Operation: Lasting Influence

Veteran visitors of yesteryear will obviously be aware that to this site no longer gets updated. Once a surging spring the slow trickle of comment submission for moderating has also been reduced manifold. Though the occasional ones do manage to slip in, this precisely is the reason why I just had to post today. It is because of a challenging comment from yesterday and came to my attention whilst checking e-mail. Yes, I moderate comments, not to filter out dissenting or critical opinions, but the people who have taken to blogs to shamelessly promote their wares. So seeing that I am in the process of one of the tightest schedules ever, I thought to prove to myself and those who continue to follow this site that, YES; you can! If I can, You sure can too! Since I can write a few lines for the sake of putting up a post, you took can get started on something and it will be completed before you know it!

Enough on being punctual and pumping up the inspiration, I think it’s more basic human nature to become lazy and put events off. Procrastination for most is one of the more powerful habits that eventually inhibit success for many. May it be getting started on an essay, an unfun chore around the house, or getting started on a book on a fine Sunny Friday afternoon. At least for myself this is 75% of the struggle, but once started this 75% of the entire task just feels like it has completed itself. Once things get rolling, it’s hard to stop since the initial momentum furthers it right along and until you have marched past the finish line… stopping is quite simply difficult. I hope this is true for another blog streak… Just an attempt nothing major though.

The prime reason for not posting is that I have been spending time elsewhere, like reading, researching and being too involved to care much about this site. With those on the verge of contemplation, I encourage you to START! Start with even taking night school, work & learn, Summer High School, but most of all take a class this Fall when most Universities and Colleges open up for business. THere really is no comparison at all with anything than the classroom, no matter what side of the instructorish fence you are on. Again I urge you to take classes, head back to school; you will not have any regrets at all...

Enough about the why, now about the what: I personally believe in the power of thought, thinking through things throughout the past and why they occurred and what can be done to plan avoiding similar pitfalls in the future.

Riding across the mediascape one clearly knows radio, Television, tabloids, papers and certainly the internet has been full of stories about the doom and gloom the US housing bubble has brought upon us, leading to a near global meltdown and the subsequent aftershocks that have created a wave of horror up to even today; it has even led to some powerful nations to the brink of bankruptcy.

Never mind the media, we all know that we, the consuming public need a fat juicy story to captivate us, but this economic thing, the entire world focus on the economy has been such a ginormous deal that when the Canadian Minority Government fell here above the 49th, the candidate (now Prime Minister Harper; and yes, we have just come out of an election) made it his mission to ensure this butter-bread business became the absolute single election cow. And it was milked like crazy. Obama had change in his sails in 2008; it lead him into the harbour of victory, and Mr Harper arrowed on his action plan shooting him to a first right majority in a long time.

Since a former neighbour asked me how hard Canadian University Education in the Arts is. It really got me thinking, how much people fear the classroom. Well I did too for a long time and would do, and did anything to escape it. But the unknown does tend to frighten. I decided to show and tell ‘em what I went though my education journey with proper original artefacts. I decided to hunt them down and present as accurate a picture I could so that they know what you need to get through this jail of a jungle called higher education. One of the most revered professors told of a very profound reality that we are heading through today. It was that looking through old first had documents was a pain. Since there was very little often, wordy and patchy excerpts on early Canadian history, to our surprise some outright doctoring had been popularized and had even made into textbooks of repute. The professor mentioned that when future historians and ethnographers look to study the genesis of the internet era, they will find it amazingly difficult to put together even a shabby picture of how we lived. For that reason I have attempted to keep records intact. I realized that keeping a few of the course outlines I had from recent years would come in handy, and they have in a big way. So, now a few months ago I asked one of my Professors to e-mail me past essays that I had submitted electronically. I had the hard copies, but they were locked up and put away. I got them promptly even during a sabbatical. As it turned out I have not had an opportunity to share them with the person who had requested to gauge the difficulty/ease of the ‘Average Canadian University.’ Anyway, this was on the backburner for a while now, it had been sitting there in my inbox until this week when a search for something totally unrelated turned it up. I was pleasantly surprised. We all are, after encountering relics from the distant past, stuff that doesn’t surface for a long duration, when it does, we look at it and reflect with bewilderment. How this could be, then it all makes sense once it has been put into context.

