A few months ago during Vaiskhai celebrations, the BBC religious department called me up for an interview and amongst the questions was, "As a Sikh you wear a turban and have different features. Do you not find it difficult to assimilate into British Society? Do you not find a lot of racism? How do you maintain your identity in this society?"

My answer was, "For me, in the wider context, my turban and beard signifies the principal of diversity. This is the country that never tires of going on about diversity around the world. It’s not a challenge for me to be accepted, it’s a challenge for you to accept me. It’s not me who is having difficulties, it’s you who are having difficulties with your rhetoric. I have no difficulties because I am confident. I am here, I am diverse. I am challenging you to accept somebody who doesn’t look like the ordinary British."

Then I said, with a bit of sarcasm, "I don’t think your bosses will put this on because I refuse to be a victim." If I had answered them, "Yes, I do feel I am being prejudiced against, I do find it difficult to get jobs," they would have put that into their programme because nothing more pleases a person who control, than to see the victim classifying himself or herself as a victim.

When you come out of that, when you put yourself in a much more positive frame, then they find it very unsettling.

One of the most successful attempts at victimising someone, at victimising a whole group of people Has been the Brahminical-Hindu system of creating the Schedule caste, the so called Untouchables or Shudrs. There hasn’t been a system more successful in putting a whole group of people in the classification of victims, and letting themselves think of themselves as victims, then propagating that from generation to generation to generation and finding it very difficult to come out of it.

What did the Brahmins do? To victimise someone you have to conquer, then control. Control the economy, control the politics, control the legislative system and control the justice. Then you have to determine the culture and education system. A conqueror may have done all this, but it still isn’t self-propagating. So then you have to make the victim believe in their status, so you have to have a system of self-indoctrination. You have to create an identity for the victim, an identity which the victim begins to believe. And above all you create parameters for the victim and the victim begins to believe in those parameters.

What happened with the Scheduled caste system, or the Hari-jans as they are called in India, was they were conquered by the Arians. The Arians were more primitive than the people who lived in India at that time. The Arians took the best thing and made them their own. They didn’t have agricultural skills for example. They created caste in which the Brahmin is superior and the Untouchable is made to believe he is born into that caste because of his previous ills. And what you find throughout South-Asian history is that the Schedule caste have self-perpetuated that myth. The Brahmin didn’t need to perpetuate it, once he created the parameters, the Hari-jans began to think they had committed sins in previous lives and that was why they were born into difficulties. For the last 3000 years the Brahmins were able to control South-Asian society like this.

Now people have begun to awaken, but it takes many generations to destroy something that is so ingrained. No other people have been so successful as the Brahmins. The Romans had a system where people not born into Roman families where considered as second class citizens, but that system only lasted a few centuries. The British tried throughout the world, with their Empire, to be superior. Culturally superior, politically superior, but that system died within a few hundred years too. The South African whites tried to be superior with the system of apartheid, but that has died. The Brahmin system has survived because they didn’t just control, they let the victim perpetuate the myth.

That’s what I’m coming to. We Sikhs are in danger of perpetuating myths created for us.

What Guru Nanak did in the sixteenth century was extraordinary and very few Sikhs recognise it. But, other people have recognised it. British scholars have said, "if we had a system like Guru Nanak’s we would conquer the world again." What Guru Nanak did was to look at the society of his time and to realise that the Moghuls were doing what the Brahmins had done before. The Moghuls controlled the economic system, the legislative system and the political system. So if you were a Hindu you received second class justice, if you were a Muslim you received better justice, because the whole system was based on the Koran. And since a Hindu did not believe in the Koran, or live by the Koran, or did not agree with Islamic rituals, he was always at a disadvantage. Hindus also began to believe themselves to be inferior. In that system they believed they couldn’t fight and that they couldn’t rise up out of it. What Guru Nanak did was he challenged both the philosophy of the victim, i.e. the victim thinking he is a victim, and the principle of victimisation. Guru Nanak began breaking away from the parameters in which society had been placed. Both the parameters that Brahmins had put society in and the parameters Islam put society in.

