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Post by Pendoo on Jan 14, 2010 16:26:11 GMT
3. Respect for sonia deol doing what she did, but this is the last quesiton i wanna ask.... Where was she when adil ray made those remarks, and her employers defedned adil ray and took the recording down. WHy didnt she speak up? Valid and good point that is what I am wondering about which made me think about her as a person. I was also intrigued about who else could have been the main person in a show like this. I did admire Dr Inderjit Singh the president of the NSO. His manner and style is always top class and he always has a very interesting take on life. The timing was ridiculous far too late to target more people for awareness and there was plenty of loopholes in the whole story. Once again typical BBC style - telling a story but leaving out the truth. Patehtic....you're going totally off the boil. Where was she during the Ludhiana riots...somebody tell me that!!
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Post by amlijattuk on Jan 14, 2010 16:28:18 GMT
[ Patehtic....you're going totally off the boil. Where was she during the Ludhiana riots...somebody tell me that!! Well DUDLEY of course
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Post by sukhbirsingh84 on Jan 19, 2010 17:55:00 GMT
It was a pretty terrible programme. When I first heard it was going to be aired I held little hope that it would be anything other than the usual 'there were terrorists in the temple...communal killings all over Punjab etc. etc.' Unfortunately my pessimism was well placed.
Sonia is clearly someone who knows little of the period and is happy to accept the Indian propaganda which is now taken as accepted fact.
The only information being provided at the time was through the state controlled 'door darshan' and Tully et al relied on them for most of their information. I have read on a few of the post's here that some imagine Tully to be a objective journalist with regard to the events surrounding Bluestar...the truth is he is a Indian sycophant who carries a great deal of blame for the negative perception of the Sikh campaign for greater autonomy that was part of the events leading to 1984. He is the 'must have' commentator anytime the media decide to revisit the subject.
The bottom line is that to Western sensibilities a man with a turban and a beard wearing a gun belt and carrying a sword has already fitted the bill. Contrast this against the urbane english speaking general brar or the very media savvy indira and you can see why the Sikh perspective was so little understood.
Remember way before we had heard of the name Bin Laden. There was the Ayatollah Khomeini who had firmly planted the picture of the turban wearing bearded fanatic into the westerm psyche...a fact not lost on indira.
The straight forward vernacular of the honest Panjabi Gur Sikh when translated into english was never going to impact well on a western audience and again in contrast we had the sophistry of indira the daughter of a Oxbridge educated lawyer....
The sad thing is that I had hoped that 25 years on we could perhaps level the field, that we had got to a position to have those from our community that would seek to set the record straight..instead what we have had is worse... Perpetuation of the lies by someone who couldnt be bothered or didnt think to challenge all that has passed into fact about Bluestar...
The visit to the Taksal and the showing of young men rote learning Gurbani was of course a image deliberately conceived to mimick a 'madrassa' the list goes on and on I have been tempted to do a minute by minute analysis of the programme for the sake of posterity but haven't as yet found the time.
In the end it is true that 'Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past' the forthcoming bollywood clap trap should prove that beyond doubt.
I look forward to a day when more of us young(ish!) Sikhs in the west manage to control the resources and gather the collective will to set the record straight..
I have included three small (relatively speaking)parts of a larger post that I wrote in 04(twentieth anniversary) and a couple of intresting quotes for those that can be bothered to read what is, I know a long posting...
SANTJI SHOULD NOT HAVE FORTIFIED THE HARMANDIR SAHIB COMPLEX, THAT IS WHY IT WAS ATTACKED.
Their missing the point, that being, fortified or not the Harmandir Sahib complex was going to be attacked by the indian army, that is an absolute. Sant Bhindrawale was simply a pretext, his arrest could have been effected at many times prior to June, besides the simultaneous assault on as many as 74 other Sikh Gurudwara at the same time somewhat negates the argument that this was about the apprehension or containment of one man, the other 74 gurudwara as well as those burned in the run up to June 84 or for that matter those attacked in Nov 84 were not fortified, did this prevent their sacrilege?
Clearly not.