While reading the first few paragraphs, it took me back to the most stressful time of the semester when it was submitted, in the wee months of 2008, I came to realize that history is indeed something that you should look back and often. Since most often, in it are hidden huge chunks of wisdom. This is why I have a great deal of respect for historians of all stripes be they genuine or agenda driven. And even more so for the ones that put two and to together and come up with five.

In that essay, I basically argued using all the evidence collected in the course of a semester from lectures and the text on every known civilization that ‘The American Empire Will Not Fall,’ no matter what happens in the future.

Little did we know that a crisis would befall the world and have us all panicking like a bunch of chickens under the shadow of the wolf. Yes, most of us common folk are still scared out of our wits, there is now serious doubts about ‘The American Dream’ and our middle class designations are seemingly escaping our grip.

Let me just copy and paste some sections, since this class is still being taught I will not put up an extensive amount of text.

“Khubilai Khan, the heir and successor to Chianggis Khan, controlled Northern China and sought to unify all of China under his control. He led a successful campaign against the Song dynasty of Southern China; his forces took the capital in 1276 and three years later the last resistors of the Song fell and Khubilai Khan crowned himself the supreme emperor of China thus ushering in the era of the Yuan dynasty.”

In addition to this instance from the East and seemingly long time ago, the fate of another Empire also ended with a sudden and tragic demise:

“Less than a century later, Francisco Pizarro set out to repeat [a similar feat] in South Central America; with about 600 soldiers they had marched into the heartland of the Incas and secured control of their capital in less than three years. Diseases such as smallpox crippled Inca society and infighting between competing factions ensured the swift collapse of their civilization.”

Lest we remain in denial, the resulting global implications if the ‘American Empire’ were to come to a swift demise, are a concern to us all, especially with the looming debt ceiling crisis. This though is not the topic I had in mind for this evening.

The obvious surprise is that even more firmly established empires have been rooted out like a badly cavitied brown tooth in front of a dentist. History again provides us with ample proof that circumstances often tally up quite nicely to lead to a swift demise of even the most powerful of entities.

“Hernán Cortés, seized the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan with only 450 soldiers in 1521. Cortés and his men with the aid of horses and simple firearms laid siege and eventually starved the inhabitants into surrender. The population of the Aztec empire was around 13 million; as the Spanish conquest progressed, epidemic diseases rapidly raced through the empire. Smallpox alone exterminated a vast numbers of population that society soon ceased to function.”

Enough with the past. Let me end tonight with what I in my ‘undergraduate wisdom’ and naivety hypnotised about the ‘Future American Empire’ and its possible lasting ‘Influences.’ Well, Jonathan Swift did say it best: “There are lies, Damn Lies and there are Statics” This may seem to apply to history too to a certain extent, there is always the other story, one that is unkind to you for you hadn’t the opportunity to write it. An infinite number of scholars on an infinite number of workstations for an infinite number of hours may do a subject to death, but there will still come along another genius who will one day shine light on some obscure, previously overlooked evidence and prove others unwise. So today as I see the Great Canadian Loony kick the wind out of the longly powerful green now way backed stuff I today urge myself to not lose faith in studying history or even causally reflecting where it can lead to. Hindsight 20/20 was something I learned in Psychology 1200 and it just hit me earlier this week that the {(Bread and Butter) or (Guns)} choice with respect to the USSR (Russian Folk during the Cold War) and the more contemporized US situation has significant parallels, it may well be way more neatly tidied up, ultimately is starkly similar. Quoting the Father of the Modern Tea Party Movement and the 2008 US Presidential hopeful Ron Paul(R-Texas) from his great book:* "With a presence in some ~118 countries no wonder they hate us" this has finally taken a toll and by factoring this into the equation we cannot discount putting together two and two may infact give us five:

“[Most of] human history has been marked by patterns of growth and decline among civilizations due to unavoidable internal factors and external threats. Virtually all ancient and more recent civilizations have been prone to this systemic feature. However, Western civilization (United States) in its various incarnations with the firm aid of entrenched institutions, contemporary technological advancements and global geo-political dynamics in its favour appears to prove immunity from the aforementioned cycle of rise and fall and the American Empire will endure the currents of history for a long into the future.”

