Congress leader Rahul Gandhi at an interaction with media at National Press Club in Washington DC, Wednesday. (PTI)
Rahul Gandhi’s recent remarks during his foreign sojourn about Sikhs in India have left not just the Sikh community but all Indians disappointed and dismayed. As a proud Sikh who has worn a turban for 62 years, I can say with certainty that not a single Sikh wonders “whether a Sikh is going to be allowed to wear his turban or a kada in India. Or he, as a Sikh, is going to be able to go to Gurdwara”, to quote Rahul Gandhi from his “talk” in Washington DC. His contention is so stunningly bizarre and alien to the lived experience of all Sikhs that it defies comprehension.
I have served India for more than five decades as a diplomat first and now as a member of the Cabinet. Sikhs consider India their homeland, their motherland, and their karma bhoomi. Gandhi’s malicious and divisive propaganda cannot be allowed to take wing. This mischief must be nipped in the bud. This is not the first time he has spewed such rubbish either. Last year, at Cambridge, he had called Sikhs second-class citizens in India.
The only time Sikhs have felt insecure and faced an existential threat in India was in the early 1980s and Gandhi needs to educate himself on this. His statement leads to the inevitable question on everyone’s lips: Will Rahul Gandhi apologise for the atrocities his family and party visited upon the Sikhs when Indira Gandhi executed Operation Blue Star that desecrated the holiest of Sikh shrines with the brazen invasion of the Harmandir Sahib complex and the destruction of the Akal Takht? Will he apologise for the violence that followed the assassination of Indira Gandhi when Congress goons killed 3,000 Sikhs in cold blood, mostly in Delhi? Will he condemn his father Rajiv Gandhi who had said after the atrocities that “when a big tree falls, the ground is bound to shake”, thus implying that such base violence was somehow justified for a democratic nation undergirded by the rule of law?
I suspect we will be waiting a long time for an apology. The fact that his statements have been endorsed by fringe separatist voices raises uncomfortable questions that Gandhi must answer. He cannot dismiss them away as his closest advisor, Sam Pitroda, had tried to when he said of the violence committed against Sikhs, “hua toh hua” (“what’s done is done”).
The Narendra Modi-led BJP government has sought to heal these wounds. The Prime Minister’s reverence for Sikh teachings, especially the philosophy of integral humanism, is evident in most of the government’s actions. We respect the integrity, honesty, and hard work that the Sikh community stands for and lives by. Unprecedented measures have been taken in the last 10 years to improve the welfare of the Sikh community and redress long-standing grievances — which, unsurprisingly, were against Congress governments.
It was the Modi government which removed 312 Sikhs from the blacklist or the “Central Adverse List” that Congress had imposed. Sikhs who were living as refugees abroad due to government persecution during the period of turmoil in Punjab were able to come home because of our intervention. It was the Modi government which took steps to bring the perpetrators of 1984 to justice and provided long overdue financial relief of Rs 5 lakh to each victim’s family.
It was the Modi government which facilitated the FCRA registration for Sri Darbar Sahib, Amritsar, and made langar and langar items tax-free. When the Taliban took over in Afghanistan, 230 Sikh families were repatriated expeditiously by the Modi government and five copies of the holy Guru Granth Sahib were brought back safely. The Modi government inaugurated the Kartarpur Sahib Corridor in November 2019. It was the Modi government which celebrated Guru Nanak Dev ji’s 550th Prakash Parv as well as the 350th Parkash Utsav of Guru Gobind Singh ji and the 400th Parkash Purab of Sri Guru Teg Bahadur ji with immense fervour across India and the world. It was the Modi government which announced that the nation would observe December 26 as Veer Bal Diwas to honour the “Chhote Sahibzaade”. It thus accorded the pride of place to Sikh tradition by righting a historic wrong.
In contrast, what has the Congress done for Sikhs except subject them to humiliation and disrespect? Rahul Gandhi needs to be taught a little about the dark passages of Congress’s history. If ever Sikhs have been subjected to identity-based discrimination, it was under Congress’s rule and under their explicit instruction. In 1982, police dragged down Sikhs from buses and cars, identifying them by their turban and kada, to prevent them from entering Delhi before the 1982 Asian Games because the community was viewed as a “threat” by Congress leaders. That is the legacy Gandhi must contend with.
Rahul Gandhi’s disgraceful remarks in the US deserve to be condemned in the strongest terms possible.
The writer is Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas in the Government of India
