[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 145 (Thursday, September 27, 2007)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2004-E2005]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           OTHER MINORITIES SUFFER MAJOR PERSECUTION AS WELL

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. EDOLPHUS TOWNS

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, September 27, 2007

  Mr. TOWNS. Madam Speaker, recently, Dr. Awatar Singh Sekhon, Chairman 
of the Sikh Educational Trust and Managing Editor of the international 
Journal of Sikh Affairs, wrote to President Bush. He noted that ``Sikhs 
live in peace and harmony in every democracy in the world; India is the 
only exception.''
  In his excellent letter, Dr. Sekhon outlines the tyranny and abuse 
the Sikhs have been subjected to in India. While India talks and talks 
about being ``the world's largest democracy,'' it continues to commit 
atrocities against the Sikhs, Christians, Muslims, and other 
minorities. Madam Speaker, the essence of democracy is self-
determination.
  As if the murders of 250,000 Sikhs by the Indian government (the 
number comes from the Punjab State Magistracy and human-rights groups) 
wasn't enough, Sikhs from outside India must get the formal permission 
of the Indian government to visit the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the 
seat of Sikhism, equivalent to the Vatican of the Sikhs. Suppose that 
Catholics were barred from Vatican City without permission of the 
Italian government. Do you think the world would be up in arms about 
that? Yet, the equivalent condition is imposed upon the Sikhs and 
nobody says a word. That is how deeply India's propaganda about being 
``the world's largest democracy'' has permeated the world's 
perceptions, thanks to massive amounts of money spent to propagate this 
viewpoint through lobbying and media manipulation. It is time to wake 
up. Madam Speaker. It is time to call India on the carpet for its 
persecution of minorities.
  If the tyranny against the Sikhs were all that India was doing, that 
would be bad enough. But it is compounded by the persecution of 
Christians and Muslims, as well as other minorities such as Assamese, 
Bodos, Dalits, Manipuris, Tamils, and others.
  In Gujarat, 2,000 to 5,000 Muslims were killed in riots that a 
policeman told the newspapers were planned and organized by the Indian 
government. It has killed over 90,000 Muslims in Kashmir while refusing 
to give the Kashmiris self-determination via a free and fair plebiscite 
on their status, as India promised the United Nations in 1948.
  Christians have been prime targets of Indian persecution. Churches 
have been burned. Nuns have been raped and forced to drink their own 
urine, to the cheers of militant Hindu organizations such as the pro-
Fascist Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), which produced a booklet on 
how to implicate Christians and other minorities in false criminal 
cases. Priests have been murdered, schools and prayer halls have been 
vandalized, and more than 300,000 Christians have been killed in 
Nagaland at the hands of the Indian government. Missionary Graham 
Staines was killed by a mob of Hindu militants along with his eight-
year-old son. The killers poured gasoline over their jeep, set it on 
fire, and chanted ``Victory to Hannuman.'' Missionary Joseph Cooper, an 
American, was expelled from the country after he was beaten up so badly 
that he had to spend a week in an Indian hospital. A Christian 
religious festival on the theme ``Jesus is the Answer'' was broken up 
by police gunfire after people there distributed religious literature.
  In several Indian states, there are laws prohibiting anyone from 
converting to any religion but Hinduism.
  Madam Speaker, this is unacceptable. We must support the rights of 
these minorities by stopping American aid to India and stopping our 
trade with India as well. It's clearly not benefitting the Indian 
people. Two thirds of the population lives on less than half a dollar a 
day. We must also demand a free and fair vote on independence for the 
Sikhs of Khalistan, the Christians of Nagalim, the Muslims of Kashmir, 
and all the various peoples seeking their freedom from India.
  Madam Speaker, I would like to add Dr. Sekhon's excellent letter to 
the Record at this time.


