Appeal

The following KHALISTAN CALLING newsletter was published in the second week of August, 2000 in leading Punjabi/English newspapers like CHARHDI KALA, PUNJAB GUARDIAN, SANJH SAVERA and other weekly and monthly publications which cater to the three million strong Sikh diaspora all over the world. The Overseas Sikhs, unlike their 18 million compatriots captive in India, are free and prosperous and they are determined - as they believe it is their destiny - to carve a sovereign, democratic, egalitarian Sikh buffer state of KHALISTAN in South Asia stretching from the Jumna river on the East to the Pakistan border on the West, China on the Northeast and Kashmir on the North.

Khalistan Calling newsletter dated August 16, 2000.

Appeal

Sen. Sam Brownback

and other law-makers on the Hill to listen to

Winston Churchill

and two great Indians

---------------------------

Sanctions must stay till India signs the CTBT

Dr. Amarjit Singh

Khalistan Affairs Centre

956-National Press Building, Washington DC 20045 USA

Tel: 202-637-9210 :: Fax: 202-637-9211

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Washington DC: August 16, 2000: It is amazing that while Senator Sam Brownback and over a hundred naive US Law-makers in the Indian caucus have been influenced (and lobbyed) into pressuring the Clinton Administration to lift economic sanctions imposed on India after the May 1998 Nuclear tests before the two and a half day official visit of the Indian Prime Minister to Washington from September 14, the respected Indian Nobel laureate Professor Amartya Sen has last week called for nuclear restraint by India, while delivering the first Dorothy Hodgkin lecture in Cambridge England, saying that; "the Indian bomb had failed to deliver the anticipated strategic benefits and carried very large human and economic costs."

According to the August 13, 2000 issue of the prestigious Indian newspaper The Times of India, Prof. Amartya Sen told the 50th Pugwash conference in Cambridge that; "resenting the obtuseness of the established nuclear powers is not a good ground for shooting oneself in the foot." He said; "It could not be claimed that India benefited from the 1998 blasts of Pokharan-II, not to mention the well-being of the people, even the strategic goals of the government of India have NOT been well served. This was true in the context of India's standing vis-a-vis both Pakistan and China. There was little success in getting recognition for India as being in the same league as China, or for its grumble that internationally; inadequate attention was paid to the dangers India was supposed to face from China. In the context of Pakistan, India lost the advantage of its massive superiority over Pakistan in conventional military strength. This is now neutralized by the mutual nuclear threat. The Indian blasts in May 1998, created a situation in which Pakistan (which clearly had a greater need to test as India had already tested a nuclear device in 1974) could itself go in that direction without being blamed for starting any nuclear adventure."

Professor Amartya Sen went on to trash the Indian Foreign minister's oft repeated argument about the unfair nuclear world order by saying that; "Moral resentment about the world order cannot justify a prudential blunder at home. The nuclear and missile programmes carried very large resource costs. Making nuclear bombs, not to mention deploying them, and spending scarce resources on missiles and what is euphemistically called delivery, can hardly be seen as sensible policy. And there were sacrifices involved in terms of public expenditure for human well-being. However, ultimately the argument against nuclearization was not primarily an economic one. The biggest penalty was the increased insecurity of human lives in the (South Asian) subcontinent. The people whose lives are made insecure as a result of these (nuclear and missile) adventures are primarily the residents of the (South Asian) subcontinent themselves."

Another great Indian the world famous Indian author, and winner of the prestigious Booker prize Ms. Arundhati Roy in a devastating narration in one of India's leading news magazines, OUTLOOK, spoke the truth in condemning the current Indian ruling caste's nuclear programme when she wrote; "The truth is that it is far easier to make a (nuclear) bomb than to educate the 400 million (Indian) illiterates who live in absolute poverty and to provide even basic sanitation to the unfortunate 700 million and safe drinking water to the 200 millions (Indians) who desperately need this. If there were a nuclear war, our foes would not be China or Pakistan. Our foe will be the earth itself. The very elements, the sky, the air, the land, the wind and water will turn against us. The wrath will be terrible." She concluded with a pessimistic note and wrote that; "My world has died. And I write to mourn its passing".

It is strange, nay bizarre, indeed that while two great internationally famous Indians, patriots both, condemn the nuclear proliferation policies of their government in Delhi and counsel restraint the senior Senator from Kansas, Sam Brownback, Chairman of the Senate Foreign relations sub-committee on South Asian Affairs and a former diplomat to boot, (according to an interview with the Washington correspondent of the Times of India published on June 29, 2000) is going out of his way to encourage the morally repugnant Swastika-worshipping Hindu-Fundamentalist BJP 'nuclear hawks' in Delhi. Senator Brownback told the Times of India newspaper that; "he would like to see the remaining sanctions on India lifted before Prime minister A. B. Vajpayee visits Washington in September." According to the Times of India; "Brownback minces no words in lashing the administration for what he sees as a flawed policy of holding the sanctions hostage to a single issue - nuclear proliferation."

May we remind the good Senator from Kansas, that it is in American national interest and in the interest of the survival of one and a quarter billion deprived South Asians the people Prof Sen is talking about (and there is a U.N. Security Council resolution on the subject) that both India and Pakistan sign the CTBT (Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty) forthwith, simultaneously and unconditionally. The international community, unlike Sen. Sam Brownback and law-makers of the India caucus, does not wish to see two additional nuclear powers whose leadership has proved, by their conduct over the past fifty years, that Mr. Winston Churchill's derisive prophesy about India was indeed true. Mr. Churchill's statement, made on the eve of Indian independence in 1947, reads as follows: "Power (in India) will go in the hands of rascals, rogues and free booters. Not a bottle of water or a loaf of bread shall escape taxation; only the air will be free. All Indian leaders will be of low caliber and men of straw. They will have sweet tongues and silly hearts. They will fight among themselves for power, and India will be lost in political squabbles."

We Sikhs, (all 21 million of us - 18 million captive in the Indian Castocracy and 3 million Free in the diaspora) appeal to Sen. Sam Brownback, Congressman Benjamin Gilman and other law-makers in the India caucus on the Hill to cool it and stop playing 'divide and rule' between India and Pakistan and give us Sikhs a chance to live. Better still why not let the sanctions stay put until such time that Delhi's myopic rulers divide their ambitions by their limitations and sign the dotted line on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty unconditionally and simultaneously along with Pakistan.

KHALISTAN ZINDABAD

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