Amritsar, Punjab: Dal Khalsa took exception over the manner the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee (DSGMC) has petitioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi for changing the name of Aurangzeb road in Delhi after Guru Tegh Bahadur Sahib’s name.
Strongly disagreeing with DSGMC, the Dal Khalsa spokesperson Kanwar Pal Singh said president Manjit Singh GK’s proposal on the subject was unwise and uncalled for.
Reasserting that the sacrifice of the Ninth Lord Guru Tegh Bahadur Sahib was unparalleled in the annals of the recent history, he said the Guru Sahib tasted martyrdom to fight against tyranny and to protect the oppressed class irrespective of their religion.
While admitting that the Sikhs had bitter historical hangover with Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, he said, the idea to change the name of the road was in bad taste that would set wrong precedent and create fresh divide between followers of Islam and Sikhism.
“If one goes by the logic of the DSGMC leadership that Aurangzeb was a cruel ruler so a public place named after him in secular India is inappropriate, Kanwar Pal Singh said why Manjit Singh and Manjinder Singh Sirsa has not petitioned before the Modi Sarkar to change the name of the Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International airport and renamed it after Guru Tegh Bahadur Sahib or any other Guru.
“Indira Gandhi too was a cruel ruler who not only ordered the Indian armed forces to storm the Golden Temple that led to bringing the Akal Takht to rubble but also imposed Emergency in the country trampling and crushing the basic and fundamental rights of every citizen”.
“Why DSGMC leaders have not objected to naming the chowk in Delhi after Rajiv Gandhi- whose hands were dipped in the blood of innocent Sikhs and Tamils too”? “Why this double standards”, he asked.
He urged the DSGMC to set up a museum at Gurdwara Rakhabganj where portraits of alleged perpetrators (modern day Aurangzeb’s) of Nov 1984 carnage that includes late PM Rajiv Gandhi & PV Narsima Rao (then Home Minister), Arjun Dass, Lalit Makhen, Kamal Nath, Sajjan Kumar, Jagdish Tytler, then Lt Governor, police chief and many more be displayed. “Let the present and coming generation knows the cruel faces of these leaders who allegedly engineered the massacre of thousands of Sikhs in broad day light”.