US East Coast Sikh-Americans mount a large Anti/Vajpayee protest in New York on Sunday September 21, 2003 at the Jacob Javits Convention Center
Scared Vajpayee shuffles through backdoor to enter and exit Jacob Javits Convention Center
Washington, D.C., Wednesday, September 24, 2003 - The disinformation by Indian newspaper correspondents about an event, in New York on Sunday September 21, 2003, (the shindig will reportedly cost the Indian government a whopping quarter million dollars) which saw a three-hours noisy protest by over a thousand Sikh men, women and children opposite the Jacob Javits Convention Center (demanding a democratic buffer state of Khalistan in South Asia and taunting Hindu-fundamentalist prime minister, Pundit Atal Bihari Vajpayee, to 'GO BACK') is symptomatic of the lack of integrity that prevails in the media of the world's socalled largest 'democracy' whose correspondents constantly mislead the Indian and American public with disinformation.The Silh-American community from all over the East Coast, rushed to New York's Jacob Javits Convention Center on Sunday (September 21, 2003), at short notice, in over a dozen chartered buses. The Sikhs rallied - men, women and children in colourful clothes - opposite the gleaming Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York (655 West, 34th Street) where the visiting right wing Hindu-fundamentalist prime minister of India, Pundit Atal Bihari Vajpayee spoke on Sunday evening to a partisan Indian (read Hindu) audiance of about six hundred. The colourful and noisy Sikh rally/protest was organized by The Sikh Youth of America in collaboration with the Washington-based Khalistan Affairs Center. Almost all the East coast Sikh Gurdwaras (Sikh-churches) also joined in the protest rally with great enthusiasm. To get an idea of the Sikh enthusiasm/anger, and to hear in living sound as to what was said in chaste Punjabi by the Sikhs, please click at the following link: www.khalistan-affairs.org/demostration.m3u.
The above sound clip is just to remind the uppity Hindu-fundamentalists strutting around, in India (and abroad) these days, that human memory, specially Sikh memory is long. We have not forgotten that ALL the Indian governments who came to office after the November 1984 state-sponsored anti/Sikh pogrom, in which over ten thousand innocent Sikh men women and children, were murdered for no reason, in Delhi alone, have NOT prosecuted the guilty. We Sikhs have also not forgotten, that no one has offered even an apology for the barbaric June 1984 Indian Army attacks on holy Sikh shrines including the Akal Takht Sahib in the Darbar Sahib complex in Amritsar. We Sikhs are also wise to the theft of our river waters by non-riparian Hindu-majority states of Rajasthan and Haryana free of charge and the conspiracy currently being hatched in the Indian Supreme Court for Haryana state to steal some more via the redundant SYL canal under cover of some legal hocus pokus.
Sunday's Sikh-American demonstration/rally, in which hundreds of small children were taking part, was a peaceful exercise of American right to protest Indian Prime minister, Pundit Vajpayee presence in New York. If Pundit Vajpayee was truly a leader, he should have come over to meet the Sikhs instead of sneaking in and out of Jacob Javits Convention Center through the backdoor like a thief.
The Indian (read Hindu) function at the Javits Convention Center was organized by India's wheeler-dealer 'duplicate' ambassador Dr. Bhishma K. Agnihotri, Ambassador-at-Large for Non-Resident Indians and Persons of Indian Origin - a unique and unheard of job created a few years ago by Pundit Vajpayee for his pal, Agnihotri. According to Harish Khare, a correspondent of the English language, Chennai-based, Indian newspaper, THE HINDU, Mr. Agnihotri, on Sunday gave some, "face-time to the Indian mediapersons after a satisfying evening at the Jacob Javits Center here. Mr. Agnihotri was the compere of the show. He controlled the access to the mike and reduced the Foreign Minister, Yashwant Sinha, and the official and the accredited ambassador, Lalit Mansingh, to mere spectators." We sympathize with the two Indian officials for the put down by an uppity BJP apparatchik who has the ear of the Indian Prime minister!
Mr. Harish Khare's report in THE HINDU on September 23, 2003 (http://www.hindu.com/2003/09/23/stories/2003092305561100.htm) claims, and we quote verbatim, that, "The 4,000-capacity Jacob Javits Convention Center was brimming with members of the Indian community, who had come to hear the Prime Minister addressing a public meeting (by invitation ONLY) organised by Bhishma K. Agnihotri, Ambassador-at-Large for Non-Resident Indians and Persons of Indian Origin. Mr. Vajpayee had been greeted by the representatives of 34 associations, representing various regions and professional affiliations among the Indians. Of course, there was no representation of the Indian Muslims in the tableau of inclusiveness that the organisers wanted to project; according to ambassador Agnihotri, 'they' were invited but the offer was spurned. The 'ambassador' quarterbacked the Indian community into creating a feel-good, vibrant 'bharat mata ki jai' mood. And the community responded."