The Punjab Solution: Manpreet Singh Badal

ਪੰਜਾਬ ਦੇ ਵੋਟਰਾਂ ਅਤੇ ਬਾਕੀਆਂ ਨੂੰ ਅਪੀਲ: ਮਨਪ੍ਰੀਤ ਸਿੰਘ ਨੂੰ ਇੱਕ ਮੌਕਾ ਦੇ ਕੇ ਦੇਖਲੋ, ਨਹੀਂ ਤਾਂ ਅਗਲੀਆਂ ਵੋਟਾਂ ਫਿਰ ਵੱਟ ਤੇ ਹੀ ਪਂਙਾਂ। ਪਿਛਲੀਆਂ ਸਰਕਾਰਾਂ ਦੀਆਂ ਨਯੀਤੀਆਂ ਨਾਲੋਂ ਤਾ ਮਾੜੀ ਹਾਲਤ ਨਹੀਂ ਹੋ ਸਕਦੀ। Let's not screw ourselves over again. It's time for change.

For those of us who think the congress is the savior of Punjab, let us not kid ourselves again folks. Check out what our 'Maharaja' sahib pulled off back in the day(right after 1984):

"When the government persisted and commissioned Budha Dal chief Santa Singh (a close confidant of Giani Zail

Singh and Buta Singh) to carry out the job, Captain Amarinder Singh, son of the last Maharaja of Patiala,

echoed the feeling of the Sikhs by declaring “If no one else pulls down this thing, then I will ..." (Jaijee P. 95 of the PDF version, check link below in this post)

The one thing that no ones had the guts to get at is the only solution to the Punjab Cancer: Tax chori. Tax enforcement! It may bar him from being elected, but it's quite the gutsy move. It is what's going to lead Punjab and indeed India into a slow and painful death, tax evasion. Much respect to him for coming out and saying it. Walter Mondale and the Democrats in the 1984 US Presidential election paid harshly for saying this publicly, let's set the course right this time and elect Mr Manpreet Singh Badal. We owe it to ourselves to give him a chance. I doubt the media in Punjab is going to support him, so let's see the light and offer him our unconditional support for the greater good. It'll sure be a new day in Punjab the likes of which we have not seen.

Let's bring in Manpreet Singh Badal! Lets bring in Peace, Progress, and Prosperity!

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
This post is dedicated to Manpreet Singh Badal. And is driven by Rajinderpal Singh Gill a University Professor killed by the Punjab Police who declaredand on this day, February 15 1989 the Professor as another terrorist killed in a 'Police encounter' through a press conference. I have never endorsed anyone in Punjabi politics. If one has gone on to university or college, like Manpreet Singh Badal, they cannot bear to read this paragraph mentioning the killing of someone, a respected law-abiding citizen and above all, an academic beyond reproach, Professor Gill Sahib free of emotion.

The agenda setting media here in town, especially the ones who may have even been in touch with Professor Sahib back in Punjab when they were in school around that time and now have the microphones in front of their mouths and beam in radio signals into Canada from American transmitters free of CRTC scrutiny are completely silent about him. People see Bhagat Singh as a God and worship him year after year, that too fraudulently since if they were sincere at all they would not have let things sink so much into the gutter.

So the question I ask myself is a professor who thought to educate kids about agriculture of all things more relevant to Punjabis of today or Bhagat Singh about a centaury ago I doubt anyone even knows about him anymore. In terms of real change and influence and the impact to the Punjab of today shouldn’t someone who studied like crazy for years and then taught the kids of Punjab in higher learning and was driving a tractor as a mode of transportation when caught. The blame lies on the community as a while. In its entirely I think Mrs. Puja not Bhagat Singh is worshipped. Have a listen to the local radio stations. It’s a shame that my mechanic jokingly told me that my car will not be fixed until I stick a Ms. Puja CD in the slot. It’s a quite a sickening scene, you have the local media starting round two of the 1998 era crap all over again, going at each others’ throats over a bunch of useless lies. This is for another rant, another post, another time.

Moving forward, and staying on topic once again:

This time, the above endorsement to Manpreet Singh Badal is being put out since the story is different for a number of personal reasons. Chiefly, that research while writing an academic paper on the recent history of Punjab has lead me to a more holistic personal understanding of the things in the Punjab of today and a backgrounder on the thrashing the people of Pakistan have experienced post-independence has aided to this a great deal.

In this regard, just listening to Manpreet Singh Badal’s voice-only interview on the issue of rotting wheat in state granaries in English about a year ago (Spring of 2010) made me realize that this guy is very different in all respects. His command of the English language verbally alone is something that almost every Indian Politician lacks, perhaps not P Chandarabham so much(The fella who ducked Jarnail Singh’s shoe at a press conference a couple of years ago). Further he seems to be genuine in all respects. Someone who has an understanding of things and more importantly can be a part of the solution not being in bed with the problem like all of his opponents.

