Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar

CHANDIGARH: Sikh thinkers and intellectuals on Wednesday criticized Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar for misrepresenting Sikh warrior Banda Singh Bahadur as ‘Baba Banda Bairagi’ and naming Lohgarh-Shahabad road after him with an apparent motive of ‘placating Hindutva forces’.

“Such move is blatant distortion of history being done to appropriate the Sikh hero into the Sangh privar fold,” they said in a joint statement. A delegation of Sikh historians issued the statement after holding a meeting at a gurdwara in Sector 28, Chandigarh.

In a joint statement issued by Khushhal Singh, general secretary Kendri Sri Guru Singh Sabha, said, “We appreciate Khattar’s desire to honour Banda Singh Bahadur, who had created an indigenous republic, was laudable but he should not insult the great Khalsa general, saint and statesman by posthumously converting him to the Bairagi sect of the Hindu faith.”

The statement further added, “There was no dearth of Bairagis in that world but not a single Bairagi joined Banda Singh’s struggle. Five thousand Muslims did join in his effort to establish the only indigenous ‘People’s Republic led by the Khalsa’ after centuries of political slavery.”

It has also been stated that any attempt to misappropriate icons of the Sikhs and minorities by the Hindutva forces is pathetic and deplorable. Glory cannot be gained with retrospective effect by an administrative action now. The act of stealing icons rather becomes a painful reminder of the shocking cultural barrenness of the contemporary society during slavery. Painfully as it is, the deficiency cannot be covered up by renaming monuments, historical persons and by rewriting history to suit the cover-up.

The joint statement signed among others by retired IAS officer Gurtej Singh, Prof Gurdarshan Singh Dhillon, Sukhdev Singh, Jaspal Singh Sidhu and Gurpreet Singh, spokesperson of Kendri Sri Guru Singh Sabha, Chandigarh.

