Canada violence conspiracy against Sikhs: Takht Damdama Sahib Jathedar

Takht Sri Damdama Sahib Jathedar Giani Harpreet Singh has called the recent Canada violence as a “deep-rooted conspiracy against the Sikhs and an attempt to vitiate peace”, while maintaining that the community members could never attack the shrine of any other faith.

The remarks came in the context of violence between Sikh and Hindu activists at a gurdwara in Malton, which appeared to be a fallout of an earlier attack by pro-Khalistani activists on devotees at the Hindu Sabha Mandir in Brampton.

Giani Harpreet Singh was in Amritsar today to attend a meeting of Sikh intellectuals at the Akal Takht Secretariat to discuss the existential crisis facing the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD). Prior to the meeting, he said that the Akali Dal’s significance had to prevail as its origin was conceptualised from the ‘faseel’ of the Akal Takht. “The Akali Dal is the representative party of the Sikhs and its workers ought to strengthen it. The Akal Takht is the custodian of the Akali Dal and has pronounced ‘tankhah’ only to party president Sukhbir Singh Badal, not the party,” he said.

Criticising the Canada violence, he claimed that a “small altercation outside the Hindu temple was wrongly projected on social media platforms as an “attack by a group of miscreants, which was part of a conspiracy”. He claimed that for a long, the anti-Sikh campaign was being run.

“Whatever happened in Canada is highly condemnable. Yet, the Sikhs can never think of attacking the temples of any faith. It has never happened. Even during the November 1984 anti-Sikh riots when the Golden Temple, Akal Takht and 35 other gurdwaras were attacked, not a single incident of attacking of any Hindu temple surfaced. The Canada violence is a pre-planned conspiracy and a mere altercation outside the Brampton Hindu temple is being manipulated by miscreants to defame the Sikhs,” he said. In fact, he said, reports of vehicles being damaged outside Malton gurdwara had emerged, which was equally condemnable.

Meanwhile, the Dal Khalsa has also reacted sharply to the alarming situation saying it was “planned to create a wedge between the Sikhs and Hindus”. “The fact is that a handful of Khalistani sympathisers and pro-Indian activists clashed with each other on the streets outside the temple where the Indian consulate was holding a camp,” said party working president Paramjeet Singh Mand.

He said that the attack on Hindu temple, which was “spread by mainstream media and endorsed by the Indian leadership, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was completely untrue”.

Appealing to “Hindu brothers not to fall into a misleading and twisted information being spread by Indian leaders and the media”, Kanwar Pal Singh said it was a ploy to pit Hindus against Sikhs, especially in Canada and India, to further polarise the society.

Cautioning both the sides, he said, “We have witnessed in the 1980s and 1990s the same dirty tactics applied by the governments to create bad blood against each other. Both the communities in Punjab fell into the state’s trap, which resulted in bloodshed. Let’s learn lessons from the bitter past and keep the government and its agencies at bay,” he said.