Sikh Community Deeply Concern at Hindu Council

New Zealand’s Sikh Community Deeply Concerned at Activities of Hindu Council

Concerned at sustained efforts by the Hindu Council of New Zealand to subsume the separate and distinct identity of the Sikhs, Sikh organisations and concerned individuals had a detailed discussion on May 12, 2010 to respond jointly to this unwelcome assault by Hindu Council in the form of some agenda points for their conference and the invitation letters sent out to some Sikh organisations. Discussions took place between Auckland organisations represented in person and via teleconference with those situated outside Auckland.

Following has been unanimously resolved:

1. Like the Sikh community’s relationship with Muslims and Christians of New Zealand, our relationship with the Hindus of New Zealand is more than a century old and has been built painstakingly on the basis of mutual respect for each other’s beliefs and working together to ameliorate difficulties faced by our communities collectively or by individual members. As an example we point to the setting up of New Zealand Indian Central Association in 1926 to take head on the White League.

2. Hindu Council of New Zealand was founded by some individuals belonging to the Hindu community as a standalone organisation with no affiliated organisations in 2006 and has appropriated the right to represent the Hindus of New Zealand without any mandate to do so from the wider Hindu community and the existing Hindu organisations. In this regard we point to the opposition voiced from time to time by Dr Pushpa Wood & Dr Sapna Samant among many other concerned Hindus about the extreme view of Hinduism represented by the Hindu Council.

3. A lack of mandate and the rabidity of the religious & social views that Hindu Council of New Zealand represents have been causing increasing concern amongst the Sikh organisations since its inception. We mention here efforts to try to install Sikh Scripture, Guru Granth Sahib, at the Hindu Heritage Centre complex in Mangere in 2007, which effort was successfully nipped in the bud.

4. Sikh organisations have been treating Hindu Council and its views as a problem of the Hindu community that they needed to tackle internally. In this regard, a major point of concern for us has been its open affiliation with Vishav Hindu Parishad (or World Hindu Council) – an extremely violent and rabidly extremist organisation that has caused tens of thousands of deaths in communal riots in India.

5. Vishav Hindu Parishad is a branch of Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (or RSS for short) which has been twice banned as a terrorist organisation in India for its violent and divisive activities aimed at establishing an oligarchy of Higher Castes and efforts to claim India as a Hindu nation with all citizens being asked to declare themselves as Hindus and failing which be treated as second class citizens.

6. It is most unfortunate that Hindu Council of New Zealand has chosen to bring this destructive agenda of RSS/VHP to New Zealand and cause friction amongst communities with benefit accruing only to Hindu Council in advancing its agenda of divide & rule. To illustrate this destructive agenda, we cite the issue of three

members of RSS/VHP/Hindu Council becoming “founder members” of Sikh organisations in Christchurch. This issue is still hanging fire as we seek to resolve the situation without fracturing the century old relationship between two communities. Having said that, we also point out that saving this relationship from harm is not the duty of the Sikhs alone and Hindu community’s accepted representatives & elders must voice their views about Hindu Council’s assault on Sikh identity.

7. It may also be mentioned that RSS has a history of admiration for Nazis and their policies with its second leader, Golwalkar, went as far as to make this statement in his 1939 book, We, Our Nationhood Defined:

“To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the semitic Races — the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well nigh impossible it is for Races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by.”

8. Till today, no one from RSS has denounced this statement of Golwalkar. We invite the Hindu Council of New Zealand to denounce this statement as abhorrent to all and the result of a thinking that has no place in today’s world, especially New Zealand.

9. Hindu Council has also caused great consternation amongst the Sikh organisations by sending an invitation letter which, amongst other things goes on to label the Sikh organisations as “organisations of a Hindu base”. We invite Hindu Council of New Zealand to accept its mistakes and apologize to the Sikh organisations for labelling them as “organisations of a Hindu base” and to stop pushing Golwalkar’s agenda of “assimilating into one united whole”. We point the Hindu Council to Dr Hans Kung’s statement: There will be no peace among the nations without peace among the religions. There will be no peace among the religions without dialogue among the religions." [Talk delivered on March 31, 2005, at the opening of the Exhibit on the World's Religions at Santa Clara University.] A basic requirement for a dialogue is to respect each other’s space – and Hindu Council must show this respect to the Sikhs.

10. We also invite the Hindu Council to take back its highly derogatory and distorted version of Sikh history and religion which has been posted on an internet forum on its behalf. The views expressed therein have been effectively discredited many a time, and it is unfortunate that RSS/VHP/Hindu Council keep repeating the discredited views a la Goebbels.

11. Lastly, we again bring Hindu Council’s attention to the most insulting statement made by its invited guest, viz., “Bhikkhu Bodhipal Solomon Raj” about Sikhs as a whole, and ask it to dissociate itself publicly from the statement in question.

We extend an invitation to the Hindu Council to sit across the table and discuss any other issues to rule out any recurrence of such offence that has the potential of ripping asunder two communities’ century old relationship in this country.

Press release issued by:
Bachan Singh Nihalgarh, President
Sikh Council of New Zealand

ENDS

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