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THIS piece is not meant to deride any community, least of all any among the minority groups. To the contrary, it is aimed at alerting our Pakistani Sikh sisters and brothers and their wider diaspora that they are being set up to be exploited yet again by both South Asian rivals.
It is amazing how states meticulously design a narrative to serve a given purpose and over time reverse it to suit their objectives. The demonisation of the ‘Sikh’ had started way before the post-Partition mayhem. According to Rajmohan Gandhi’s excellently researched book, Punjab: A History from Aurangzeb to Mountbatten, the All India Muslim League, miffed at being denied the opportunity to form the government in Punjab despite emerging as the single largest party in the1946 elections, dubbed the unionist premier Khizr Tiwana as ‘Sardar Khizr Singh’.
In the wake of the bloodletting during Partition, especially in Punjab, the Sikh community was painted as villainous in popular Pakistani lore. In the following couple of decades, most Partition-oriented films billed the sword-wielding Sikh as the antagonist. Master Tara Singh who had unsheathed his sword at the steps of the legislative assembly building in Lahore while vowing to resist the creation of Pakistan, was at the top of the list of Sikhs Pakistanis were taught to hate.
The East Pakistan debacle happened. There was no introspection in Pakistan. Some amongst the nearsighted brigade started to dream about dismembering India to avenge the mostly self-inflicted deathblow.
Demonisation of Sikhs began before the post-Partition chaos.
The Sikhs on the other side of the border were seen as potentially receptive to provocation due to their grievances against the central government. Unlike in Afghanistan, the handler-agent relationship was never in-your-face. The kerfuffle over the alleged lists of Sikh insurgents that Benazir Bhutto or her interior minister supposedly shared with the Indians notwithstanding, the Khalsa image never dropped to the level of proxy-hood that the Afghan ‘mujahideen’ turned Taliban did.
To engender sympathy for the Khalistan cause, the Sikh could no longer be portrayed as the chief perpetrator of misery on the mohajirs who came over via East Punjab. The stereotypical roguish ‘Sikhra’ morphed into a chivalrous ‘sardar ji’ and the vengeful ‘kaur’ into a vivacious ‘jatti’ in our films. Bhangra and Heer Waris Shah were once again touted as forces that bound the two Punjabs. Nothing wrong with the cultural bonhomie, but the fact that it was an eyewash.
It would be ridiculous to claim that any significant disenchantment of a community can ever be solely of the ‘manufactured’ kind. However, it is also in the nature of regional one-upmanship that such emotions are exploited. How the curtain fell on this unfortunate period and how various characters involved in it on both sides of the border met their end is part of history now. The Sikh community in Pakistan continues to be portrayed in a benevolent light, and the Hindu and Christian minorities bear the brunt of discrimination.
The contrast between how the state and its Frankensteins treat the various minority groups according to their perceived potential to foment trouble for the ‘enemy’ is telling. Compare the official fanfare over the restoration work at the Gurdwara Darbar Sahib at Kartarpur and the warm welcome accorded to the Sikh pilgrims on the 550th birth anniversary of Baba Guru Nanak last year, and the recent fracas over the construction of a Hindu temple in Islamabad.
To illustrate how the two countries compete to gain the Sikh community’s goodwill, consider; a few weeks back, the dead bodies of 20 Sikh pilgrims whose van was hit by a train near Sheikhupura were transported to Peshawar on a special C-130 plane. No prizes for guessing who owns these aircraft. The government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has announced a compensation of half a million rupees for every Sikh casualty in the accident. According to the July 8, 2020, issue of The Tribune published from Chandigarh: “In India, an apex gurdwara body, the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee has announced financial assistance of one hundred thousand rupees to each of the families of the Pakistani Sikhs killed in the accident and fifty thousand rupees to each of the injured.”
Two sets of alerts are in order. To the unsuspecting Pakistani Sikh community, like the proverbial lunch, there are no free rides either. You may once again be in the cross hairs of something way bigger than a firearm. Most likely you are being fattened to be sacrificed. To the Sikh diaspora around the world; since your most sacred religious sites are located in Pakistan, do visit when circumstances permit and take advantage of the ‘cultural tourism’ initiatives in the works. While here, talk to the strangers all you want to, just don’t take the candy.
The writer is a poet and analyst.
Published in Dawn, July 26th, 2020
