Fundamentalism and the Sikh Religious Tradition by T.N. Madan

have, without solving any problems of the Punjab, of law and order, or separatism, been
seriously damaging to the country.
The statement that General Shahbeg Singh was dismissed for corruption, is not
correct. Actually, General Shahbeg Singh was removed under a special clause in the
Army Act, which had never been used earlier. It was invoked in his case only a day
before retirement. Under this clause he was not entitled to even a trial. But Shahbeg
Singh approached the Court, and he was cleared of the supposed charges against him.
Thereafter he sought his reinstatement, and even approached the Government for it,
without success.
Whatever be the facts leading to the army action, one thing is singularly
unexplained, as to why the day chosen for it was the Martyrdom Day of Guru Arjun, the
Founder of the Golden Temple, when normally thousands of pilgrims had to be present.
This sadistic choice of time cannot be explained on any rational or administrative
grounds, except that the object of the attack could perhaps be to teach the Sikhs a lesson
and to break their spirit of resistance. No serious scholar can fail to notice the
implications of the choice made.
An equally important fact is the role of the ruling party in allegedly organising
the massacre of over ten thousand Sikhs all over India, after the assassination of Prime
Minister Indira Gandhi. Highly responsible personalities, including the former Chief
Justice of India, have issued cogent and credible reports, accusing Congressmen of
organising the killings, and the Administration of negligence or participation in the
continued commission of large-scale crimes for about three days in the capital. Here it is
relevant to state that to treat the minorities as hostages and to retaliate against them, so as
to pressurise the majority elsewhere, has been a known policy of some senior Congress
leaders. The relevant issue is not so much as to why the perpetrators of the crimes have
not been punished so far, but why those took place at all. For, that by itself could explain
subsequent reluctance or failure to punish anyone so far. It is well known that following
the assasination of Mahatma Gandhi, no Maharastrian was touched, nor was a Tamilian
destroyed in Delhi or elsewhere, after Rajiv Gandhi's assassination. A biased scholar may
decide to omit these realities of Indian life, but these facts cannot fail to register on a
perceptive or Sikh mind.
In conclusion, we find that there has been a continuous silence and omission on
the part of the learned author, both about the salient facts of the Punjab Problem, which
the Central Government seemed reluctant to solve, and the more important fact as to why,
despite all administrative, military and other measures, the issues that arose in 1966,
remain unsolved and the situation has become more tangled.
Results of the Sikh World-View :
The burden of Madan's paper is that Sikhism is a split ideology, one of the first
Gurus, quite akin to Hinduism, and the second of Fundamentalism, as introduced by the
Sixth and the Tenth Master, involving even political objectives. We have stated in the
first section of this article that Sikhism is a harmonious and rational whole-life ideology,
just as are Judaism and Islam. However, there is a difference as well. Pacificism and
withdrawal appeared in the former in the sixth century B.C., and in the latter as Sufism.
These have been significantly avoided in Sikhism, because of the doctrines as prescribed
in Guru Granth and as lived by the Gurus. Struggle for justice, including that in the sociopolitical
Field has been a religious objective with the Gurus and in the Sikh faith. While