­son whose shop were gut­ted in fire by the ar­son.” He rued the fact that so far no com­pen­sa­tion of any kind has been given by the Megha­laya gov­ern­ment. He clar­i­fied that no com­pen­sa­tion has been an­nounced for any in­jured per­son by the Gov­ern­ment of Pun­jab.

Putting the record straight, the mem­o­ran­dum listed that, “In 2016, the then Pun­jab chief min­is­ter Parkash Singh Badal vis­ited Shil­long gave Rs. 10 lakhs to the Guru Nanak School and Rs. 5 lakhs for the gen­eral de­vel­op­ment of Vil­lage Thand­non­giaw, Dis­trict Ri-Bhoi, Megha­laya. This was ex­ten­sively cov­ered in the me­dia, no­body had protested and every­one had wel­comed it.”

“The deputy chief min­is­ter Pre­stone Tyn­song and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment min­is­ter Mr. Hamel­ston Dohling are un­nec­es­sar­ily rais­ing the is­sue to cause con­fu­sion and ma­lign the Sikhs.” said Gur­jit Singh.

Gur­jit Singh who has been spear­head­ing the fight for jus­tice for the poor Sikhs also pointed out that, “The NCM has clearly or­dered a stay on the ef­forts of the Megha­laya gov­ern­ment to re­lo­cate the poor Sikh res­i­dents. The Na­tional Hu­man Rights Com­mis­sion (NHRC) has also given sim­i­lar di­rec­tions. An or­der to main­tain peace in the re­gion and not do any­thing detri­men­tal to peace, in­clud­ing a stay on the fol­low up of the Shil­long Mu­nic­i­pal Board pub­lic no­tice seek­ing own­er­ship de­tails from the Sikh res­i­dents has been passed by the High Court of Megha­laya at Shil­long.”

It is test­ing times for the poor Sikh res­i­dents to show more re­silience and dili­gence in fight­ing for their rights. The Sikh com­mu­nity, apex bod­ies like the SGPC, DS­GMC and the Pun­jab gov­ern­ment lead­ers must re­main stead­fast to their promises. The gov­er­nor of Megha­laya Tatha­gata Roy –a scholar who deeply un­der­stands the ques­tion of mi­gra­tion and the plight of mi­grants, must lis­ten and re­solve the griev­ances of the Sikhs of Shil­long. And of course, the gov­ern­ment of Megha­laya must ho­n­our not only the con­di­tions of the court, the NCM and NHRC, but also the fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple of equal­ity en­shrined in the Con­sti­tu­tion of In­dia.