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Editorial
Welcome to India, Hillary, but…
 Sikhs
befriend politicians in high places and earn goodwill for the
community quiet easily. Courtesy the good offices of Sant Singh Chatwal,
Secretary of State -Hillary Rodham Clinton and her husband, former
president of Bill Clinton are perceived to be friends of the Sikhs.
Perhaps they are too. Throughout her campaign for nomination, Sikhs
were by the side of Hillary Clinton and raised huge funds for her
campaign and she too lost no opportunity to be with the
Sikhs.
India is keen to
augment its nuclear energy requirements and the visit of Hillary
Clinton to Mumbai and Delhi is more for business needs than for
political reasons. Understandably, only a day out of five days is
spent on meeting political counterparts and the rest is to be spent
on business negotiations particularly the site and building of
nuclear reactors.
Sikhs as a
people are wary of the strengthening of nuclear energy by India.
Like all minorities, Sikhs believe that as it is, even without the
nuclear arsenal, India is a big bully to its minorities and
neighbouring countries, with the energy, it will be furthermore
difficult for the underprivileged and unrepresented peoples to stand
up for their fundamental rights.
Though nothing
much can be expected from the visit, it is certainly an occasion to
let the US secretary of state and the US administration know of the
concerns of Sikhs and minorities of the country she is visiting and
which carries the tag of being the world’s largest democracy.
India is large
in terms of population -large enough a host of ethnic minorities and
regional identities who are scared of
India
being part of the Nuclear Club and getting a permanent seat in the
UN Security Council. India is large-hearted enough to be known as
the land
of
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
and be a bartender for peace throughout the world, though it kills hundred upon thousands
with impunity in Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir and the north-east.
There is no
doubt that India is an emerging economy and the TIME magazine says
that the Sikh Prime Minister has made India
one of world’s fastest-growing economies and changed tens of
millions of lives for the better, though it is another matter that
close to forty percent of the population lives below the poverty
line, unable to have two square meals a day.
Strangely, official visits of senior leaders of any country are
preceded not by efforts to iron out differences but to subvert them
or brush them under the carpet till the visit concludes. World Sikh
News wonders whether Hillary Rodham Clinton will enquire from her
Indian counterparts as to what has happened to the enquiry into the
killing of 36 Sikh civilians in Chittisinghpura in
Kashmir,
which killings coincided with her visit and that of President Bill
Clinton -her husband, on
20
March, 2000.
The government of
India
is still to officially say who the killers were and what their
motive was. In case the
US
administration knows more, as friend of the Sikhs, Hillary Clinton
should tell us more.
It
will also be pertinent for Hillary Clinton to ask the Sikh Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh and the Opposition leader Lal Krishan Advani
as to why they opposed the visit of the United States Commission on
International Religious Freedom scheduled to begin on June 12 this
year. Hillary Clinton must ask what happened in Kandhamal in Orissa,
what happened in Narendra Modi’s
Gujarat
and why do Sikhs continue to be Hindus on the statute? At some
point, the political aides of Hillary Clinton need to take up the
issue of the proposal of the Indian state to deny minority rights to
Sikhs, Christians and even Muslims as proposed in the new definition
of who constitutes a minority.
Irrespective of
what Hillary Clinton does or does not, the friendship with the Sikhs
will stay and we will continue to hope that one day, like your
intervention in Sri Lanka, you will actively seek “reconciliation
for Sikhs” in India and work more legally and politically to ensure
that Sikhs are not officially and otherwise subjected to racial
abuse and stress anywhere in the United States of America. Jee
Aayan Nu.
15
July 2009
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