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.