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Panthic bodies redouble efforts
for Bhai Bittu’s release
WSN Bureau
 PUNJAB/FREMONT:
Gradually, news about Bhai Daljit Singh Bittu is slipping off the
newspaper pages. Gradually, new dramas claim their space in the
theatre of news. And the Indian establishment takes heart in the
development that their game plan to simply tire out the adversaries
is succeeding.
Well, nothing is
farther than such a contrived truth. A media which sells its soul
and lets the state apparatus decide its priorities has never been
able to change the path of history. Had that been so, our lessons
from the McCarthy era would have been different.
The more the
Indian establishment, and its associate Punjab Police, keeps Bhai
Daljit Singh Bittu, chairperson of Akali Dal (Panch Pardhani),
behind bars, the more it keeps embroiling him and his associates in
false cases, the more popularity and acceptance is he gaining in the
Sikh mindscape.
At a time when
the Akali Dal (Badal) government is Punjab is out to appease all
kinds of deras and is finding new allies in Sachkhand Ballan, Dera
Sirsa and Radha Soami sect, Bhai Bittu was clearly seen as one who
was leading the movement against such dera culture from the front.
Even as panthic
organizations in Punjab including Akali Dal (Panch Pardhani), Khalsa
Action Committee, Damdami Taksal, Dal Khalsa and others raise their
pitch for release of Bhai Bittu, the Sikh Youth of America has taken
the lead and launched a signature campaign in the United States.
Clearly, such a
move will generate unprecedented solidarity and awareness among the
Sikh Diaspora about the policies, convictions and agenda of Bhai
Daljit Singh Bittu and his party. In its own foolhardy way, the
Indian establishment is only helping the cause of Bhai Bittu by
keeping him behind bars. Come the SGPC elections, and the
establishment may get even more vicious to contain Akali Dal (Panch
Pardhani) and other panthic organizations.
 Such evidence is
already tumbling out. Across Punjab, police and intelligence
agencies are out to harass the associates, sympathizers and workers
of Bhai Bittu’s party for no rhyme or reason.
A lecturer in BR
Mohindra College, Rama Mandi, Baljinder Kaur, has claimed that her
father Darshan Singh, who is also general secretary of the party,
was picked up by the cops from their native village in
Jaggaramtirath (Talwandi Sabo) last week without any reason.
The cops
relented only when they feared that Baljinder was likely to raise a
ruckus in the media. Baljinder said the probable reason behind their
harassment was that her party had decided to fight the SGPC
elections and intelligence agencies were unduly bullying the party
cadres.
She also claimed
that earlier her grandmother Malkit Kaur, an SGPC member from Maur
Mandi, was picked up by the police and was subjected to harassment.
In what way are
such strategies serving the ends of the ruling Akali Dal, or of its
president, Sukhbir Singh Badal? Clearly,
Punjab
is refusing to come out of its police state image, and the ruling
Akalis seem little bothered by it all.
14
October 2009
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