The Am­rit­sar po­lice and ad­min­is­tra­tion swung into ac­tion late last night mak­ing pre­ven­tive de­ten­tions of scores of Dal Khalsa ac­tivists through­out the state and es­pe­cially in Am­rit­sar to thwart the pos­si­bil­ity of Dal Khalsa hoist­ing the Sikh flag as planned by the body on 15 Au­gust. Co­in­cid­ing with the In­dian In­de­pen­dence Day cel­e­bra­tions, Sikh po­lit­i­cal body Dal Khalsa had planned to hoist the Sikh na­tional flag in Am­rit­sar in a par­al­lel pro­gram. To­day, Dal Khalsa ac­tivists at­tempted to un­furl the Sikh na­tional flag out­side their of­fice while the po­lice made des­per­ate at­tempts to snatch the flag from them, be­fore be­ing hurled into po­lice vans, amidst shout­ing of pro-Sikh sov­er­eignty slo­gans. WSN re­ports.

NEARLY 50 AC­TIVISTS OF THE DAL KHALSA, in­clud­ing for­mer party head Har­cha­ran­jit Singh Dhami, se­nior leader Jasvir Singh Khan­dur, party spokesper­son Kan­war Pal Singh and youth lead­ers Paramjit Singh Mand, Paramjit Singh Tanda, Gur­preet Singh Khudda, Hard­eep Singh Mehraj, Gur­nam Singh Moonkan, Malkit Singh and many oth­ers were de­tained in the Chhe­harta po­lice sta­tion, on the out­skirts of Am­rit­sar, while the chief min­is­ter of Pun­jab Ma­haraja Amarinder Singh did the In­dian in­de­pen­dence day flag hoist­ing in Am­rit­sar city. The Am­rit­sar po­lice clamped down on the Dal Khalsa say­ing that it would not al­low any such event to be held.

Sikh rev­o­lu­tion­ary party Dal Khalsa has been spear­head­ing the cause of Sikh self-rule and has been ob­serv­ing 15 Au­gust as a black day in protest of in­jus­tices to the Sikh peo­ple and Pun­jab for the last many years. This year, they de­cided to ex­press the Sikh claim to sov­er­eignty by hold­ing a par­al­lel event to demon­strate that Sikhs con­tinue to yearn for free­dom. 

The Dal Khalsa state­ment propos­ing the func­tion had stated that “Dal Khalsa is com­mit­ted to the goal of Pun­jab’s in­de­pen­dence, to up­hold the sov­er­eign char­ac­ter of the Sikh peo­ple, who con­tinue to be gov­erned in Pun­jab by In­dia as a colony for the last 74 years.”

“Dal Khalsa will fo­cus on decades of the in­jus­tice of the In­dian state to­wards Pun­jabis, Dal­its and other mi­nori­ties and other na­tion­al­i­ties.”

“His­tor­i­cally speak­ing, the In­dian sub­con­ti­nent was meant to be a multi-eth­nic and multi-re­gional con­fed­er­a­tion of sov­er­eign en­ti­ties.”

Party Spokesper­son Kan­war Pal Singh said that the Sikh flag sym­bol­izes Sikh sov­er­eignty and it is our in­alien­able right to in­form and pre­pare our peo­ple about the his­tor­i­cal, re­li­gio-po­lit­i­cal and geopo­lit­i­cal ra­tio­nale for self-de­ter­mi­na­tion of the peo­ple of the Pun­jab.

“We are the third party en­ti­tled to free­dom af­ter Hin­dus and Mus­lims and we con­tinue to as­pire and thrive to ex­press our as­pi­ra­tion for free­dom,” he added. 

Party pres­i­dent Harpal Singh Cheema, who was placed un­der house ar­rest in his home in Fate­hgarh Sahib had stated two days ago that, “His­tor­i­cally speak­ing, the In­dian sub­con­ti­nent was meant to be a multi-eth­nic and multi-re­gional con­fed­er­a­tion of sov­er­eign en­ti­ties. The British had uni­fied all to pur­sue their pe­cu­niary, ad­min­is­tra­tive, and po­lit­i­cal in­ter­ests. Sub­se­quently, in 1947, the very ra­tio­nale of con­fed­er­a­tion was com­pro­mised to make In­dia a fed­eral struc­ture con­sti­tu­tion­ally, ig­nor­ing the con­cerns and ap­pre­hen­sions of the Sikhs, mi­nori­ties, Dal­its and oth­ers. The events over the decades, par­tic­u­larly in the last few years, have seen In­dia un­der Naren­dra Modi de­gen­er­at­ing into a more and more cen­tral­ized struc­ture crush­ing the fun­da­men­tal and hu­man rights of all na­tion­al­i­ties, re­li­gious, re­gional and caste iden­ti­ties.”

Spelling out in­jus­tices of the In­dian state to­wards Pun­jab and Sikhs, the Sikh Youth of Pun­jab pres­i­dent Paramjit Singh Mand said: “ram­pant mis­use of dra­con­ian laws like UAPA and sedi­tion, not re­leas­ing po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers de­spite com­ple­tion of their life sen­tences, loot­ing Pun­jab’s river wa­ters, im­pos­ing one lan­guage and one cul­ture phe­nom­e­non, deny­ing na­tion­al­i­ties their right to self-de­ter­mi­na­tion be­side re­fus­ing to re­peal the three black farm laws were the cur­rent ad­di­tional causes to sus­tain our spirit of free­dom.”

At the time of writ­ing the Dal Khalsa lead­ers con­tin­ued to be de­tained and the count is re­ported to be 44 ac­tivists -30 in Chehharta po­lice sta­tion and 14 in Cir­cuit House, Am­rit­sar.