Punjab CM Beant Singh’s 1995 assassin hailed as ‘great martyr’ at Akal Takht ceremony
NB: This celebration of assassination from inside the holiest shrine of the Sikhs is a travesty of religion. The fact that it was not well-attended is over-shadowed by the involvement of senior granthi's in the ceremony. The failure of religious leaders to condemn violence in the name of religion or the 'honour' of the community is a dangerous trend and is made worse by open encouragement. This is no different from the Hindutva brigades' celebration of Godse and Savarkar and the impunity which the RSS/BJP government affords to the cow-vigilantes and those of their ilk who are accused of terrorist crimes.
It is a sign of the degeneration of religious sensibility in India that our different faiths and religious places can be used as sites for broadcasting the so-called heroism of assassins. It has gone on for far too long, with tragic consequences of which we are all aware. I am sure the vast bulk of practising Sikhs do not approve of this. It is time for peace-loving followers of all faiths - not to mention agnostics - to distance themselves from the perversion of their religion. DS
Dilawar Singh, the
‘human bomb’ who assassinated the then Punjab chief minister Beant Singh in a
suicidal attack in 1995, was hailed as a ‘great martyr’ at his death
anniversary held at the Akal Takht, the highest temporal seat of Sikhs, in the
Golden temple complex on Thursday. A sandesh (message)
of Jagtar Singh Hawara, a convict in the assassination case, was read out at
the event by his father Gurcharan Singh, who was designated as a parallel
jathedar of Akal Takht at the radicals’ Sarbat Khalsa (grand Sikh assembly)
held in Amritsar in 2015.
Hawara, who is serving
a life sentence in Tihar jail at Delhi, glorified his aide Dilawar Singh as a
“great martyr.” No Shiromani Gurdwara
Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) employee stopped Gurcharan Singh from reading out
Hawara’s message, even as members of the task force of the apex gurdwara body
were present on the occasion. Dilawar, a
cop-turned-militant, had blasted himself to kill Beant Singh outside the Punjab
civil secretariat at Chandigarh on August 31, 1995.
Like previous years,
an ‘akhand path’ was organised at the Akal Takht, the bhog ceremony of which
was solemnised on early Thursday morning. It was followed by ‘gurbani kirtan,’
which concluded around 8 am. Meanwhile, Akal Takht
jathedar Giani Gurbachan Singh, who had declared the Beant Singh’s assassin as
‘qaumi shahid’ (martyr of the community) in 2012, skipped the ceremony.
During the previous
years, the Golden Temple’s head granthi Giani Jagtar Singh used to honour kin
of Dilawar Singh, but this time he too, besides other SGPC office-bearers, kept
a distance from the ceremony. However, Akal Takht
head granthi Giani Malkit Singh honoured the kin of the assassin, including the
latter’s brother Chamkaur Singh, with siropas (robes of honour).
Sikh hardliners owing
allegiance to the Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar), led by Simranjit Singh Mann,
Akhand Kirtani Jatha and Dal Khalsa paid tributes to Dilawar. Talking to the media,
some of them demanded that Dilawar’s portrait be installed in the Central Sikh
museum at the Golden Temple
Notably, despite
all-out efforts by Sikh radicals to ensure a huge gathering during the
ceremony, there was a low turnout. Apart from the SGPC, the police had made
tight security arrangements inside and outside the Golden Temple complex to
prevent any untoward incident.
see also
The Broken Middle (on the 30th anniversary of 1984)
