Akali patriarch and the former Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal on Tuesday asked his successor Capt Amarinder Singh to express remorse and apologize to the khalsa panth for the “incalculable” hurt caused to it by “denigrating” the great Guru Sahiban in the newly brought out Class XII history book of the Punjab School Education Board (PSEB).
“It is condemnable that the Chief Minister has abrogated his responsibility as head of the State and refused to register criminal cases against those responsible for preparation and distribution of sacrilegious material which has assaulted the senses of Sikhs worldwide,” he said.
The five-time Chief Minister said that mere withdrawal of history book, which launches a brazen assault on the sacred image of the great Sikh Guru Sahiban, especially Guru Arjan Dev, Guru Hargobind, Guru Tegh Bahadur and the tenth Sikh master Guru Gobind Singh, is not enough. “The Chief Minister should own responsibility for this bajjar paap (grave sin) and apologize to the Khalsa Panth and seek its forgiveness immediately,” he said.
Badal said that the Congress Government’s refusal to bring perpetrators, including Punjab School Education Board chairman to book, indicated that there was a deep rooted conspiracy to distort Sikh history and through it strike at the very core of the Sikh religion.
“This is also an attempt to sow the seeds of discord in young impressionable minds about Sikh religion and thought and take them away from it,” he said.
Stating that the attack on the history of the Sikhs was an attack on the community, Badal said that no Sikh could tolerate the claim as written in the new book that Guru Gobind Singh fled from Chamkaur Sahib without informing anyone and that the Mughals did not order the martyrdom of the fifth Guru Arjan Dev but had merely “fined” him.
“All these distortions occurred after the Punjab Government was forced to remove similar sacrilegious material from the same books following which Capt Amarinder Singh formed a Committee to prepare new history books for Class XI and XII. Now with even more serious distortions coming to the fore, it can only be assumed that the Congress Government is working on a deliberate design to denigrate the Sikh community,” he alleged.
Badal said that now, the only course open to Capt Amarinder was to apologize to the Sikh community and take strong action against the perpetrators of the sacrilege to send a clear message that no one would be allowed to denigrate Sikhism in this manner.