                                   The Sikh Educational Trust,

                         Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, July 30, 2007.
     Re: violation of religious and political rights of Sikhs in 
         India.
     Hon. George W. Bush,
     President, United States of America, The White House, 
         Washington, DC.
       Honourable President, I am writing this letter to seek your 
     intervention in the religious affairs of the Sikhs, 
     especially the Diaspora Sikhs in North America, Europe and 
     other continents.
       The Sikhs live in peace and harmony in every democracy in 
     the world; India is the only exception. In fact, the Sikhs 
     are treated as slaves even in the Punjab, which is the holy 
     and historic homeland of the Sikhs. This is because the 
     ruling class consists of Brahmins--who are only 4 percent of 
     the population along with 10-11 percent of Hindus of other 
     castes. Although a majority in the Punjab, the Sikhs are 2.5 
     percent of the huge population of India that is approximately 
     1.1 billion. It is because of the denial of the right of 
     self-determination in our land that India is able to 
     marginalized the Sikhs as a small minority. The Hindu-Brahmin 
     rulers have pursued their anti-human agenda: (i) practice of 
     unsociability against the native majority who are 65 percent 
     of the population, and (ii) persecution of mono-theistic 
     faiths--the Sikhs, the Christians and the Muslims, by 
     maintaining an environment of fear and of crushing poverty.
       In June 1984, even the facade of Secular Tolerance was 
     discarded when the Indian Army assaulted the holiest shrine 
     of the Sikhs--the Darbar Sahib (also known as the Golden 
     Temple) including the Supreme Seat of Sikh Polity, the Akal 
     Takht Sahib, killing tens of thousands of devotees inside the 
     temple. The Indian administration has ever since maintained 
     heavy presence of its intelligence and armed personnel in the 
     state. No Sikh from outside India can visit his/her holy 
     place and the seat of Sikhs' polity without having a formal 
     `visa' endorsement in their passport from the Indian Embassy 
     or Consulate. Mr President, this constitutes a violation of 
     the Sikhs' religious rights. Pilgrimage to pay respect to 
     Gurus is a right that should not depend on the caprice of a 
     government. It certainly should not depend on the goodwill of 
     a state that has not just failed to protect but has actually 
     been an instrument of our persecution and destruction of our 
     holy sites by wanton bombardment.
       Mr. President, India is interfering in my religious 
     affairs. As a free citizen of a free country. I cannot 
     approve of the way the Sikhs are treated in India; I cannot 
     condone the assault of the Indian Army on Darbar Sahib in 
     June 1984; I cannot support that the Sikhs relinquish their 
     right to self-determination. I am required to do all this in 
     order to get a visa. And if I did any of these things, I 
     would not be a Sikh. That means, in order to get an Indian 
     visa, I am required to renounce my faith. That cannot be 
     acceptable.
       Mr. President, no Roman Catholic needs a visa to visit the 
     Vatican, no Jew is prevented from visiting Jerusalem, a visa 
     cannot be denied to a Muslim to go to Mecca, why do the Sikhs 
     need to have India's Hindu/Brahmins (neither a religion nor a 
     culture), permission to visit their holiest shrine? Indian 
     administration's control of the Sikhs' shrines constitutes an 
     intervention into their religious affairs. That's why, 
     Honourable President, none of the elected representatives of 
     the Sikhs accepted/initiated/endorsed the Indian Constitution 
     of 1950. Under Article 25 of that Constitution, the Sikh 
     faith and national

[[Page E2005]]

     identity was `de-recognized'. The Sikhs were constitutionally 
     `exterminated'. Because of this blatant injustice, the Sikhs, 
     elected representatives--Sardar Hukam Singh, MP; Sardar 
     Bhupinder Singh Maan, MP; and Sirdar Kapur Singh, ICS, MP, 
     MLA and National Professor of Sikhism--`Rejected' the Indian 
     Constitution of 1950 and its Article 25, in its draft and 
     final forms, every time it was put to vote in the Indian 
     parliament--in 1948, on 26th November, 1949, in 1950 and on 
     6th September, 1966.
       Honourable President, the question is why we, the Sikh 
     citizens of the United States and Canada, of Europe, Far 
     East, and other continents should need a `Visa' or the 
     permission of the predominantly Hindu-Brahmin administration. 
     Especially after the June, 1984 assault on Darbar Sahib 
     Complex--which is the Sikh Vatican--and an `undeclared' war 
     on the Sikhs ever since. This undeclared war has taken a 
     heavy toll. The ``Operation Bluestar'' of June, 1984 was 
     blessed by the government of a so-called `democratic' state. 
     The desecration of their holy places and wanton massacre of 
     the Sikhs was carried out for no reason other than their 
     demanding the right of self-determination honouring the 
     pledges made to the Sikhs by Mahatma Gandhi and Prime 
     Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru. More than 250,000 innocent Sikh 
     (majority of whom were infants, children, youth, females and 
     the elderly have been killed by Indian security forces. This 
     is the hallmark of a fascist oligarchy, not a democracy.
       In recent months, the arrests of Simranjit Singh Mann, 
     Chief of Akali Dal Amritsar, Mann's vice president, Daljit 
     Singh Dittu and the arrest warrants of an Editor and 
     academic, Dr Sukhpreet Singh Udhoke, provide further evidence 
     that repression of the Sikhs continues even in the Sikh 
     majority state of the Punjab, the administration of which is 
     headed by a Sikh, Prakash Badal. The former two are being 
     tried, along with 30 other Sikhs, on charges of `treason'. 
     Treason against who? How does the Indian Constitution apply 
     to the Sikhs when the Sikhs' elected representatives 
     `rejected' it repeatedly?
       Mr. President, there is great anxiety among the Sikhs in 
     Diaspora over the denial of their religious and political 
     rights and repression of dissent. If India is not restrained 
     by the international community and its leader--the USA--peace 
     and security in the whole region would be undermined. In 
     retrospect and historically, India was never a country; it 
     was an empire (the British Empire). In its belly there are 
     many peoples with legitimate right to self-determination--in 
     Kashmir (mainly Muslim) in the Punjab (mainly Sikhs) in the 
     states of Assam (mainly Christian) who are not a part of the 
     Indian nation. The issues relating to the native majority--
     the children of lesser gods--encompass a huge section of 
     humanity, as many as 700 million people. All this cannot be 
     swept under the carpet or buried under slogans like `India 
     Shining'. The Sikhs want their own sovereign state--as they 
     had been (1799 to 14th March, 1849, under a Sikh monarch 
     Ranjit Singh) before the British take over, as an ``annexed'' 
     state, of the Punjab in 1849. Until then, we want 
     unrestricted access to our holy places. No Sikh should need a 
     visa to go to the Punjab. And peaceful dissent should not 
     just be tolerated; it should be respected and honoured. Is 
     dissent not the hall mark of democracy?
       I shall look forward to hearing from you.
       With regards,
           Respectfully submitted,
     Awatar Singh Sekhon.

                          ____________________