The last and only time I supported a politician on the Blog was Sukh Dhaliwal who since then is my local MP here in my riding. I have been very pleased at his performance and the kind of things he has done for this riding and the community in general. Come on people! We ought to give him a chance at it. Things in Punjab need a fixing right now, just go there and have a look for yourselves, or read about what is going on there. Surely, it’s comparable to what went down in Egypt recently in terms of the state structure and problems that the electorate has to deal with, and he from the looks of it appears to be the right individual to do this the right way for once. We owe it to ourselves to offer him our support.

I now see a glimmer of hope for not just the traditional farming Akali electrode who need help most at this time, but having read some of the most marvelous books on the subject over the past months, books and texts on the subject that no one I know and respect have ever heard of; the most educated of people that I thought would know had no clue. This is classic, being ignorant and not doing personal research on thing when there's an ocean of knowledge around us and acting dumb while being academically literate. No wonder the community gets herded like sheep and are left to regret in the end when getting screwed over.

Keeping all this mind I think that Manpreet Singh Badal is the one person who can fix things. And in light of the present state of Punjab, is the best fit individual to govern and usher in an era of peace, prosperity and progress. He is the messiah that Punjab has been waiting for and needs, not Baba Bhindranaala. Check out the literature made available to you. Let’s not hate, but educate ourselves and others about the things that happened and why today we are at a crossroads and have a chance to make it right for once.

Formerly, I did not see any hope at all regarding a political solution that would deal justice and lead to fair play for the average Punajbi. After periodically going through the literature of the past Punjab, stuff that was available here through the normal channels it lead to a feeling of utter helplessness because the situation would be next to impossible to fix given the culture of politics and power and the systemic collapse of the bureaucracy due to corruption and political interference. The scope was very limited and most of the stuff that I read was not ‘scholarly’ at all and missed out huge chunks of the puzzle and so the complete picture could not be comprehended.

The last few weeks have been different. And anyone that reads up on the stuff I have would never dare say that history is boring. The material I read up on made me realize the enormous complexity of the present situation that the people of Punjab face. So, up until now I really didn’t see there could be any effective response and that things would never improve. The preliminary platform of Manpreet Singh Badal looks very promising looking at comparable stuff that has come out of previous elections in both the US and Canada over the years there are very promising indicators that lead me to believe that if elected with a majority Sardar Sahib would change things for the better for a long time to come.

Having seen what has been happening on the world political stage in Washington, the Canadian Parliament proceedings at Ottawa and the CBC radio reporting about the Egypt ‘Crisis’ one thing is certain: times have changed even in the Middle East of all places! For the better! Perhaps this is something that may finally wake the people of India, specifically the Punjabis. The rest of India is getting screwed over too, even more so at some places but the situation of Punjab to me is more relevant.

All this is mind, there are a few things that have made me more educated about this subject. The most effective in this regard I think is Professor ShinderPal Singh Purewals text Sikh Ethnonationalism and the political Economy of Punjab based on his PhD thesis from 2000. This book offered something to me that no other book had ever done, it put things in a totally different light and made re realize that in order to be a scholar you need to be objective and not take sides at all and understand and present a balanced and fair picture of history. Although not a historical work, I think this is the one book everyone ought to read.

The second is Gurdarshan Singh Dhillon’s White Paper on 1984. The third is the Politics of Genocide written by Inderjit Singh JaiJee which mentions the things behind the politics behind and writing, marketing and sale of the aforementioned White Paper by the SGPC.

Check the links:

1)Here

2)Here

3)Here.

So coming back to the beginning of this post, without which it would be utterly useless and incomplete the following two essentials are directly quoted below. First is from the 1984 White Paper, second from the Politics of Genocide. Both of these books are available in searchable PDF format. My stuff ends here and the quotes are:

“1984 saw a replay with troops of the Indian Army in the role of Abdali. After the Darbar Sahib was captured, the Army refused to hand it back to the SGPC without imposing certain conditions. Sikh opinion was divided.

Most of them wanted the Darbar Sahib back without conditions and delay in handing back the complex to the Sikhs was working out to be a unifying factor in the community. The Army realised it and worked to reach an agreement with the SGPC. The SGPC’s nominated jathedars met the Army generals and the Jathedars accepted the conditions.

