Committee Holds Indian State Guilty for Conspiracy to Distory Sikh Reference Library

Amritsar, 23^rd June 2009

Prior to the Indian armed forces’ attack of June 1984 on the Guru’s Darbar at Amritsar, the Sikh Reference and Research Library had at least 15,000 books and more than 5,000 rare manuscripts including hand-written, hundreds of years old, volumes of Guru Granth Sahib. Besides that there were other invaluable manuscripts. The detailed list of these is available with the SGPC. But very few of the items then present in the Library are available today.

The Sikh people world-wide and all right-minded individuals want to know what has happened to their precious heritage of a section of the human race.

The government of India has taken various contradictory positions on this important issue such as:

a) Everything was burnt in the fire that ‘accidently’ raged in the Library on June 6, 1984. (Eye witnesses who were present in the complex, including Giani Puran Singh, say there was no fire on the 6^th June 1984. Some items were later returned).

b) Government took away nothing.(Reply filed in Satnam Singh’s suit in the High Court.)

c) It returned every thing it had taken away. (Latest statement by A.K. Antony in the Parliament). This is supposedly based on the ‘affidavit’ furnished by the SGPC to the Government. (There is no such affidavit. In a typed list of some returned items, a handwritten single line is inserted above the signing parties’ names to say ‘the SGPC has no further claims against the army or the government.’ One of those who signed the document says this matter was never discussed and the document he signed had no hand-written line. It is clearly a mischievous interpolation by someone representing the government).

d) Defence Minsiter George Fernandes’ letter to SGPC says everything was handed over to CBI.

e) Shri Chandra Shekhar, the then Prime Minister of India, told one member of the present fact-finding Committee (Gurtej Singh) that everything was lying at the Sikh Regimental Centre, Meerut and will be returned.

In a meeting of some right-minded people at Chandigarh, a Committee of five persons was appointed to look into the evidence available and to find out the truth about the Library.

This committee has received some information from the government under the RTI Act and has sought information from the SGPC. The required information has been pin-pointed and the Secretary SGPC has promised to give photo-copies of certain letters, lists and so on. After receipt this information will be sifted and joint suit will be filed in the appropriate court asking the government to clearly state its position and to return the Sikh heritage. In the alternate, it must compensate and pay for reconstruction of the Library to the extent it can be done.

The possibility that in one of the most rare barbaric act in all human history the invading forces set fire to the priceless Sikh heritage after its ‘great victory’ over unarmed priests, Gurdwara servants, innocent pilgrims of all ages and less than forty defenders led by Sant Jarnail Singh Khalsa Bhindranwale will be explored. This was done by way of celebrations on June 7, 1984 at 11:30 A.M. If this is the position then the world will be entitled to ask ‘the largest democracy’ to answer why it deliberately wants to destroy a culture believers in which have served the causes nearest to human hearts for all five and half centuries of their existence? Allied questions will be asked emphatically by the Sikh people all over the world. The faces of all perpetrators will be blackened for history to exhibit their dark, sinister souls behind the masks they wear.

This is what the Committee for discerning the truth has at present to report to the Sikh people worldwide, aware citizens of the world and their countrymen over the Sikh Reference (and Research) Library.