Mr. Khare also reported in THE HINDU that, "For weeks the various religious centres in lower-middle class neighbourhoods - like the Hindu Center in Flushing and Satnarain Temple in Jackson Heights - were used to drum up support and attendance for the evening's function. And they all came - not just the elegant and the successful NRIs, but those still striving for affluence. Hand-tailored suits competed with downmarket t-shirts. They filled the vast hall. They wanted to wallow in their Indian identity. The Agnihotri-controlled show was designed precisely to meet this need. They cheered the loudest when an under-choreographed and over-musicaled 'swagatam' dance importunately invoked 'maa tu hi to bandhan hai' - 'Mother India you are the sole and abiding link. They presented to Mr. Vajpayee a 'charter of solidarity and commitment, including a promise to inculcate in the new generation an appreciation of Indian values and heritage." Mr. Khare forgot to mention that Indian Christians also boycotted the function as did the lower caste Dalits.
"The only sour note in an otherwise perfect evening," wrote Harish Khare in THE HINDU, "was a demonstration by about 200 Sikhs outside the Javit Center. They were raising pro-Khalistani slogans, but were kept away at a decent distance by the New York police." It is interesting that the Indian Express correspondent Ms. Jyoti Malhotra, in a New York-datelined dispatch, headlined, "PM mixes poetry with unity call," unwittingly ridiculed Mr. Harish Khare's estimate of the Sikh protestors count, when she wrote that, "Outside the auditorium, about 300-400 Sikh men raised slogans for fairness and justice back home in Punjab." (See: www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=32064) Jyoti Malhotra's count is also wrong as she forgot the 'Khalistan' word but atleast she is closer to the truth (than Mr. Khare of THE HINDU) who reduced the figure from over a thousand to about 200 Sikh demonstrators. Tanmaya Kumar Nanda of Rediff.com (www.rediff.com/news/2003/sep/22pm.htm) takes the cake when he reduced the count of the Sikh demonstrators to one hundred and increased the number of Indians attending the function to four thousand.
It is obvious that Mr. Harish Khare, who penned a sobre report in THE HINDU has a problem counting. His eyes counted the six hundred Indians (give or take a few as we were witnesses) who entered and exited the Jacob Javits Convention Centre on Sunday, September 21, 2003, to attend the Agnihotri-organized function as FOUR THOUSAND where they were addressed by Indian prime minister Pundit Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Some exaggeration!
Somehow, Mr. Khare's eyes failed him when he counted the over one thousand vociferous, colourfully-dressed, Sikhs (men, women and children) protesters assembled opposite the front door of the Jacob Javit's Convention Centre from 6 PM to 9 PM on Sunday September 21, 2003! He could only count upto two hundred Sikhs according to his report in THE HINDU. Tut, Tut Mr. Khare!
Atleast Harish Khare's journalistic conscience was lurking somewhere in the background unlike the Times of India Washington correspondent/Editor Mr. Chidanand Rajghatta, who like his Nazi propagandist role model, Joseph Paul Goebbels (1897-1945) beleives in opportunistic, convenient evasion and keeps sliding on the verge of truth. His writings in the Times of India revive memory of a line from an essay by Scottish essayist/poet Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) that, "the cruelest lies are often told in silence." Mr. Rajghatta wrote a lengthy dispatch headlined, "Vajpayee serves old wine in new bottle," in the (Spetember 23rd) Times of India on the two events that took place at the Jacob Javits Convention Centre in New York on Sunday, September 21, 2003. (timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?msid=196022)
The Times of India's Foreign Editor & Washington correspondent, Mr. Chidanand Rajghatta, took leave of his journalistic ethics, and wrapped himself in a cloak of Indian nationalism, and elected to 'tell a lie in silence' by completely ignoring the presence of a thousand Sikh protestors, shouting 'Shame Shame Vajpayee', 'Go Back Vajpayee,' 'Khalistan Khalistan' etc., etc., who were right there protesting for three hours (from 6 PM to 9 PM) in front of New York's Jacob Javits Convention Center, on Sunday September 21, 2003. Instead, Mr. Rajghatta decided to stretch the truth, in the Times of India, (a la Mr. Harish Khare in the Hindu) by exaggerating about six times the number of Indians (from six hundred to three thousand) who attended Mr. Agnihotri's 'by-invitation' function.
Mr. Rajghatta wrote in the September 23, 2003, Times of India, as follows, "But for some 3,000 people of Indian origin who trooped in with military precision to the Jacob Javits Center in New York Sunday evening, the annual darshan of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was as good as it gets... Rallied together by India's ambassador-at-large Bhisham Agnihotri, 34 Indian and Indian-American organizations representing a wide spectrum of India's regional and professional diversity were introduced to the Prime Minister and together they pledged to help India become a developed country by 2020. It was a stirring display of Indian pluralism and unity by groups often seen as divisive and scrappy. In fact, the entire event, which lasted just over an hour, was organized with clockwork precision and was probably shortest Prime Ministerial NRI engagement in the five visits he has made here in six years."
Mr. Chidanand Rajghatta and the Times of India ought to remember a famous line that, "Nationalism is a silly cock crowing on its own dunghill". The first duty of a journalist is to be accurate. If he be accurate, it follows that he will be fair. Mr. Rajghatta and his newspaper - Times of India - are neither accurate nor fair.