To The Tribune,
Chandigarh.

Sir,

Fateh,

Comments by Simranjit Singh Mann: Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) states that I have been reading the columns of the editor of The Tribune Mr. Rajesh Ramachandran.

In most of his articles the editor demeans people whom the Hindu Indian state would denounce. This time around he has vilified the Dravidians and the Tamil leader Prabhakaran who was looking for political space within Sri Lanka for the Tamils who were supressed by the majoritarian Sri Lankan’s. Their persecution was like the persecution of the Sikh’s who like Mr. Ramachandaran’s predecessor the late Prem Bhatia, the editor of this newspaper wrote calumnious articles against the Sikh’s and forced the hand of Hindu Indian state under Indira Gandhi to send in the armed forces of Britain, Soviets and her own to fight the stateless Sikh’s in what is now called the infamous Operation Bluestar of 1984. These Armed Forces committed the genocide, memoricide, vandalism and ethnocide of the Sikh peoples.

Then Mr. Ramachandran talks of the genocidaire late Premier Rajiv Gandhi who committed the genocide of the Sikh peoples all over the country and obviously with impunity. He tells us of Gandhi sending in the armed forces IPKF into Sri Lanka who fought the Sri Lankan Tamils and Mr. Ramachandran laments that IPKF officers were killed and 1,200 soldiers also died besides 3,000 were wounded.

But we have never learnt what was the intention of Gandhi to send in his armed forces to fight the Tamils, when Tamils are proud citizens of this country. If the prisoners who have been released are being fated by the Tamils, Gandhi should have known that to send his armed force against the Tamils in Sri Lanka would embitter the Tamils at large within this country. If an armed force is sent to battle, it is obvious that it will lose its officers and soldiers. Therefore, like the Henderson report of the 1962 debacle, such a report on the IPKF has not come to the public mind as also of the Ladakh debacle of 2020.

In the assault of Communist China in Ladakh in 2020 Premier Nerndra Modi kept his powder dry and did not give a fight to the PLA, choosing instead fists instead of guns. Therefore there were few causalities but what was demeaning was the capture of Hindu India’s soldiers by Communist China.

Premier Modi and his right wing BJP – RSS Union Government has still not managed to rid the PLA from within Ladakh of what was lost in 2020 and earlier in 1962 when Hindu India surrendered 39,000 Sq. Kms. of Ladakh territory to Communist China.

Mr. Ramachandran was quiet all this time since the folly of sending in the IPKF to fight our Tamil people in Sri Lanka. His vile and venomous regular columns have demeaned my late grandfather who is not alive to write back. In this column Mr. Ramachandaran has also had a shot at me but when I retort or respond and send a riposte, cowardly, the editor refuses to print.

Writing an editorial in his newspaper on 19th November,2022 Mr. Ramachandran states that Bharat Ratna should be bestowed on “Bhagat Singh and his comrades by shooting dead a British Police officer”. However, that British police officer was a young innocent officer Saunders who along with another innocent Sikh Head Constable Chanan Singh was also shot dead. Does shooting down innocent Police officers and a Head Constable merit a Bharat Ratna? We would think that The Tribune and its editor Mr. Ramachandran is a misanthropic and we await his further spiteful columns. It is not a co-incidence that The Tribune finds such editors whose thoughts are akin to Prem Bhatia’s, blood thirsty of the Sikh and Tamil blood.

Simranjit Singh Mānn,
President,
Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar),
Email: simranjitsinghmann@yahoo.com
website: https://akalidalamritsar.in/
facebook page: @sardarsimranjitsinghmann