Since I was married into a Hindi-speaking Bhatnagar family I read, write and speak fluent Hindi, yet I do not fail to identify myself with the Tamil culture in which I had been brought up having been born in a Iyer family. My nationality is lndian, whose heritage, I adore, my mother tongue is Tamil which I am proud of. I admire those Sikhs who are proud of their Punjabi culture and its language and spare no efforts in retaining it.

I also fail to understand, on what ground did Punjabi and Haryana Hindus oppose the legitimate religious demands of the Sikhs? Are we not, by these very actions, implying that the Sikhs are not Hindus? Why did they oppose the demand of holy status for the city of Amritsar? Don't they know that the official Sikh name for the Golden Temple is "Hari Mandir" and is no less holy than the holiest of all the Mandirs in India. Are we not already enjoying the holy status for Varanasi, Hardwar and Kurukshetra? Narrow-minded fanatics have pushed some of our Sikh brothers into proclaiming that we are not Hindus. We can only blame ourselves for that. False declaration in the census by millions of Punjabi-speaking Hindus is a disgrace to our ancient Hindu tradition, in which truth is given paramount importance.

Even though it is mainly the Hindus of Punjab and Haryana, who owe their Hindu-birth to the Great Gurus and their Sikhs, who made the highest sacrifices for the protection of our Hindu religion from Mogul tyranny, yet it is the Hindus of the South and elsewhere, who seem to have greater respect for the Sikh Gurus and the Granth Sahib than the Punjabi-Hindus, who as history teaches us, only survived due to the emergence of Sikhism in their region of India. While national RSS has incorporated Guru Govind Singh and Guru Nanak in their prescribed morning prayer, some local Punjab and Haryana R.S.S. have joined hands with the Arya Samaj, who have slandered Guru Nanak in their prayer book.

Punjab Arya-Samaj apparently has a history of hundred years of hostility against the Sikhs and have found it difficult to reconcile themselves with the gradual influence of Guru Nanak's simple teachings on Hinduism, such as on the Sindhis.

Du to anti-Sikh indoctrination since 1875 by their founder Dayanand, the Arya-Samaj has gradually worked against the Sikh interests and especially more so since the partition of our country, when due to the sudden absence of the Muslim population from Punjab, they could afford more time and energy indulging in Sikh politics. Punjab R.S.S., too, was misled in joining hands with the Arya-Samaj in their anti-Sikh activities. Thus far from doing any good, the Arya-Samaj and R.S.S. of Punjab did far more damage to Hindu Dharma, by alienating the Sikhs from Hindu Society by weakening its very special branch of Sikhism, the branch, which is the protection of the mother-tree itself.

Great Hindu leaders of action have derived inspiration from the holy Sikh Gurus. Since my childhood, I remember the Tamil poem of India's great poet and patriot Subramanium Bharati. In his two hundred and four line poem on Guru Govind Singh he has described him as a 'great ocean of Knowledge,' a "lyric poet", a leader among warriors and a "lion among men''. Bharati describes the Sikh as one who does not know the caste distinction and wipes out injustice and tyranny. Achieving Dharma through knowledge is not great, great are the liberated souls of Khalsa who sustained Dharma with their lives. Guru's Khalsa is a 'sangam' brought about to preserve the Dharma and the country. Bharati concludes his poem with a moving note of optimism; "As the flag set up by Govind Singh fluttered on high, the regime of Aurangzeb fell down tottering".

Similar reverence to the Sikh Gurus and brotherliness towards Sikhs was expressed by many great lndian leaders. I may quote Swami Vivekananda's lecture in Lahore, in 1897, when he said . . . "Here it was (i.e. in Punjab) that in later times the gentle Nanak preached his marvellous love for the world" . . . Towards the end of the lecture he said . . . "I have quoted at the beginning of this lecture of our great Guru Govind Singh . . . Mark me, every one of you will have to be Govind Singh, if you want to do good to your country. You may see thousand of defects in your countrymen, but mark their Hindu blood . . . If they drive you out, retire to die in silence like that mighty lion Govind Singh. Such a man is pride of Hindu Dharma, such an ideal ought to be before us always". There are numerous tributes of this kind made to the Sikh Gurus and their Sikhs. Their rare sacrifices and contribution make our Nation proud.

It is a pity that the Sikhs have to agitate, struggle and sacrifice lives for their constitutional demands, the kind of which are usually granted automatically to other states and communities. While most linguistic states in India were carved out in l950's, Punjabi state was agreed upon in 1966, only after a decade of great peaceful satyagrhas and sacrifices by the Sikhs. While no other state was deprived of its capital, today 25 years later, Sikhs still continue to struggle and sacrifice lives for their Chandigarh. It is a great pity that entire Sikh community and Punjab should be held responsible and deprived of their rights because of the violence from few extremists.

It is tragic that some of our Punjabi Hindus should be betraying their own State's welfare by not supporting the common cause of Chandigarh and River waters etc., and thus alienating themselves from the Sikhs. Their most unfair and mean opposition to the Sikh religious demands, e.g. demonstrating with cigarette packets on Sikh swords in a communal procession through the streets of Amritsar, are the kind of high degree of provocations which cause disharmony and the rift which we witness today between the two communities. Due to the frequent biased press reporting Sikhs have not been able to present the true picture of their grievances across the nation. I will advise the Sikh politician to invite few prominent Hindus from each state of India to Amritsar to discuss their grievances and impress upon them the genuine sincerity of their demands which are within the framework of the constitution.