WARIS PUNJAB DE OR WARIS BHARAT DE?

RSN SINGH analyses the resurgence of separatist forces in i! the vital state of Punjab and how the foreign governments of Pakistan, Australia, the UK, the USA and Canada have not stopped the Internationalisation of their movement

The Khalistan insurgency after two decades has arrived in a new package, "Waris Punjab De" (Inheritors of Punjab). Actually, the fire of separatism in the 1980s was suppressed, but not extinguished. In 2012, 28 years after Operation Blue Star, 78-year old Lt Gen Kuldip Singh Brar, was attacked by the Khalistanis while he was on a walk with his wife in London. They slashed his throat.

Fortunately, the General retaliated and managed to survive the attack. He said "Luckily they were not able to get my throat in the first stab, they got me on the back, then they stabbed my cheek, and finally one of them was able to thrash my throat and I started bleeding heavily." He also averred: "I had to fight back because if I had just given in I think that would have been the end of it."

The octogenarian General showed the way but the exigency was lost out on us. Amongst the four attackers, there was a Sikh lady as well. Their age profile suggested that they would have been kids when the General performed the sacred duty of salvaging the defiled Golden Temple from the clutches of impious Bhindrawale and his followers, and restored its sanctity. Consequently, the physical repairs of Harminder Sahib were carried out, but the theocratic repairs were left at the mercy of the same impious elements, who had destroyed the syncretism, intrinsic to the Sikh panth. In a way, they have been abusing those mothers, who gifted their eldest sons to the Sikh panth, because Sanatan celebrates different paths.

There is no denying that the Sanatani theocratic environment has become vitiated because of the machinations of the inimical external agencies and the Khalistani diaspora abroad. Those non-Sikh Sanatanis who were regular worshipers in the Gurudwaras are experiencing acute sense of alienation and are apprehensive. The confidence has to be restored at the physical, psychological and spiritual levels.