Fascist Haryana Yuva Shanti Sena Invades Punjab and Desilts The Abandoned SYL Canal

And Punjab Chief Minister Badal Lets Them


Washington, D.C., Wednesday, April 14, 1999 - How could hundreds of members of the Haryana Yuva Shanti Sena (HYSS) a Hindu fascist organization, led by their chief Sampooran Singh, cross the Punjab/Haryana border and without let or hindrance engage in the treasonable activity of desilting the SYL canal, is a question that comes to mind? Where were Chief minister Parkash Singh Badal and his Sikh Director General of Police? Why did they not stop this assault on our ghairat and izzat?

According to a story (headlines; "Congress toughens stand on SYL issue".) in the April 11th issue of the Tribune, Chandigarh, Mr. Sampooran Singh, chief of the HYSS, led an ‘expedition’ of a few hundred Hindus a few days ago into the Punjab to desilt the SYL canal – that is what he called the grave provocation. He has also tried to muster support by writing to; "the Chief minister of Haryana and to former Chief ministers and state presidents of all political parties to work collectively for the construction of the SYL canal". Even before the ink on the letters was dry Mr. Bhupinder Singh Hooda, a leader close to the President of the Haryana Pradesh Congress Committee, said the leadership of his party had defended and supported the action taken by Sampooran Singh the chief of the HYSS of desilting the SYL canal in the Punjab. Mr. Hooda went on to threaten that; "in case the Akalis did not desist from their obstructionist method on the completion of the SYL project and allow Haryana to have its share from the Ravi – Beas – Sutlej waters, his party will launch an agitation including the blocking of movement of traffic going to Punjab through Haryana." Mr. Hooda forgot that Punjab also has a border with Pakistan!

Rao Inderjit Singh, Congress MP from Mahendergarh, Haryana also jumped into the arena and urged the central government to, "enact suitable legislation to declare river waters as national property." Another Congress MLA from Gurgaon, Mr. Dharamvir Gaub has asserted that his party would raise the issue in the Haryana assembly during its next session. To complete the jig the Delhi Chief minister has joined the fray by accusing Haryana of not supplying enough water to Delhi.

It is obvious that the Haryana and Delhi politicians are pushing the water issue to the fore and raising the temperature at this point in time when the Sikhs are engaged in interline ‘welfare’ and are also busy celebrating the 300th anniversary of the Khalsa so that Punjab’s river water, a provincial subject – becomes a central subject. The SYL dispute has defied solution for the past three decades and has been dormant till about a month ago and should have continued as is ? It became dormant when Sikh Freedom Fighters, following the June 1984 Indian Army attack on the Darbar Sahib, put an end to all activity on the anti/Punjab SYL project as they correctly believed that this Link canal would drain above ground water from the Punjab. In turn that would adversely effect underground water tables and increase water logging in areas through which the canal would pass. One has only to look at Southern Punjab, North Eastern Rajasthan and Northern Haryana to see what water logging and salinity can do to fertile farmlands. The situation has not changed in fact the underground water has sunk deeper and deeper in many parts of the Punjab and now has as additional problem of being contaminated a la Bangladesh making it unfit to drink.

Punjabis, Sikh and non- – Sikh, better wake up and find the time to read numerous research papers on the subject of water. All of them, without exception, predict that most future wars in the 21st century will be over water as population is growing while water supplies are not. Sikh Punjab they predict will be one of the areas which will be water stressed and there will be shortages unless something is done now. It is hoped that Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal will show more guts in the matter of SYL canal and the Pandoh dam on the Beas river than he did on the issue of the future of thousands of Sikh farmers who developed barren land into fertile farmlands in the Udham Singh Nagar district of UP which area is now being transferred to a new Hindu – majority hill state being carved out of the huge state of Uttar Pardesh.

Any failure of dereliction of duty or compromise by any politician on the water issue which effects the children and their children is an unforgivable and punishable offence in any language in any country of the world specially in Sikh Punjab!