The fact that some Sikhs decided to defend their holiest shrine is a act which should be admired, be under no illusions defended or not the army was going to storm the complex and kill Sikhs, the date chosen for the attack was not coincidence it was intentionally chosen to inflict maximum damage.
Below is an interesting quote which exposes the widely held belief that bluestar was a response to Sant Bhindranwale, as contemptuous.
On May the 5th 1984 Rajiv Gandhi visited Panjab; speaking in Chandigarh he described Sant Bhindranwale as "a saintly man without political ambitions." p.o.g./ I.S. Jaijee
This less than a month before the attack?
There will always be those whom seek to justify bluestar as being perpetrated in response to the actions of Sant Bhindranwale, this is a mistake not only for the reasons given above. It is impossible to look at the fortification of the Harmandir Sahib or the Sikh situation as a whole in isolation.
It must be understood in context of the prevailing political climate of the time, it was not paranoia which led the Sant to concentrate on the grave injustices suffered by Sikhs at the hands of indian authorities, indeed events since 1984 have left us in doubt as to the veracity of his claim's, but even in the years and months preceding June 84 we can see a determined increase in the governments anti-Sikh agenda, as example.
February 20, 1984. The Congress chief minister of Haryana provoked an anti-Sikh riot through his inflammatory speech "warning the akali leaders that hindu patience is running out and retaliation was near". Satish Jacob (BBC) saw police looking on as hindu mobs burnt down the gurudwara in Panipat. He also witnessed Sikhs pulled from buses and forcibly shaved, Sikh shops looted, eight Sikhs were clubbed to death that day.
Bear in mind that the Congress chief minister that incited these actions was not only a minister of the ruling government of india but a close personal friend of I gandhi. So this was the situation that Sikhs found themselves trapped within, the ruling government of 'their' country had decided that seeing the desertion of the muslim vote from congress the Sikhs alienation followed by retribution against them was a certain vote winner amongst hindu chauvinists.
Bluestar was conceived and gestated on political ambition it was nurtured on vanity and executed in reckless hate, it was the last gasp of a woman who was no stranger to inciting communal and religious tensions to fuel her megalomania, therefore fortification was no provocation as none were needed. The defiant protection of a Sikh shrine could do no worse than to allow history to record that the proud spirit of Sikh resistance to tyranny is still existent.
THERE ARE TWO SIDES TO EVERY STORY, INDIA HAS ITS VERSION OF EVENTS.
This is a comment that tries to suggest that their is somehow some parity between the Sikh experience and that of the GOI or indian people, there is no parity whatsoever. India was the aggressor and instigator, the vast majority of civilian victims were Sikh, those imprisoned,raped and tortured by the police and army were all Sikh, those disappeared, killed in 'encounters', imprisoned for years without trial were and are Sikhs, bluestar desecrated the most holy shrine of the Sikhs, all victims of the Nov pogroms were Sikh, all those denied and still denied justice are Sikh.
There are opinion's, some are based on facts whilst others are based on misinformation, the propaganda that was used by the indian government to justify bluestar and the subsequent 'information' issued through government and army officials into the aftermath of the attack, such as numbers of militants, numbers of dead, breakdown of men women and children, damage to akal takht, numbers of arms, discovery of illicit drugs, troop casualties, arson, removal of artefacts etc.etc.etc. have all subsequently been shown to be lies, this is not a matter of opinion or open to debate they were absolute, unashamed, downright, lies. How do we know this?
Because every single piece of information issued relating to the examples above was later revised or in a number of cases completely denied.
As a small example the Indian's originally issued a statement saying that there were 49 militants taking shelter in Harmandir Sahib, Lt.Gen Brar later offered these statistics "army casualties were 83 killed and 248 wounded; terrorist and other casualties were 492 killed and 86 wounded" Yesterday 24th May 2004 speaking on the BBC programme 'After Bluestar' Lt.Gen. Brar put the number of militants at 2,000! To further add to the confusion It is noted that PM Rajiv Gandhi addressing the national union of students at Nagpur in September 1984 referred to the 700 shaheed soldiers killed executing bluestar. (I.Jaijee P.O.G.) One statistic that is unequivocal however is that more gallantry awards were given for operation bluestar than the combined awards for indias four wars of 1948;1962,1965 and 1971.
