STATEMENT TO SIMON WEISENTHAL CENTRE, PARIS, JUNE 12, 2001
by Dr Kanwar Ranvir Singh
It gives me enormous pleasure to address this international conference hosted
by the Simon Weisenthal Centre here in Paris. Sikhs have taken great
inspiration from this Centre as they seek justice for the pogrom of Sikhs in
Delhi that claimed between ten and fifteen thousand lives in 1984. Finally,
after 17 years the Government of India is investigating this issue, yet Sikhs
are also faced with the fact that the same Government invaded the Golden
Temple of Amritsar in 1984 and claimed in its White Paper that Sikh
nationalists inside the sacred precincts set fire to the library of historic
manuscripts, while the Sikhs maintained that this was an instance of cultural
genocide. The issue was settled when last year, the Defence Minister, George
Fernandes, a Christian, admitted that the armed forces had stolen the
manuscripts and relics before setting fire to the building. At this moment,
Sikh religious authorities are trying to recover the material. As we shall
see, history is central to understanding current events.
In Indian history, only two people have the title, 'the Great'. The first is
Asoka the Great, a Buddhist, to whom I will return, the second Akbar the
Great with whom I will start this talk. Akbar was a Muslim, a very tolerant
Muslim. To some extent he also constructed his own religion, Din-I-Allahi,
yet it is his tolerance that was the root cause for the greatness of his
kingdom. The religious instructor of the heir apparent was the Sufi sheikh,
Mian Mir, who belonged to the Qadariya order. The person who eventually
succeeded him, Jehangir, came to power supported by what we may term
fundamentalists, sheikh Ahmad Serhendi who formed the Naqshbandi-Mujadidi
sub-order of Sufism. The sheikh celebrated when the new emperor ordered the
execution of Guru Arjun, the fifth Guru of the Sikhs for reasons which are
hinted at in the autobiography of the emperor. Mian Mir tried to prevent the
execution and suggested to the Guru that he, Mian Mir, could launch a civil
war between the two imperial centres of Delhi and Lahore. Guru Arjun told him
to be patient and his successor, Guru Hargobind, gave the same advice to the
Sikhs reinforcing it by giving them sweetened and flavoured water to drink.
To this day, all across the world Sikhs commemorate the martyrdom of Guru
Arjun and offer sweetened and flavoured water to all passers-by to
re-emphasise that coolness, sweetness and patience is needed to deal most
effectively with human rights abuses for as much as we are commanded to
perfect this world through loving kindness, "the final vision of justice is
with God and not with humankind."
Following this martyrdom, the nature of the state changed, and by the time of
the ninth Guru, Guru Tegh Bahadur, religious minorities including Sufis,
Shiites, and Hindus were being persecuted. Sufi samas were banned and
Brahmins from Kashmir came to the court of Guru Tegh Bahadur asking for
protection. He led the first mass scale non-violent protest against the state
and was executed in 1675. Recently, Kashmiri Brahmins commemorated his unique
martyrdom. In the decades which followed, there was a price on the head of
every Sikh, but it must be emphasised that the struggle was between the Sikhs
and the state, not with Muslims. It was Muslims who opened the gates of
Lahore to the Sikhs in 1799 and Muslims were the largest community in the
Sikh republic, Sirkar-I-Khalsa in the nineteenth century. The successors of
sheikh Serhendi moved to Afghanistan and tried to launch jihads against the
Sikh state, but they were ignored by the Muslims living in the Sikh republic.
What is this struggle about?
Let us turn briefly to Sikh teachings. God lives in each heart as fragrance
in a flower, reflection in a mirror, or fire in wood. This has two
implications. The first is that there is no intermediary between the human
being and the Divine. Therefore, each person's distinct perspective is
valuable. We support pluralism and the diversity of human cultures. The
second implication of this teaching is that God provides a higher guidance in
the human heart, but we can always choose to ignore it. Thus, the Church that
is the result of the will to divinity within us, and the State where people
express their more immediate, pragmatic, self-centred interests, must always
exist.
