With the Lok Sabha elections a few months away, the battered Shiromani Akali Dal in Punjab has been looking out for battle cries to attract and hold within its fold the Panthic–read devout Sikh-voters. The SAD has now raised the issue of Punjab School Education Board school text books of Class 12 pertaining to the Sikh Gurus.
Sukhbir Singh Badal, the Shiromani Akali Dal president and former deputy chief minister of Punjab, on Thursday launched a 24-hour relay agitation at Amritsar, to protest against what he called the Congress government's “persistent, repeated and deliberate” insult to the Sikh gurus.
The Akali leader alleged that the government was “teaching the children of Punjab the sacrilegious Mughal version of the history of the great gurus. The old and the new textbooks prepared by the Punjab School Education Board includes the same hostile falsehoods which the Mughals preached against the Sikhs”. He, however, did not say what exactly was false about the contents. The former deputy chief minister also said they would launch a state-wide struggle to force Chief Minister Amarender Singh and the Congress government to apologise to the Sikh community.
The protests came after the committee set up by the state government to review the accuracy of the contents of the books, approved the content. The committee, headed by historian Kirpal Singh, said the changes made by the PSEB were justified, and as such there was no distortion of Sikh history. “We are historians, not politicians,” he told a press conference in Chandigarh.
Congress leader and Rural and Urban Development Minister Tript Rajinder Singh Bajwa turned the tables on the SAD and Sukhbir Badal saying that they should investigate the distortions in the books published by Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) and have them withdrawn. He pointed out that in 2007 when Parkash Singh Badal was the chief minister, books published by the SGPC had described one of the gurus as a thief, another as a kidnapper and yet another as a coward. The distribution of the books was stopped after objections were raised by some leaders, and the SGPC had constituted a committee to review its history books.
The issue could heat up over the next few days as the SAD intends to mobilise people on this emotive issue of the history of the Gurudom. The response could also indicate which way the political winds are blowing for the moment.