This endemic lying resonates throughout the entire period of insurgency in the Panjab and continues to the present day. The GOI has so twisted and distorted reality that there are those who will contend that their are 'two sides to the story' without really looking at the fact's.
The idea that any individual act of barbarity, although unjustifiable is comparable to the sustained, pre-meditated assault on an entire people, employing the whole might of a national army, police and intelligence networks, the use of all media by government to demonise the Sikhs both nationally and internationally, the corruption of the judiciary, the suspension of the rule of law, the passing of draconian legislation, the legitimisation of extra judicial execution,the negation of the democratic process,the immunity from prosecution of the guilty. In fact the entire machinery of the indian nation state was pitted against one of its own minority communities, India had effectively declared a war on the Sikh's.
These actions as the action of choosing to perpetrate 'bluestar' on a recognised day in the Sikh calendar belies the governments intentions. The intention of GOI was to cause maximum Sikh civilian casualties. If not the case then why June 6th? If not why hundreds of thousands of soldiers? If not why give total immuity from prosecution to the police and army? If not why cut off all communications, effectively turning Panjab into a open prison? If not why expel all media,foreign and domestic? If not, why ban entry of UN or Human rights delegations to Panjab to this day?
THE SIKH TERRORISTS MASSACRED HINDUS.
The Sikh armed response in any impartial and objective summary was never one intended to impose civilian casualties, if it had been it would have been far easier to move the battle out of the Panjab and bomb any number of indian cities. If the fight had not been focused firstly on defence and later moral struggle and resistance, cell's could have disappeared at will in the vast metropolis of delhi, bangalore, calcutta, bombay. If their intention had been to inflict mass civilian casualties, it would have been far easier than facing an army on the plains of the Panjab, in many ways taking the fight out of the Panjab would not have only been more effective in hurting the GOI it would also have meant that a far higher proportion of those killed would have been hindus rather than as it was, Sikhs... -------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Taken from fighting for faith and nation, Cynthia Keppley) "Dramatic acts of violence as Franz Fanon noted, have the capacity to jolt the silent masses into an awareness of their power. This experience of sudden empowerment seems to overcome hesitations relating to concerns for victims, on the part of both perpetrators of the violent acts and the audiences who applaud them. Were the sense of disempowered not so strong, acts of violent empowerment would not resonate as they do in the khalistani Sikh community virtually all of whose members assert the primacy of moral considerations in the separatist struggle".
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The resistance movement imposed upon itself high moral standards, in stark contrast to its opponent. The GOI would hold on to Panjab regardless of the cost both in civilian and moral term's. If the freedom movement had adopted the same principle i.e.. victory at any cost then there can be no doubt a Sikh state would be a reality today, however could a state built in such a way ever hold legitimacy? Would the end's justify the means? As Sikhs we must say no they would not. Equally does the GOI who adopted such immoral methods in order to 'win' hold any legitimacy? No, it cannot.
The situation in Panjab was created for nothing other than political gain it was not a issue of hindu/Sikh communalism as the GOI would have us believe. It is telling that the massacre of Sikhs in Delhi and all over india was not responded to by a massacre of hindus by the Sikhs in Panjab.
Gross injustice on this scale is never forgotten, it may be quelled by brutality for a generation or even more but the history of similar movements has always shown that the state will eventually reap what it has sown. The truth of Guru Nanak Dev Ji 'Apei beej ape hei khae' is not lost on the indian state which is why every effort is now being made to tear the 'seedlings from their roots.'
If we push these issues under the carpet it is ultimately the youth that will pay the price for when in years to come they will not be able to answer the fundamental question....WHY?
They will have to accept the lies of other's that there were terrorists all over Panjab, that even woodrose was justified because of the Sikh 'extremist's, militants, fundamentalists, separatists,traitors, atharvaddi's etc. etc. They will have to accept these 'labels' and statements as the truth because they will have no knowledge of the period themselves.
Be under no misapprehension the indian government will teach this period as part of the curriculum in the not so near future and the children of Panjab will have to rely on their brothers and sisters outside india to keep the torches of truth alight.
