Amritsar, Punjab: Dal Khalsa has asserted that the film ‘Nanak Shah Fakir’ produced by Harinder Singh Sikka has the evil potential to challenge and subvert the fundamental belief system of the Sikhs, hence it cannot be allowed to be released.
In his strong-worded letter sent through e-mail to the producer of the film, Kanwar Pal Singh leader of the Dal Khalsa said by portraying Guru Nanak in human form–whether through computer graphics or through blurred images, “you are striking at the roots of our faith and that was simply intolerable”.
The letter explains that the Sikhism was monotheistic in character, reveres the Shabad-Guru principle and believes in an omnipotent, omnipresent and formless God.
Kanwar Pal Singh, spokesperson of Dal Khalsa
The organization’s spokesperson pointed out that Sikh tenets categorically, unambiguously and unmistakably prohibit the human portrayal of Sikh Gurus and their immediate family members in any form. “What you are about to do with the release of your movie is nothing short of blasphemy”, he said and added that this would lead others to be more pernicious and wayward.
Sending stern warning to him, the letter stated that “If you are choosing to be a Salman Rushdie who wants to hide behind the veil of modernity and preach blasphemy, you are surely inviting trouble”.
Stating that they would not tolerate or allow this to happen, he said “you are working on taking the entire Sikh community down through your movie”. He said we can’t allow you to stream roll our belief systems in the name of propagation or freedom of expression.
Undoubtedly, cinema is a good promotional medium, but Sikhism is not a proselytizing religion which seeks to increase its numbers through propagation, reads the letter.
Agreeing that portrayal of Sikh Gurus and other Sikh characters had been going on in pictorial form for very long now, he said let this be clear even that pictorial portrayal was unwarranted and a deep failure of the community.
He further said that just as no one in this world can visualize Hazrat Mohammed Sahib -the founder of Islam, similarly no portrayal of any kind of Sikh Gurus -pictorial, graphics, cinematic will be a workable to the Sikh Nation.
On Harinder Sikka’s utterance that only radicals were opposing the film, the Dal Khalsa leader in a letter said Guru Nanak belongs to all-the simplistic, the devout, the faithful, the orthodox whom you and media call names like fundamentalists and radicals.