mohan@sbcs.UUCP (Chilukuri K. Mohan) (11/11/85)
Bajwa overstates his case with implications that the Sikhs are a people SUPERIOR (!) to other Indians, and that the problems of Punjab (with a little less than half Hindu population) are the problems uniquely of the Sikhs and indicate religious discrimination. The relative prosperity of Punjab seems implicitly to be attributed simply to the hard-working `nature' of the Sikh people -- ignoring the non-sikh population, ignoring the massive GreenRevolution inputs at the expense of agricultural developments in other parts of India, ignoring the large numbers of agricultural laborers from UP and other eastern states who toil to produce Punjab's riches... Bajwa does also seem to ignore Bhindranwale's militancy which has largely been disowned by Indian Sikhs. But the article by Muralidhara Subbarao is very damaging. He commits the blunder so many others do: attributing responsibility for Bhindranwale's actions to all Sikhs. Hence his counter-terror proposal of `revenge on all for the crimes of some', his glee at the atrocities perpetrated on Sikh families, most of whom had no financial or other resources to flee/defend themselves, nor did they have anything to do with terrorist groups. He is wrong in saying it was the sikhs as a community who were trying to `hold the nation to ransom'. Someone outraged at the murder of people of his religion may refuse to condemn another murder: that's not a good thing, but that does not make him party to the latter crime or an enemy against whom you call for blood. Mr Subbarao is right in saying that his "instinct" (in quoting a rabidly communal poem gloating over the killing of Sikhs) is indeed BEASTLY. I hope future discussion on this net will not be so.