Politics around the Blasphemy Laws in Punjab: The Murder of Lakhbir Singh; the Sikhs Need to Speak Up
By
Arshad Alam, New Age Islam
20 October
2021
The Politics
around the Blasphemy Laws in Punjab Has Contributed To the Enactment of Such
Horror
Main
Points
1. Lakhbir
Singh was killed by Nihang Sikhs at the Singhu border.
2. His limbs
were cut off as religious punishment; he was accused of committing sacrilege
and blasphemy.
3. The near
silence on the issue within the Sikh majority is worrying.
4. If the
politics around blasphemy laws had been called out in the Punjab, the Nihangs
and other violence prone groups wouldn’t have felt so emboldened.
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Lakhbir Singh (left), cremation (right), images via Indian Express
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His wrist
cut off, the man in excruciating pain is lying on the ground, trying to say
something to turbaned Sikhs surrounding him. These men all seem normal humans;
they must be having families and loved ones. But not one of them had the
humanity to take the brutalized man lying on the ground to hospital. Not one
had any empathy for a fellow human; not one had any remorse for what they had
done to another man.
We are told
that Sikhism is a religion of love and brotherhood. In large measures, its
followers have demonstrated it during natural calamities and pandemics like
COVID-19. It is as if helping others is the prime motto of their religion. But
we saw a very different practice of Sikhism at the Singhu border, where farmers
are protesting to repeal certain farm laws. A particular sect of the Sikhs, the
Nihangs, are also part of this protest. The Nihangs accused a daily wager,
Lakhbir Singh, of committing blasphemy by carrying a holy book to an ‘unclean
place’ and eventually punished the man by cutting the opposite sides of his
limbs. Lakhbir would later die due to loss of blood and a couple of Nihangs
would admit to killing him and surrender to the police. These surrendered men
were absolutely certain that they had acted out of pure religious conviction
and were garlanded by fellow Sikhs as champions and protectors of Sikhism. If
we have to give an example of how religion corrupts the soul, the killing of
Lakhbir checks all the boxes.
Police personnel with accused Nihang Singh for his alleged involvement
in the murder of Lakhbir Singh, who was killed at a farmers' agitation site in
Delhi, during a media briefing in Amritsar, Saturday, Oct. 16, 2021. (PTI
Photo)
-----
A gruesome
murder, when imbued with a ‘higher purpose, becomes a religious calling. We
have seen this in the Christian crusades, Muslim jihad and Hindu rage to
‘avenge 800 years of oppression’. Lakhbir was lynched, his almost lifeless body
put on display, hung from a police barricade. A Dalit farm labourer, his kind
should have been the natural ally of the farmers as both depend on each other.
Religion broke that solidarity; the severed hand becoming the symbol of much
that is awful in Indian society.
Whenever
the word Dalit is mentioned, analysts spin it in such a fashion that the social
group becomes a synonym of progressivism. Dalits are expected to resist
Brahmanical hegemony simply because they are Dalits. But social reality does
not present itself in neat binaries. Lakhbir Singh’s killers are Dalits
themselves. But they are so taken over by religious zeal that they ended up
killing a fellow Dalit without any remorse or guilt.
I refrain
from commenting on other religious traditions in the belief that it is up to
the respective practitioners of the particular faith to raise their voice
against such horrific practices. It is unfortunate that the murder of Lakhbir
Singh in the name of blasphemy hasn’t been resoundingly condemned by members of
the Sikh community. And I am not talking of political parties who have their
reasons (unjustified, in my view) to remain silent on such issues. Even the
voices of civil society within the Sikh community were few and far between
and filled with lots of caveats.
A murder
must be called out without any ifs and buts, else it will only embolden the
killers. If one is calling the murder ‘unfortunate’ but at the same time not
taking a position against blasphemy, it only means that one is missing the
woods for the trees. The sad truth is that the Sikh majority has not only
remained silent on the issue of blasphemy but have in fact demanded that it be
written into a law.
The Punjab
blasphemy bill of 2018 had proposed a 10-year sentence to anyone who was
‘guilty of sacrilege’ to the texts of any religion and gave huge powers to the
police to initiate criminal proceedings. Irrespective of whether it gets
enacted into a law or not, the idea itself was pernicious and had everything to
do with appeal to religious passions. The Congress government and even the
opposition Akalis were united in the need to have such a law. What constitutes
sacrilege was loosely defined leaving many of the sects within Punjab
vulnerable to this proposed draconian law.
But more
importantly, it told us that the government itself was promoting obscurantism
and religious intolerance by becoming champions of faith. Such a law was being
demanded by extreme religious groups for many decades and in placating them,
the government was indirectly promoting their cause. The actions of the Nihangs
at Singhu can only be understood properly if we relate it to religious politics
that has been happening in the state of Punjab. Condemning the Nihangs but not
speaking a word against the regressive politics of Congress and the Akalis is
plain hypocrisy designed to obfuscate rather than to have any meaningful
discussion on the issue.
It is said
that Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, was hailed as “Hindu ka Guru; Musalman ka
Peer” (A Guru of the Hindu; and of Muslim, a Peer). The Sikh faith, in large
measures, is a testament to tolerance and non-violence. By killing Lakhbir,
these zealot Sikhs have forgotten that original message of their faith.
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Arshad
Alam is a NewAgeIslam.com columnist.
URL: https://www.newageislam.com/current-affairs/lakhbir-singh-nihang-sikh-blasphemy/d/125610
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