Islam starts with the theory, like Jews and Christians, that they have the best system and everyone not in that system is inferior. Where Islam rules, if you are not a Muslim you are a second class citizen automatically. What the Hindus did was if you were not born into a Brahmin family you were a second class citizen and if you were born into a Hari-jan family you were automatically third class.

Guru Nanak began to break away from those systems, from those parameters where people restrict themselves, restrict exploration of the truth and Sikhism’s principle philosophy is the search for truth. Not truth as dictated by an individual like Christ or Mohammed or someone else, because truth is elusive. Guru Nanak does not tell you what the truth is, but the path to find that truth. Now I’ll come to this later on and show where we have failed to take the strength that philosophy gives us. And not only how we have become victims in South Asian society, but also how we have created our own parameters by adopting an identity system given to us, not by our Gurus but given to us by the British and the Indians. That identity, those parameters and those restrictions are not going to be broken unless we come out of it ourselves.

What happened with Sikhs, is that when the British conquered them in 1848 it was an extraordinary defeat. The British had lost the last battle with the Sikhs, but the Sikhs’ own Dogra Kings, for some reason, told the Sikhs they had lost, so the Sikhs let the British claim victory. How did the British rule? They began to contain the Sikhs, began to create a myth for them and an identity. They restricted Sikh philosophy into a religion, and they created an identity with restrictions. Now, the idea of Sikhs as a martial race was not the idea of our Gurus, but of the British. Guru Gobind Singh says we do not take up arms against anyone as an offensive. But, Martial races throughout history are not defensive but aggressive. We are a people who believe in the principle of rights and we will fight to protect those principles. That does not make us martial, it makes us more truthful.

The thing the British were successfully able to do was to bring Sikhs from the intellectual sphere into the military sphere and use them as fodder for their army and on the back of the Sikhs, they were able to rule the rest of India. It was around the 1930s, when there were mutinies in the armies by the Sikhs, that the British began to realise they were going to lose India. They were not worried about people like Mahatma Gandhi, because as long as they had Sikhs in the army they thought they could control India. Once the Sikhs were against them, the British realised the game was over. And unless they shipped thousands of troops from Britain they wouldn’t be able to maintain control.

The myth of the Sikhs as a martial race was created by the British. The myth of creating Sikhism the religion, from Sikhi the philosophy, was created by the British. The effect was to make the philosophy only relevant to Sikhs and not to the rest of the world. We don’t have a wider contribution, we don’t have a wider say in the issues of the world, we merely control our own lives according to Sikhism.

What did Mahatma Ghandi do when this mutiny was going on with the Sikhs? He realised what the British were upto. So he recreated Hinduism, and look at his genius. If you read about the Indian independence movement, it’s only a Hindu Independence movement. All the words used are from Hinduism. There is not one universal word used in that struggle. He talks about ‘the dharma of the individual’ and recreates Hinduism as a peaceful struggle. But, who started the peaceful struggle? The Sikhs did as early as 1917, long before Mahatma Ghandi came onto the scene. The most successful peaceful struggle for independence was from Punjab to Delhi, when 500,000 Sikhs marched. It’s reported in The Times newspaper, that it made Mahatma Ghandi’s demonstrations pale into insignificance.

Throughout the world we don’t read or see any mention of the Sikhs having started peaceful struggles. We are shown as the people who are martial, who challenged the British with swords. The peaceful method has been given to Mahatma Gandhi as a Hindu thing.

Back in 1984, when Darbar Sahib was attacked and innocent people were killed, then no lesser organisation than Amnesty International would not believe anything was wrong. They thought that India means Mahatma Ghandi means peace. And that Sikhs mean martial races means warriors. That was a myth created for us, but peace started by the Sikhs was captured by the Hindus. Yet, Hinduism has a goddess Kali, who demands the death of people as a sacrifice, and until recently there were still animal sacrifices in India. There are such cruel systems in India that it defies logic that this country can be called peaceful. Throughout the 3000 year history of India, there is not a period when there has been peace. The genocide of the Jews upto 1945 is much less than the genocide of the Buddhists in India. Many more millions of Budhists were killed by Brahmins, because they challenged the authority of the Brahmin system.

