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Taliban upsets
Pak Sikhs
Sikh-Muslim relations intact
Jagmohan Singh
 LAHORE/NEW DELHI:
British
award-winning journalist Yvvone Ridley, who under captivity of the
Taliban converted to Islam, tells us that oppression by the Taliban
is not about Islam but about tradition and customs. The tyranny
against women has been going on for decades.
Notwithstanding
the tyranny by many Mughal emperors, it is the strong belief of the
Sikhs that Sikhism and Islam are religiously close to each other in
the worship of the One Almighty and that the historical animosity
perceived to be between Sikhs and Muslims was actually a revolt
against the tyranny of the Mughal empire.
Sikhs worldwide
are disturbed. For long,
Pakistan has
been perceived as a friend of the Sikhs and do not understand as to
why suddenly it has turned foe. Many do not go beyond the surface to
understand that the tyranny of the Taliban is directed not only
against the minorities –Sikhs, Christians and Hindus, but also
Muslims who do not toe their line.
More than 300
Sikhs from Buner district of the Orakzai Agency area are now taking
shelter in Gurdwara Panja Sahib in the Hasanabdal town of
Panjab
district. It is further agonizing to note that the number of Sikhs
is increasing by the hour. Most of the victims from Orakzai Agency
are from Peer Baba, Daggar, Dewana Baba, Jhangi, Gogga, Sawari,
Changli and Ghourgohsti areas. During the course of his abduction
for recovery of Jazia tax, Kalyan Singh, who is the head of a family
of 24 members, was brutally tortured for 10 days by the Taliban
militias.
According to
latest reports, the Shrines Evacuee Trust Property Board has made
elaborate arrangements to assist the families who for fear of the
Taliban have left their home and hearth and have made Gurdwara
Panjab Sahib, their refugee home.
Human rights
body, Voices for Freedom in its communiqué to Asma Jahangir of the
Human Rights Commission for
Pakistan has
called for immediate intervention saying, “The Jazia tax on the
Sikhs is reminiscent of the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in
Afghanistan by the Taliban in the early part of the last century.
In that case, it was a violation of the right to manifest one’s
religion through one’s heritage. In the case of the Jazia tax on
Sikhs, the very right for Sikhs to exist has been egregiously
violated by the Taliban.”
Dal Khalsa too
has sent a plea to the
Pakistan embassy
in New Delhi seeking immediate assistance and support to the
beleagured Sikhs from the FATA regions.
Fighting with
bare hands against a set of people who know no logic, the cry of a
Sikh shopkeeper quoted in a section of the media tells all, "I have
four children, all of them are with me. My husband has a shop. We
can’t say anything against the Taliban but the truth is that they
are brutal. I think the militants are not against any specific
religion. They are fighting against humanity. No peaceful citizen
can be their friend." No doubt, It is time for the
Pakistan
government to ensure that the numbers do not swell.
Citing history,
Voices for Freedom says, “It is also historically evident that
Emperor Mohammad Jalluludin Akbar had abolished Jazia during his
reign. Though the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb had reinforced the tax,
history has witnessed that Sikhs accepted to die than to embrace
another religion through force.”
Agitating Sikhs
in India
and the rest of the world are clear that the Islam of Prophet
Mohammad is against tyranny, oppression and injustice. The tyranny
of the Taliban can be that of Emperor Aurangzeb or even Frakhshiyar,
who had ordered the destruction of Sikh home and hearth. During
those times too Sikhs fled, chose martyrdom, but did not accept
racial discrimination and subjugation.
Pakistan may
have dismissed the verbal demarche of the government of India on
grounds of non-interference in the affairs of
Pakistan,
but it has to follow up on the many good will measures that it has
taken for the Sikh community that descends on
Pakistan
from across the globe for a variety of religious anniversary
celebrations every year.
Muslims clerics
and scholars have been unequivocal. Maulana Abdul Hameed Nomani,
Secretary of Jamiat Ulama-e Hind said, "Levying jaziya on Pakistani
Sikhs is absurd as they have not been a party in any war and have
lived in the land for as long as the Taliban elements themselves. In
the light of Islam, the action is wrong; we do not know, which
Shariah they are trying to impose in the tribal regions.
World Sikh News
columnist, Nanak Singh Nishter, while talking about Sikh-Muslim
relations has the last word, “The multi-religious nature of Guru
Granth Sahib prevents the Sikhs from any communal hatred and ill
feelings in the name of religion. The brutalities of the Mughal
emperors for about two centuries, leading to the near-extinction of
the community could not make the Sikhs, anti-Muslim. Similarly, the
countrywide genocide and plundering of the Sikhs in the eighties of
the twentieth century by the Hindu rulers and Hindu masses could not
make them, anti-Hindu.”
6
May 2009
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