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MCLEOD & FENECH AS SCHOLARS ON SIKHISM
AND MARTYRDOM *
SANGAT SINGH **
Falsehood gets dissipated, O Nanak,
And, truth ulitimately prevails.
– Guru Nanak Ramkali Var, 13.2 SGGS, p. 953
Here is another genre of McLeodian literature. It seeks to follow
the precepts laid down by Louis Emanuel Fenech’s mentor and guide,
W H McLeod.
I
Before going into Fenech’s enunciations, it will be of interest to
briefly highlight his guide McLeod’s inspirations and formulations that
have gone into his makeup to emerge as the guru of the anti-Sikh
school of thought, out to denigrate and demolish Sikh values and
concepts. In building up his school of thought, McLeod, like Trumpp
in the 19th century, was assisted by Brahminical forces: these, at the
time, were involved in suppressing the Sikhs and their aspirations,
revolving around their demand for linguistic re-organisation of Punjab.
The process started shortly after January 1961 Nehru-Tara Singh
standoff at Bhavnagar, when Nehru hurled threats to liquidate the
small Sikh community in India, as Greeks had, once, done to Melians
around 410 BC. Tara Singh’s discomfiture led Partap Singh Kairon,
then Punjab’s Chief Minister and a willing Nehruvian tool in Punjab,
to, firstly, play upon the supremacy of distinct Jat culture, vis-à-vis,
* This paper was read over at a seminar organized in May 2000 at Los Angeles, CA,
USA
** Dr, # S-181, Greater Kailash II, New Delhi