Even now, peaceful struggle means Mahatma Ghandi means India, and Sikhs mean martial race means warriors. We still continue to call ourselves warriors. But warriors of what? On a path to what? Warriors trying to achieve what? Look at the India–Pakistan war over Kashmir. Again very good propaganda by the Indian Government. In every news report there is a Sikh General and a Sikh spokesman. The impression given is that this warrior class fights for us. Who is going to take advantage of this? The BJP, and what does the BJP think about Sikhs? That Sikhs are a sub class of Hinduism. While all these Sikh soldiers are fighting for India and every Punjabi is feeling proud of seeing Sikh Generals and Sikh spokespeople, the BJP are saying Sikhs are a subclass of Hinduism. We forget that. We are so full of the phrase ‘We are Warriors,’ that we forget that is not what Guru Nanak said to us. To stand on the principle of truth, to defend rights is completely different from being classed as warriors. To stand for the rights of the weak and oppressed is very different from being a martial race.

Once myths are created for people, then people fall into living with those parameters. For the last hundred and 50 years, since 1849, the natural jobs for Sikhs have been in the army or farming. But, not many Sikhs have gone into intellectual jobs. Even in Punjab, 65% are Sikhs, but only 5% of judges and lawyers are Sikhs. Is this discrimination or were we led in the wrong direction? We’re living out the myth. This is not what Sikhi stands for, this is not what Guru Nanak said to us.

Outside Punjab, in Silicon Valley for example, hundreds of Sikhs work there. They make some of the best computer scientists, yet there is only one technical college in Punjab. There are lots of Art colleges, but hardly any engineering and technical colleges, because the Punjab government were not allowed to invest in it.

The British had been successful in creating myths for the community, which Sikhs then perpetuated. Once the myth has been created, it is very easy to victimise that community. The community then becomes content in that system. Once you are a victim, you lose control of your political and legislative systems. This is what happened to us. The example in the last 15 years is the attack in 1984. About 400 Sikhs where burned, tortured and killed after Indira Ghandi was assassinated. Did you know in South Africa, tyre burning of people was common-place, but it originated in the Delhi riots of 1984. Up to today, not one leading politician has been brought to justice.

Even when the question is asked, "Why was the Darbar Sahib attacked in 1984?" people respond, "It was a religious place, why where there weapons there? It was a religious place, why did they have guns there?" And the extraordinary thing is that one of the most evil men of the century was Hitler, but he told his forces never to cross into the Vatican come what may. The Vatican could give refuge to the most wanted person, but the Nazis wouldn’t go in. In these European countries , there is a greater reverence for sacred places than in India. India advertises itself as the spiritual home of the world, but Europe has more respect for sacred places. The fact is that Darbar Sahib was licensed to have guns. When India goes to war with other countries, they’ve always asked for the support of the Akal Takht. The whole history of Darbar Sahib and Akal Takht has been steeped with the fight for justice. It wasn’t as if it was something unknown to Indians. But, in 1984, so many Sikhs asked me, "What was Bhindrawale doing there with guns?"

If you’ve been to St Paul’s Cathedral you’ll see weapons. Every religion has weapons. The Vatican has its own army. The Sikhs were unable to argue this, Sikhs accepted the addage that "religion is peace" hence asked, "What was Bhindrawale doing there?" The Sikhs took up a struggle and many decided, rightly or wrongly, I think rightly that they needed their own state.

What did India do? They passed legislation that made a person guilty until proven innocent! Completely the opposite to the rest of the world. Independent sources say that at least 60,000 Sikhs have been killed, Sikh sources say that at least 100,000 Sikhs have been killed between 1984 and 1996. But, no full independent inquiry has been conducted. A few people killed in Kosovo and about 5000 in East Timor have led to a complete war, even independence has been granted to East Timor. In Punjab at least 60,000 Sikhs have been killed, there are lots of villages that have no young males aged between 18 and 36. They have been killed.