These conditions were:
i. The complex road dividing Ram Das Sarai from the Golden Temple was to be made a public thoroughfare.
ii. Pickets would be placed on either side of this road.
iii. No firearms were to go inside the complex.
iv. Police were given the liberty to search the complex.
v. A secret condition was the SGPC was not to challenge the official White Paper and was to obliterate all tell tale marks of the war on the Golden Temple and other Gurdwaras forthwith.

SGPC president G.S. Tohra, faithfully implemented these conditions, and true to his word to the government and in spite of repeated demands from the community, stalled all efforts to bring out an independent White Paper on the
1984 events. Twelve years later, under extreme pressure, he agreed to commission a Sikh historian to bring out a White Paper on Operation Bluestar.

That was for public consumption. What he actually commissioned the Sikh historian to bring out was a “White Paper on the Sikh Problem.” This obviously diluted the focus on Operation Bluestar. It is amazing that where thousands were killed, 74 gurdwaras attacked, property worth thousands of crores destroyed, the SGPC could only spare Rupees 40,000 to the professor for his research into a period spanning 500 years. A clear attempt was made to dilute focus on operation Bluestar. Professor G.S. Dhillon returned the money in disgust and frustration. He was later to accuse Tohra for deliberately restricting the sale of his book through the SGPC.”

“Teachers draw security from their very powerful labour union. Professors, not having all-state unions, were easier to hit. Some were killed as militants or killed and made to appear as militants’ victims. It was only at the later stages when the police had become all-powerful and resistance to it had broken down at all levels that arrest of teachers and
professors started. It is interesting to observe that most of the leaders of the militant movement were highly qualified academically.

Some professors became “ideologues” but by and large the universities remained quiet.
One major reason for this is that vice chancellors of Indian universities are hand-picked by the government with little consideration for their academic merit; secondly 95 per
cent of the staff of Panjab University is non-Sikh. This university has never had a Sikh vice chancellor in 50 years of independent India. Where this was not so, notably the
Agricultural University, Ludhiana, or Punjabi University, Patiala, one did hear persistent protest.

On February 6, 1989, Rajinder Kaur, wife of Rajinder Paul Singh Gill, Assistant Professor in the Punjab Agricultural University’s Department of Horticulture, filed a habeas corpus petition in the Punjab and Haryana High Court averring that her husband had come to Chandigarh on January 25 to meet his daughter who was studying in Panjab University. The Ludhiana police had picked him up in Sector 15, on that day.

She said that she learned that the Ludhiana SSP had interrogated him but when she met the SSP and asked to be allowed to meet her husband, he threatened her with dire consequences. She feared that her husband would be, or already had been, killed in a fake encounter and mentioned the encounter listed in FIR 45 of the Ludhiana Police in which the identity of the slain terrorists had not been disclosed.

On February 15, 1989, the Ludhiana SSP, S.S. Saini, announced at a press conference that Rajinder Paul Singh Gill, assistant professor in the Punjab Agricultural University’s Department of Horticulture, was among three terrorists killed in an encounter on the night of January 26 near village Khehra Bet, district Ludhiana. He claimed that Gill was the leader of the gang responsible for the murder of state BJP president Hit Abhilashi and Major General B.N. Kumar, chairman of the Bhakra-Beas Management Board, and that he had planned the attack on United Akali Dal president Jagdev Singh Talwandi.

The PHRO investigated the case. Witnesses said that Sant Kumar, SHO of Payal police station district Ludhiana led the party that arrested Gill around noon in Sector 15, and
impounded the tractor on which he was travelling. An advocate, Major Singh Mangat, who had gone to the Ludhiana police station around 10 p.m. on January 20, saw the tractor parked at the station and overheard the SHO reprimanding his juniors for bringing the tractor there when it was supposed to be taken to Ladhowal near Ludhiana. (Ladhowal is very near the place where the “encounter” supposedly took place.)

At 10:30 p.m. on January 25, Gill and some others were brought to the CIA head office in Ludhiana. Harpreet Singh, a close relative of a United Akali Dal leader, saw him there at 9 a.m. on January 26. Gill, a resident of village Juggiana, district Ludhiana, was a member of the United Akali Dal advisory board.

Following the robbery of Rs 5.7 crore from a Ludhiana bank (February, 1987) he had been kept in custody for three days and since then had been underground to avoid police harassment. Another reason why Gill and his wife, Rajinder Kaur, were suspect was that the marriage of Rajinder Kaur’s brother’s daughter had been arranged with Charanjit Singh Channi, a wanted terrorist.