In contrast with the fundamentalist who seeks for church to dominate state,
or secularist who seeks to replace the church with the state, the Sikhs argue
that the two must exist in a state of dynamic tension, as checks and balances
on one another. These perspectives - celebration of diversity, and checks
and balances of church and state - led to the persecution of the Sikhs. These
perspectives are increasingly important as the process of globalisation has
led to unprecedented numbers of minorities. Less than a decade ago, the
United Nations established a Working Group on Minorities to investigate this
issue. Sikhs strongly support a global framework for policies regarding
minorities, and feel that the answer lies in celebrating diversity. Moreover,
Church-state relations need to be reconsidered. People are concerned with the
recent decision in Afghanistan to ask certain religious minorities to wear
ribbons to identify themselves. However, I feel that this is only the same as
states in the European Union defining certain religious groups as sects.
Should the state have the right to define religion? In this example, the
effect of church over state, or state over church is the same.
It may surprise many of you to learn that one of the greatest Sikh saints,
Bhai Nand Lal was born in Afghanistan and his writings are in Persian. Thus,
Sikhs have lived in Afghanistan for 300 years. After it achieved independence
in 1919, a Hindu, Diwan Niranjan Das, served as a minister and two Sikhs,
Baba Mangal Singh Bedi and Bhai Tara Singh served in the Council of Advisers.
In 1965 a Sikh, Jai Singh was elected a Member of Parliament and it had been
announced that he was to receive a Ministerial appointment when he died on a
train en route to Delhi. Thus, we can see that tolerance has prevailed in
Afghanistan. Even now, Sikh men have been exempt from the requirement to wear
the ribbon on the basis that we can be spotted with our beards and turbans.
In Europe, the ribbon has great significance for us because of the terrible
Holocaust that followed the Jews being forced to wear it, but Hitler had a
plan and programme. On the other hand, the Afghans as they point out have
been able to spot us for three hundred years. I do not believe that they have
any evil intent towards the Sikhs. While we have our distinct perspectives as
peoples of faith, we should not comment on the internal dialogue within
faiths. There are many currents of Islamic thought and we must respect the
internal dialogue about the nature of minorities in Islamic states, as also
internal dialogues about "the other" within other traditions, such as
Hinduism. Aggressive commenting across traditions is dangerous. The
Government of India made a huge outcry over the destruction of Buddhist
statues. The irony will not have been lost on the Afghans as they were
Buddhists at a time in their history when the Brahmins created the
opportunity to exclude Buddhism from India, and also vandalised these
Buddhist statues built after the conversion of Emperor Asoka the Great.
Moreover, the Indians were insistent that Muslims were bad Muslims for the
destruction of the statues of a religion no longer practised in the country,
yet asserted that Hindus were good Hindus for destruction of the historic
Babri mosque, in a country with over a hundred million Muslims. It should be
remembered that the Government contains many of the most vocal supporters of
the religious-inspired destruction of the historic mosque. Just recently, the
imam of the Jama Masjid in Delhi, perhaps the largest and most influential
mosque in India, threatened the Government of India that he would call on
Islamic states to impose sanctions against India if the persecution of
Muslims in India did not stop.
In conclusion, in the twenty-first century, the era of globalisation, we have
the unprecedented opportunity to celebrate diversity. The rights of diversity
can be imperilled by religious leaders who advocate or tolerate persecution
of others. While the world focuses on the Middle East, the threat of
religiously-sanctioned suicide bombers goes beyond any one region or
religion. We must not demonise others, but seek the divinity within them,
even as we must seek what is special in ourselves. I suggest three things:
that we adopt global standards and frameworks for minority rights; celebrate
diversity subject to international human rights norms; and enact a new
relationship of checks and balances between church and state. Only then we
can achieve the goal of the Unity of God and the unity of humankind.
Thank you.
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rights organizations with a membership of over 400,000 families in the United
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