In India, human rights campaigners are portrayed as terrorists. Jaswant Singh Kalra and Jaspal Singh Dhillon conducted an investigation. They were very respected human rights activists. They found three cremation grounds containing 3000 unidentified bodies. It was solid evidence of police lawlessness to the outside world. What happened to them? A few weeks after the report became public, Jaswant Singh Kalra was killed by the police. It led to international fury – not many Sikhs took it up – but it meant that Jaspal Singh wasn’t killed as well. The police charged him as terrorist and put him behind bars. He was a human rights activist, no less than Mandella, another voice that was stifled. It took 6 months of international campaigning to release him.

Because we haven’t got our own strength, our own voice, our own systems, we suffer in Punjab and we suffer in the West.

Karamjit Singh Chahal had committed no crime in this country and led a group of Sikhs within the ISYF (International Sikh Youth Federation). He was a charismatic leader, but viewed as a threat by the Indian government. The Indian government pressured the British government to detain or stop key Sikhs to destroy the Khalistan movement. So what the British government did was to charge Chahal with "political and other reasons" under the National Security Act. And when the British government was asked in the courts what the "other reasons" were, the government replied:

1) he threatened fellow Sikhs in Britain.

This is a domestic matter. Now, I don’t know if me threatening another Sikh here today suddenly becomes a matter of national security. I don’t know how this country is going to lose its monarchy or the government is going to be toppled just because I threatened Mr Singh!

And 2) he was assisting terrorists in India.

When we challenged the Indian government asking why don’t they apply for Chahal’s extradition under the treaty in place between the Britain and India, the Indian government said they had no interest in Mr Chahal.

We don’t have the strength, we didn’t have a voice behind us so Mr Chahal was victimised. And believe me, it was a lot easier getting support from non-Sikhs than Sikhs in this country. Many Sikh Gurdwaras and organisations replied to request for assistance with, "Well, he must be a terrorist." But, if he was a terrorist why didn’t they prove it in court? You, me and every other person would have to have their guilt proved in court. It took me years to convince Sikhs of this. That no matter what Mr Chahal was said to have done – it had to be proved in court before he could be declared guilty. And that he couldn’t be deported just because the British government said he was guilty.

The only reason he was detained for 6 years, was because the Sikhs are a weak community in this country. Politically we haven’t got together nationally or internationally.

It took the European Court of Human Rights to get Mr Chahal out.

Look at the case now of Balbir Singh Bains. People who know him know he hasn’t been involved in any terrorist activities. He went to India to a relative’s wedding, as he left the airport he was detained incommunicado – meaning he was detained without the police revealing his whereabouts. If you are taken by the police in this country, the police have to register it within hours and you are given the right to one phone call where you can call your family or solicitor. But, Balbir Singh was detained incommunicado for five days. On the first three days he was tortured very badly. We lobbied here to MPs. His relatives in India got a lawyer to file a petition and the police produced him on the fifth day. Their statement was that they found Balbir Singh wandering around at Delhi Bus Station with explosives in his bag and the intent to blow up the Indian Parliament.

I said to people here, assume he had gone to India to blow up Parliament – good luck to him! –he surely wouldn’t have done it before his relative’s wedding. He’d wait until afterwards. A person from Indian or Sikh background wouldn’t jeopardise relationships with relatives and any normal person wouldn’t be carrying explosives around.

But, the fact is that we all know he was in detention when he was supposed to be carrying the bag of explosives around. When we took these issues to the British Government, and remember this is the government that when a white girl is convicted of smuggling heroin into Thailand, that no lesser person than the Prime Minister Tony Blair himself goes there to get her released. And you remember the girls released from Saudia Arabia thanks to the British Government. Do you know what the Foreign Office said about Balbir Singh Bains? They said it was in the jurisdiction of another country. It is because we, the Sikh community have not created ourselves into a political force.

