Shocked and out­raged at the In­dian Pres­i­dent Shri Ram Nath Kovind pre­sid­ing over a func­tion in San­ti­ago, Chile where a lady danseuse per­forms the Kathak dance with Gur­bani be­ing played in the back­ground, WSN ed­i­tor Jag­mo­han Singh writes a scathing, bold, hard-hit­ting and un-par­don­ing Open let­ter to the Pres­i­dent of In­dia.

Pres­i­dent Ram Nath Kovind:  It’s never easy to dis­card tra­di­tion and cour­tesy, and yet with a heavy heart I can­not be­gin this let­ter with a greet­ing. You and your of­fice, es­teemed as it is per­ceived to be, have lost re­spect in the eyes of Sikhs since the func­tion of 31 March 2019 held in your ho­n­our in San­ti­ago, Chile.

When the first cit­i­zen of In­dia shows dis­re­gard for the founder of the Sikh faith –Guru Nanak, it be­comes dif­fi­cult to show re­spect.

Dance is anath­ema to Gur­bani –the Word of the Gu­rus, should have been known to you or in the least pro­to­col should have fore­warned you.  Guru Amar­das -the Third World Teacher, on page 506 of Guru Granth Sahib says,

ਨਾਚੁ ਰੇ ਮਨ ਗੁਰ ਕੈ ਆਗੈ ॥
ਗੁਰ ਕੈ ਭਾਣੈ ਨਾਚਹਿ ਤਾ ਸੁਖੁ ਪਾਵਹਿ ਅੰਤੇ ਜਮ ਭਉ ਭਾਗੈ ॥ ਰਹਾਉ ॥

So dance, O mind, be­fore your Guru.
If you dance ac­cord­ing to the Gu­ru’s Will, you shall ob­tain peace, and in the end, the fear of death shall leave you. ||Pause|

My hands trem­ble as I de­scribed your par­tic­i­pa­tion, my fin­gers find it dif­fi­cult to hit the key­board. Your name has words that a large num­ber of peo­ple of a cen­turies-old faith use to de­scribe their gods, and yet you thought it is al­right that you talk about Guru Nanak’s 550 years and also pre­side over a func­tion where the prime teach­ing of the same Guru Nanak Sahib, en­shrined as the Mool Man­tar –the Key Pri­mor­dial Note in Guru Granth Sahib, are re­duced to a dance ac­com­pa­ni­ment? This dis­grace­ful des­e­cra­tion and blas­phemy is un­ac­cept­able and in­tol­er­a­ble.

While you al­lude to 550 years of Guru Nanak in your speech, you men­tion Guru Nanak in the same breath as Mo­han­das Karam­c­hand Gandhi. You have every right to praise Gandhi, but you do not have the priv­i­lege to equiv­o­cate him with the founder of the Sikh re­li­gion. 

While speak­ing to the In­dian com­mu­nity,  you are re­ported to have said, “As the world around is in­creas­ingly falling prey to neg­a­tive forces of ter­ror­ism, vi­o­lence and greed, uni­ver­sal mes­sages of peace and tol­er­ance by Guru Nanak Dev and Ma­hatma Gandhi are in­creas­ingly rel­e­vant….”

While you al­lude to 550 years of Guru Nanak in your speech, you men­tion Guru Nanak in the same breath as Mo­han­das Karam­c­hand Gandhi. You have every right to praise Gandhi, but you do not have the priv­i­lege to equiv­o­cate him with the founder of the Sikh re­li­gion. That should ide­ally ap­ply in all cases. As Head of the State, you should not have equated even a god or god­dess of Hin­dus with any­one from the world of pol­i­tics, even if that per­son is ad­mired by many peo­ple. You were ig­no­rant of the sim­ple his­tor­i­cal fact (and your ad­vi­sors failed to ed­u­cate you) that Gandhi spoke against the Gu­rus and did not par­tic­u­larly like the Sikhs, and the dis­like is rec­i­p­ro­cal.

The dance act in San­ti­ago su­per­sedes all bla­tant acts done by anti-Sikh forces in­clud­ing the RSS and its off­shoots. The In­dian am­bas­sador to Chile Ms. Anita Na­yar and the group of Non-res­i­dent In­di­ans in Chile un­der the flag­ship of In­dian Com­mu­nity and Friends of In­dia are equally cul­pa­ble of the crime of blas­phemy.

