Countering Fake News

At the National Sikh Youth Federation, we will not tolerate slander and fabricated allegations made against the Sikh Shaheeds, who's names have been written in golden lettering in Sikh Ithihaas. Such is the greatness of the Guru and his Sikh, that those who are opposed, are unable to challenge Sikhi and the struggle for Khalistan it inspires.

Weak-willed and substandard journalists, have taken cheap shots at those who occupy the highest echelons of our nation. They fail to grasp the lofty ideals of the Guru and the dedication of his Khalsa and make ill-informed and unfounded claims.

Terry Glavin, a Canadian journalist has made a living out of peddling low-level sensationalist journalism which reinforce racist stereotypes and attempt to silence the voice of activists of the Sikh Quam. He recently jumped on the internationally trending topic of Khalistan, to offer up some of his own freshly concocted allegations:

“Across the shimmering pool from the Akal Takht, in his sandbagged four-storey bunker, Babbar Khalsa’s senior commander, Sukhdev Singh, happily admitted to me that on Parmar’s direct orders he’d recently carried out more than 40 assassinations. The dead were insufficiently observant Sikhs, poets, Hindu-Sikh peace activists, left-wing intellectuals and innocent Hindu shopkeepers. The killing would go on until Khalistan was won, Sukhdev Singh told me.”

The Babbar Khalsa was founded following the Vasaikhi Massacre of 1978 in which 13 Sikhs were brutally killed by armed Nirankaris (a god-man cult) with the assistance of the Panjab Police. Following the failure of the Indian Judicial system to dispense any justice, acquitting all the Nirankari accused, Sant Bhindranwale declared that as per Sikh tradition those guilty of murdering unarmed Sikhs should be punished.

The Babbar Khalsa is a Jujharoo Jathebandi, which mandated by the Akaal Takhat Hukumnama at the time, was set up to target those Nirankaris who were responsible for attacks on the Sikh nation.  It is false to claim that in the early 80s it was fighting for Khalistan, the struggle for which started after June 1984:

"The leading extremist Sikh group at the time, which had owned responsibility for killing 35 Nirankaris since 1981, was the Babbar Khalsa. It too denied any hand in the bus killings or indeed in the killing of any Hindus, bank robberies or religiously provocative acts. 'Our targets are only those Nirankaris who were involved in the Baisakhi killings of 1978, and those police officers who are guilty of torturing and humiliating Sikh youth’.
The Tribune (Chandigarh)
7 October 1983

 “Last fortnight Sukhdev Singh, the leader of one of the less well-known Akali groups, the Babbar Khalsa, proudly stepped out of the shadows to claim credit for the killing of 35 Nirankaris. Sukhdev Singh was unrepentant about his group's bloody activities, saying, "We shall continue to deal the same way with the enemies of the Panth."
India Today
January 15, 1984

Shaheed Jathedar Bhai Sukhdev Singh Ji Babbar

These statements, and the events as recorded at the time, completely disprove Glavin’s claim that the Babbar Khalsa was somehow bent on assassinating poets and innocent Hindu shopkeepers.

Political detractors of the time were quick to note that the Jujharoo Jathebandis would take full responsibility for their actual actions, and condemned actions that were carried out by Government sponsored groups to defame them:

“It is important to note that even the religious activists among the Sikhs who felt bold enough to claim responsibility for selected killings over this period, not only disclaimed these acts of communal murders of Hindus and desecration of Hindu temples, but also condemned them.”
Focus on Regional Issues, Volume 3
Institute of Regional Studies, 1984

 It is unclear therefore why the Babbar Khalsa would confide in Terry Glavin, of all people of their supposed 'real intentions'; to create Khalistan by massacring Hindus. It is noteworthy that those Terry claims to have interviewed have become Shaheed in the struggle for Khalistan, and cannot refute the fictitious claims that Terry chose to wait nearly 40 years to reveal.

"From his perch in the Akal Takht, “the throne of the timeless one,” the genocidal hatred of Hindus that Khalistani supreme leader Jarnail Singh Bhinderanwale expressed during our interview was helpfully informative...  Khalistan was the ethnically cleansed theocracy that Bhinderanwale wanted to carve out of Punjab. It was nothing like the cause of a righteous Third World liberation movement that Canada’s Khalistanis were claiming it was."

It wasn’t only the Babbar Khalsa, Terry’s other alleged personal sources included Sant Bhindranwale (the most revered Sikh of the 21st century as declared by Akal Takhat). In the quote above from his recent article, Terry claims Sant Bhindranwale confided in him that rather than greater political autonomy and civil rights through agitations, for which over a hundred thousand Sikhs had courted arrest and over 100 died, Sant Ji's actual strategy for Khalistan was the ethnic cleansing of 10 million Hindus of Punjab.

Sant Bhindranwale repeatedly confirmed his stance in his speeches that he was not against Hindus in general but opposed to the Indian State that leveraged Brahmanism in a bid to galvanise a fanatical Hindu vote bank. He condemned any attacks on innocent Hindus, and no “ethinic cleansing” took place either while Sant Bhindranwale was alive or during the armed struggle for Khalistan.

Articles such as the one written by Terry are deeply problematic and show no understanding of Sikh thought or history. Fortunately for the Sikh Quam the media does not write our Itihas, rather Sikh Itihas is written by the Jivan and Kurbani of Gursikhs such as Shaheed Jatheder Bhai Sukhdev Singh Babbar and Shaheed Sant Jarnail Singh Ji Khalsa Bhindranwale.

Shaheed Jathedar Sant Jarnail Singh Ji Khalsa Bhindranwale