Who is behind us to tell Tony Blair, that if he is going to treat us like this, then he will lose the next election without our support? Or unless we had a country like India behind us to say we will cut off trade with you.

You may remember the case of the strong opposition to the building of a Hindu Mandir in Watford. The Indian government said to the British government that trade would be effected if they didn’t give permission for this place. Opposition from everyone was ignored by the local council and the temple was built. You try and get support from the Indian government for a Gurdwara issue and there would be none.

There is nothing political behind the Sikhs, so that means we get victimised, not just in India but throughout the world.

It is interesting that throughout our preaching system, the victimisation process has seeped in. I hear Sant after Sant in Gurdwaras and they haven’t changed their preaching to include the last 15 years. That’s why you are the only hope for the future. To overcome our parameters and restrictions and to go to the rest of the world.

I go to Gurdwaras and they say, "We don’t talk politics here." How can they say this? A Khalsa is a Sant-Sipahee, but it seems to me that Sants are not even Khalsa yet, because they say they talk of nothing other than spirituality. Is that what Guru Gobind Singh asked you to do? I ask, "What is the kirpan for?"

Is it just a symbol, or an ornament? What are these sants doing? They go on and on about the atrocities committed by the Moghuls and it seems to me that history ends for them somewhere around the 1920s. It seems there has not been one single atrocity to Sikhs after that. Now, either they are blind, or no one tells them. Or they have been indoctrinated and are now indoctrinating the rest of the community.

The media asked me in 1984, 1985, 1986 and again in 1987, "When are you Sikhs going to stop talking about politics?" I replied, "When are you going to get the Archbishop of Canterbury to stop talking about politics? When is the Church of England going to stop talking about politics and just about spirituality?" There was no response to that. I asked, "When are you going to stop the Muslim clergy talking about politics? Is it just for Sikhs to talk spirituality and not politics?"

Is it right that Gurdwara after Gurdwara, and Sant after Sant only talk about spirituality? Infact, not talking about politics is a political statement in itself. It is a statement of survival. Not to talk, hear or mention anything about an individual who has been tortured next to you is itself a statement. It is a decision not to say anything because you fear for your own survival. You are political through your silence.

It is not right to compromise on truth. Someone who is being victimised has rights. We have to stand up for the victim’s rights.

I said that the British were very clever. They pushed our system into the domain of religion. The word religion is appropriate for Christianity and Christianity alone. And I’ll tell you why. Christianity had no other place to go except into the sphere of religion after losing the battle of Truth. Christianity ruled the system of thought in the West for centuries. Christianity said that the centre of the Universe was Earth and that it was created in seven days. These ideas were challenged by science. The West decided to push God into religion. Religion is faith, faith is blind. It makes no sense to anyone else – you just believe it. Guru Nanak taught us to question, to search for Truth. You are no longer a Sikh if you have stopped searching for Truth.

What is Truth? Science, Mathematics and Spirituality hold truths. Look for truth with all your five senses and other senses. The tragedy of the West is that it limits understanding to the five senses, and leaves the spiritual sense undeveloped. For example, a mother and child are in separate rooms, yet the mother knows when the child is in distress. She can’t see or hear the child, she just knows.

When you merely have faith, then it has no relevance to the rest of the world. The West has claimed science as their own. Guru Nanak said that worlds and countless worlds exist, science comes to that truth now. Faith is believing that one message came from God for all humanity, and hence that message is the best. But Guru Granth Sahib does not say that. Truth is not exclusive. Truth is searched for. Religion is a derivative of this search. When we step out of the parameters of faith and religion we will stop being the victim. Leading scientists get their latest ideas about the Universe and existence from the Guru Granth Sahib. Our tragedy will be that truth is hijacked by Stamford, Oxford and Cambridge Universities.

Stop living out myths, read Guru Granth Sahib properly. Stop being a victim. Create your own political force and get your own homeland.

Waheguru jee ka khalsa Waheguru jee kee fateh!

What was 1984 all about?