Your of­fi­cers have since re­moved the blas­phe­mous post from your Face­book ac­count How­ever that is not enough.  Re­act­ing to Sikh ire, your press sec­re­tary Ashok Ma­lik has tweeted, “….it has since been pointed out that el­e­ments of the cul­tural pro­gramme, in pro­duc­ing which the Pres­i­den­t’s Sec­re­tariat had no role, have hurt sen­ti­ments of some of our peo­ple. Re­spon­sive to the faith and tra­di­tions of all sec­tions of In­dia, the videos have been deleted.” Does this con­tain an apol­ogy? No. Does this say that Sikhs were of­fended? No. Has the Pres­i­den­t’s of­fice in­sti­tuted an in­ter­nal en­quiry to find out who pro­duced the pro­gramme? Highly un­likely!

Are Sikhs dumb? So is their be­hav­iour. Are Sikhs naive? That is what many in In­dia think.  Are Sikhs dead? No.

The Pres­i­den­t’s Sec­re­tariat may not have pro­duced the pro­gramme but did the Pro­to­col of­fi­cer not brief the Pres­i­dent about the event where he was to be the chief guest? Is that not stan­dard pro­ce­dure as per the Blue book? No ex­pla­na­tion has been of­fered so far. Will it be given? Highly un­likely! This is what pains us.

Even though you were nur­tured in the ma­trix of a po­lit­i­cal party which has scant re­gard for Sikhs and Sikhism, as Pres­i­dent you should have fared dif­fer­ently.  Even though Sikhs are now pre­pared to ex­pect the worst, they wished that the Pres­i­dent of a coun­try would be wiser than the rest.

If the SGPC and DS­GMC have even an iota of self-re­spect, un­der strong protest, they should not touch a sin­gle paisa that the gov­ern­ment of In­dia may at­tempt to give for the cel­e­bra­tions to mark the 550th year of Guru Nanak Sahib.

This should be the last time that such an in­ci­dent has hap­pened.  To the best of my knowl­edge, never ever had things plunged so south. Still, to be sure, I have started re­search into the past.

The Shi­ro­mani Gur­d­wara Par­band­hak Com­mit­tee and the Delhi Sikh Gur­d­wara Man­age­ment Com­mit­tee of­fered fee­ble de­nun­ci­a­tions of the San­ti­ago in­ci­dent and as for them, af­ter the Face­book re­moval, their job is done. If they have even an iota of self-re­spect, un­der strong protest, they should not touch a sin­gle paisa that the gov­ern­ment of In­dia may at­tempt to give for the cel­e­bra­tions to mark the 550th year of Guru Nanak Sahib.

Are Sikhs dumb? So is their be­hav­iour. Are Sikhs naive? That is what many in In­dia think.  Are Sikhs dead? No. The hun­dreds of protests show that all is not yet fully lost.  How­ever if this hap­pens again, Sikhs will have them­selves to blame.  In one voice they should ob­tain an un­qual­i­fied apol­ogy from you.  The Sikhs do not have within their pow­ers to im­peach you. The least we want is an apol­ogy and a rep­ri­mand all those at the In­dian em­bassy, in­clud­ing the In­dian Am­bas­sador in Chile and in your Sec­re­tariat, who are ac­count­able for this sac­ri­le­gious ex­cur­sion.

As I cog­i­tate over your out­ra­geous de­meanour, I can­not help but re­call an in­ci­dent in Sikh his­tory.  In the early eigh­teenth cen­tury, af­ter the wide­spread per­se­cu­tion of the Sikhs, Za­kariya Khan spread this no­tion that the en­tire pop­u­la­tion of the Sikhs had been fin­ished -lock, stock and bar­rel. “No Sikh re­mains. All Sikhs have been killed.”

I see you as Bhabhi Khanno and this epis­tle is in the spirit of Bota Singh and Garja Singh.

Learn­ing this, two Sikhs –Bota Singh Garja Singh, blocked the road at Sarai Nu­rud­din, Tarn Taran and started col­lect­ing tax from trav­ellers and trans­porters. They pro­claimed, “Chitti likhat likhe Singh Bota, Hath hai sotta, vich raah khalota, aana laaya gad­dhe nu te paisa laya khota, aakhi bhabi khanno nu yuh kahe Singh Bota.” —-Go and tell Bhabhi Khanno –the ruler of In­dia, that Sikhs are alive; they up­hold their sov­er­eignty and are col­lect­ing tax on the Grand Trunk Road.

The Mughals sent an army bat­tal­ion of a 100 horse­men and both died fight­ing. The Mughals killed them, but soon re­alised that Sikhs are not ex­ter­mi­nated and that they were still alive and kick­ing.

I see you as Bhabhi Khanno and this epis­tle is in the spirit of Bota Singh and Garja Singh.

Jag­mo­han Singh
Ed­i­tor, The World Sikh News