International terrorism and what lead's to it and it's containment is the single biggest issue that governments the world over are debating as a matter of course since 09/11 how we can fail to see the need to set the record of bluestar straight in this enviroment.
The youth need to see issues put in a way that is relevant to them, the children need to see that they are, have been and continue to be a persecuted people. It is this knowledge that will lead them to feel protective and zealous over what is their birthright, this is not manipulation this is the truth they are truly under attack and they need to know it.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This is how Ram Narayan Kumar puts it in his book 'The Sikh unrest and the Indian state'
'The Akali leaders could no longet negotiate with a goverment that had destroyed the Akal Takht. Indira Gandhi herself could not have immediately judged the long term consequences of the army action. Approximately 150 terrorists, fighting with light weapons,had matched the Indian army, mobilized on the scale of a full-fledged war. The high casualty rate during the operation and later during the mutiny of Sikh regiments, had exposed India to a crisis of confidence in the army's fighting capability' ------------------
More gallantry awards were given for operation bluestar than for the combined awards for Indias four war's of 1948,1962,1965 and 1971! This is revealed by Air Marshall Malhotra in his own book. ------------------
In his book 'Uncivil Wars' Ved Marwah (once amongst the highest ranking policemen in india) writes about bluestar "...but 35 per cent casualties in a division-level operation cannot be called a well-planned and well-executed operation" (A division is comprised of 16,000 troops) ---------------------------------------------
S.K. Sinha, a General in the Indian Army, who was contacted to conduct theattack but declined, is quoted as say the following on July 16 1984:
“The Army action was not the ‘last resort’ as Prime Minister Indira Gandhi would have us believe, decided upon toward May-end (1984). It had been in her mind for more than 18 months.” Said the General that when he was GOC-in-C ofwestern Command, he got a call around 10 p.m. from ‘someone in Delhi’ that adecision had been taken at the highest level that the Army should undertake thearrest of Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale.
Nothing was heard after the General told the caller that in matters like this he would like to hear from either the Chief of Army Staff or the Defense Minister. This was towards 1981 end when Darbar Singh was Chief Minister i.e. nearly 30 months before the Army actually struck at Amritsar.--- This was long before the Akalis launched their morcha in August 1982.
Shortly after the morcha, the Army began rehearsals of a commando raid near Chakrata Cantonment in the Doon Valley, where a complete replica of theGolden Temple complex had been built.
“Another training involving AviationResearch Centre Commandos, was given in the Sarsawa area and Yamuna bed in helicopters converted into gunships. This plan, earmarked for implementation first in August last year (1983) and then in April this (1984) year, was given up as it had leaked out to the Sikh militants.”
“In view of these military preparations, if Sant Bhindrawale and his men decided to defend the Golden Temple with all their might and means, no one can, and should, blame them.” “you are duty-bound to do your all when you know someone is going to raid your house. In this case, the house was the holiest Sikh Shrine in the world.”
“All you have to do is to match the adversary’s weapons with your own weapons of equal, if not more, fire power. This is an acknowledged rule of combat.”
“Mrs. Gandhi contends that arms were being collected by Sant Bhindranwale for the last one year. But this was much after she herself had drawn up plans for Army action against theGolden Temple and other gurdwaras. In December, last year (1983) two trenches were dug by Sant’s men in front of Teja Singh Samundari Hall within the holy complex but he was persuaded to fill them up. This proves that till then noresponsible Akali leader was prepared for an armed showdown with the Government.”
2 2 S.K. Sinha, ”Sant Bhindrawale did not nothing wrong by defending the Golden Temple.” Spokesman June June 2001:28-2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If there had been no defence of Harmandir Sahib then the Sikh spirit would have been considered extinguished.....It is not the bricks and mortar that are beloved of the Sikh's but the teachings of our Guru's. It is their teachings alone that inspired the stout and brave resistance to bluestar..Gurbani is not just meant to be heard.... its message should influence our actions...in the case of Sant Bhindranwale and the defenders of Harmandir Sahib that was exactly the case.
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