It has been illuminating walking around the group discussions. Some people have mentioned they are not aware of what happened in 1984. If you read pro-Indian government books then the impression you will get is that Sikhs became too rich in the 1960s and 70s. They then wanted political power and started causing trouble because they couldn’t get that power. They hid in Darbar Sahib and threatened India. The Government had no choice but to attack Darbar Sahib and give it back to the real Sikhs.

My own argument is that if any community becomes rich, then is India saying the community will automatically want political power and to separate? So is the solution to keep everyone poor? I get no answer to that.

The 1984 issue started in 1885. During Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s reign of the Sikh Kingdom, the British had an agreement not to attack. After his death, his sons fought between themselves and the British invaded. The agreement then was that the Kingdom would be handed over to Maharaja Duleep Singh when he reached the age of 18. However, two years later the British changed the agreement saying the Kingdom would be handed back to the sarkar-e-khalsa when and if the British left India.

In 1885, the Arya Samaj was a big Hindu movement, the Sikhs joined them, but where shocked when they read the literature calling Guru Nanak, Mohammed and Christ idiots. The Sikhs awakened and formed the Singh Sabha movement. It became very strong. The 1919 massacre at Jallianwala Bagh and the control of Gurdwaras by the British, including Darbar Sahib, led to Sikhs conducting non-violent protests. Gandhi and Nehru saw the strength of the Sikhs and asked them to join the Independence movement. Sikhs asked, "What if you double cross us like the British did?" Nehru, Ghandi and the Sikhs then produced a written agreement that in an independent India, the Sikhs could have their own state. They would only share military, economy and communications with India. Jina never trusted them and got Pakistan. In 1947 India got independence. In 1948 , the Sikhs weren’t offered autonomy. In 1949 there were only 5 Sikhs in a parliament of 529. India said, "Sorry mate! The Brits aren’t here to help you now – that’s politics!"

One of the reasons there are so few technical and engineering colleges in Punjab, is that the central government never re-invested 70% of the money it took from Punjab back into Punjab. The Sikhs left Punjab not because we are natural travellers, but because we weren’t allowed to control our own economic growth. If we were, Punjab would have been a success story like Japan.

The Government also started funding anti-Sikh movements such as the Nirankaris. Sikhs were killed in the peaceful protests of 1978 yet no one has ever been prosecuted. Sikhs were imprisoned, the courts decided that Sikhs can be punished but not the ones against the Sikhs. All this culminated in 1984. Not one charge or warrant for arrest was issued against Bhindawale or any other individual with him. Yet the army was sent in to attack Darbar Sahib on the day when 10,000 people were inside. It is very sad and complicated, it brings people to tears.

The other thing is that all over the world we are recognised as a distinct people and religion. But, in the Indian constitution, Sikhs are a sub-class of Hinduism. The Government of India decided to let Punjab water go to Rajasthan instead of Punjab, and Punjab suffered. The Indian government failed to resolve it in the courts.

1984 for Sikhs was a campaign for basic principles, on upholding agreements made between Sikhs and the Indian State. It had nothing to do with terrorism or rich Sikhs.

As a result of 1984 people were, and still are, detained under false charges. India has been criticised for human rights abuse, so now they detain Sikhs under the false charge of finding them with up to 40kg of the explosive RDX in their briefcase!

250 Sikhs have been charged with this in the last year or so. The clearance rate in India is 15%, meaning only 15% of cases get caught. If 250 people represent 15% then there must be at least another 1000 Sikhs not caught, just walking around. I’m surprised there’s not been a massive explosion! Everyone in India knows it’s a false charge when they read it in the papers. When the magistrate gets the case in court, he declares it to be under the National Security act due to the explosives and hence does not allow a court case. The person is automatically guilty without a trial. The police force is out of control.

I was at the UN three weeks ago, the diplomat from India said, "Everything is normal now." I replied, "It is normal if my friend can go to Ludhiana and say ‘KHALISTAN’, but he will be dead within 3 days."

It is not normal to suppress freedom of expression.

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