The call from the Prime Minister is for each of us to resist division among ourselves and unite around the over 6,000 years of history all of us have equal title to.
New Delhi: October 31, 1984 was the day Prime Minister Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi was assassinated in her official residence by two of her bodyguards. Subsequently, the capital city of India witnessed what could only be described as an organised pogrom targeting members of the Sikh community. Very little of such mayhem was spontaneous, they were clearly organised and orchestrated. Only after Narendra Modi took over as the Prime Minister of India in 2014 were those still living among the principal perpetrators brought to justice. The long wait for justice for victims of the 1984 riots was a travesty of that noble term, but since 2014, those held by courts as guilty of complicity in the riots were punished. Just as their Pakistan Army minders, several of friends and family of the same minders were or are living in properties that had to be abandoned by members of the Sikh community. Many because they were killed during 1946-47, others because they managed to save their lives by escaping into the Republic of India.
This is the genocide that the small band of adherents in the “K Group” (a more apt name than calling them Khalistanis) on behalf of their puppeteers in the Pakistan military, wish the world to forget. Instead, they seek to focus exclusively on the violence unleashed against a noble community that was witnessed on the streets of the national capital in 1984. Such violence was condemnable and needed to be severely punished, but must not be allowed to cover up and ignore the genocidal violence against Sikhs which took place in the immediate west of our state of Punjab during 1946-47. Yet this is what the K Group are trying to do, including by making absurd allegations, such as that in our country, it is dangerous for Sikhs to wear a turban.
Ironically, on the instructions of their masters, the K Group are making as their target of vituperation Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister who has worked diligently to bring the ringleaders behind the pogrom which took place in 1984 to justice. The K Group are seeking to instil hatred within the Sikh community against the Hindus, a community that in 1947 and subsequently warmly welcomed members of the Sikh community who were fortunate enough to escape into the Republic of India from the large-scale 1946-47 genocide of the Sikh and Hindu communities in what had by 1947 become the separate country of Pakistan. Once Prime Minister Modi won a third term in his job, efforts by groups hostile to India are being supercharged to try and derail the India story through attempting to sow division among the people and inciting violence. Such efforts are being orchestrated by those countries who seek to prevent the Union of India from becoming the third superpower in the world by 2029, after the US and China. They are seeking to prevent an outflow of foreign investment from China into India, and to create an atmosphere that would discourage domestic and foreign investors from starting or expanding their operations in India. They are not succeeding, as interest in India is becoming more, not less, which is why they are doubling down on efforts at causing divisions within the people of India. It is such a danger to the people and prosperity of India that Prime Minister Modi warned about in his Unity Day speech to the nation.
We are all Indians, or as we call ourselves among ourselves, we are all Bharatiyas. PM Modi’s Unity Day message is clear: we must not allow those hostile to Bharat to weaken our country through seeking to stoke division and violence. Sabka saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Viswas, Sabka Prayas. From 2014 onwards, this has remained the central thread of the message of the Prime Minister, a call to national unity that reflects the efforts of Sardar Patel as he single-mindedly and tirelessly worked to ensure the seamless integration of the princely states into the Union of India. Indeed, for Bharatiyas, every day is a Unity Day. The call from the Prime Minister is for each of us to resist division among ourselves and unite around the over 6,000 years of history all of us have equal title to. It is such a history that makes Bharat the only country in the world which has retained its civilisational roots from ancient times to the present.