Politics | Nankana Sahib attack and the focus on CAA

Kamlendra Kanwar

The murder of 25-year-old Sikh youth Ravinder Singh in Peshawar town of Pakistan on January 5 (Sunday) close on the heels of the attack on and stone-pelting on the revered Sikh shrine of Nankana Sahib near Lahore in Pakistan, the birthplace of Guru Nanak, by a Muslim mob, has raised concerns in India.

These two incidents will strengthen the resolve of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders that the Sikh minorities in Pakistan are victims of persecution and the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) will come to their aid.

Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri said on January 4 that vandalism, stone-pelting and acts of desecration at Nankana Sahib Gurudwara should be an eye-opener for those who refuse to recognise religious persecution of minorities in Pakistan and the rationale behind the CAA.

Local police say a man named Hassan had married 18-year-old Jagjit Kaur, daughter of a Sikh granthi in the shrine in September 2019 after abducting her and converting her to Islam. The mob on January 3 was led by Hassan’s brother who was agitated over attempts by the Sikh community to bring the girl back to their fold, wrenching her from the clutches of those who converted her forcibly.

In a video recorded at the site of the gurudwara, Hassan's brother was purported to have said that he would destroy the gurudwara to build a mosque at the site. He went on to say that he would ensure that no Sikh was left in the city and that it is re-named from Nankana Sahib to Ghulaman-e-Mustafa.

Nankana Sahib has great sentimental value for Sikhs as the birthplace of their first guru who lived in the 15th century.

With India ready to offer them citizenship for them to escape persecution, the Pakistani Sikhs look upon this country as a future viable refuge. Significantly, Pakistan had excluded the Sikhs from the official census in 2017, the country's first national headcount in 19 years. So, there's no real figure of the community’s population. However, civil rights campaigners say the size of the Sikh population has come down in the last two decades — from around 40,000 in 2002 to 8,000.

Evidently, there is no authenticated official headcount and these are only estimates but that the Sikh population has been dwindling is a hard reality. It is no secret that minorities per se are persecuted in Pakistan and conversion of Hindus and Sikhs is commonplace in a country whose foundations were built on the basis of theocracy.

Recently, former frontline Pakistan cricketer Shoaib Akhtar claimed that the lone Hindu cricketer in the country’s playing 11 in yesteryears, Danish Kaneria, was mocked at by some fellow cricketers for being a Hindu and that he (Akhtar) was appalled at his plight.

After the Nankana Sahib incident, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan put out a video claiming that it was from Lucknow and that it showed police violence against anti-CAA demonstrators. The cat was out of the bag when the Indian external affairs ministry exposed that the video was shot in Bangladesh seven years ago.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has criticised the Congress and other opposition parties of spreading falsehood by toeing Pakistan’s line on the CAA being a sinister move against the Muslim community, and being inimical to India’s interests.

Given these developments, all those parties opposing the CAA risk being isolated and being seen as soft towards Pakistan. Since the whole basis of the anti-CAA campaign was the legislation giving favoured treatment to select minorities in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, protesters would need to re-assess and fine-tune their approach so that they are not branded as anti-nationals.

Kamlendra Kanwar is a senior journalist. Views expressed are personal.