Serving the global jihad: This is what Khalistanis supporting Pakistan are doing. And it is a betrayal of Sikhs
A day ago, I saw on Facebook a picture from outside the Indian consulate in Toronto, Canada. It showed small flags bearing the Sikh symbol, along with the word ‘Khalistan’ — dwarfed by a giant Pakistani flag in the middle of the frame.
I was moved to declare on Facebook that these Khalistanis were traitors to Sikhism and the servants of Jihad.
A concerned user with a Hindu name asked, "But what about justice for the Sikhs who were ruthlessly massacred in cold blood?"
I had to respond.
There is a history between the Sikhs and Hindus, involving Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and the Arya Samaj, that has to be faced and worked out.
But an alliance with Pakistan — well, what about justice for the Sikhs who were massacred in cold blood in 1947?
Did the Sikhs ask for Pakistan?
Did anyone ask them what they wanted?
No.
But they accepted what happened — without hate or hostility towards either Muslims or Hindus.
My family in West Punjab had no intention of moving to India. They were at peace and harmony with their Muslim neighbours. Punjabi Muslims had been with the Unionist Party. No one cared for Jinnah in Punjab. The Muslim League was nothing in Punjab. In 1946, when the Muslim League mobilised all its forces, including Ahmedis and communists from across India, to deliver a victory for the Muslim League in Punjab, my family members thought nothing of it. When they learned of Partition too, it didn't mean a lot. What did the Hindus of, say, Agra or Nagpur mean to them in front of their own known neighbours?
Then, the slaughter started.
Still, my family didn't leave. In fact, they didn't leave until it was too late.
They were then going to die. But they were lucky. They were evacuated by an army officer with some trucks who was gathering whoever he could.
Virtually no one in the area, except a few, got out before their defences failed, before they ran out of ammunition, before they were run over by mobs of their neighbours out to rape and kill. Those who made it ended up in the destitution and poverty of the refugee camps, scattered across a foreign land.
I don't think anyone, except Kashmiri Pandits, can imagine what I am describing.
There was only one place for us Pakistani Sikhs to go. India. And, that's where we went.
And, after years in refugee camps, we settled in Haryana, not far from Delhi. Hindus working in the bureaucracy of newly independent India slowly got us settled in the cities and farms, with plots of land to build houses and start agriculture.
The trader Khatris, Hindus and Sikhs, filled the cities, the farming Jats and Majbis went to the villages, and over a generation, became a part of the country that was their home.
We had loved our Muslim neighbours.
We didn't want Partition.
But the Muslim League brought hell to Punjab, set fire to the love between the Muslim and the other, and literally burned us to the ground.
We grew again as seeds in the soil of an India that we had never seen. We farmed, we joined the army, the civil service, politics, we did all our duties with honour, honesty and dharmic devotion to our work.
But our family was scattered. We don’t know where anyone was, where they went, who survived and what became of them.
My great-grandfather was one of seven brothers.
We have no idea what happened to the families of six of them.
We have no family, no community, no relations, no baradari, other than those who escaped in the truck together that night in 1947.
This was brought to us by the Muslim League and those who voted for the Muslim League. It was brought to us by Jinnah, the Qaid-e-Azam of Pakistan.
And now, we have to watch the Sikh Nishan in the same frame as the star and crescent of the sons of Jinnah, whose Jihad against Hind has still not ended.
Is this what Guru Hargobind called the bhakti Sikhs to bear arms for? Is this what Guru Tegh Bahadur gave his life, but not his faith, to Aurangzeb for? Is this what Guru Gobind Singh wanted, when he wrote the Zafarnama to Aurangzeb? Is this what Guru Arjun Dev and the Char Sahibzadas gave their lives for? Is this justice to the deeds of Sardar Banda Singh Bahadur? Is this for the valour and glory of Maharaja Ranjit Singh?
Is this what Shaheed Udham Singh and Shaheed Bhagat Singh wanted?
Is this what India deserves from us — after having given us new homes, new lives, security and prosperity, after we, the Sikhs, were subjected to the latest in a string of genocides we endured at the hands of Muslim rulers since the days of Guru Arjun Dev and Jahangir?
No.
My deceased grandfather of the Punjab regiment says "no". The Boys of the Sikh Regiment say "no". Baba Farid and Baba Bulley Shah say "no".
Whatever Hindus and Sikhs have to work out has to be worked out.
But Sikhs in alliance with the Ghazwa-e-Hind, the Jihad being waged upon Hindustan?
I don't see Khalistanis as Sikhs. Just turbans and long beards cannot make them Sikhs. They are only ignorant, hate-filled servants of the global Jihad.
Also Read: Have Hindutva forces in India reignited the Khalistan movement overseas?