Disrespecting Bhagat Singh reflects historical illiteracy and ideological toxicity of Khalistan ecosystem: Report

Ottawa, March 26 (IANS) Khalistani extremists disparaging Shaheed Bhagat Singh, who embraced the noose for India's independence, is not an act of courage but moral bankruptcy masquerading as activism. Such acts expose "Khalistanism" for what it truly is - “not a liberation theology, but a grievance industry that survives by cannibalising its own history," a report has highlighted.

According to a Khalsa Vox article, in the recent days, social media platform X has once again been inundated with the same offensive videos showing self-styled Khalistani preachers and activists openly calling Shaheed Bhagat Singh a "traitor", a "Brahmin bootlicker", and even a "terrorist".

These clips, it said, featuring extremists like Gurcharan Singh of pro-Khalistan organisation Dal Khalsa and others in Canada and the UK are being recirculated, fuelling fresh outrage and engagement. It added that the Khalistani ecosystem appears unable to let a single month pass without exposing its historical illiteracy and ideological toxicity.

The report noted that this is not mere fringe ranting by Khalistani extremists targetting a freedom fighter. It marks a new low for the Khalistan movement that has already normalised violence, flag desecration, threats to diplomats, and glorification of terrorists.

“Bhagat Singh was not some distant historical figure who can be airbrushed or slandered without consequence. He was a 23-year-old Sikh revolutionary who walked to the gallows in Lahore Central Jail on 23 March 1931 with the cry 'Inquilab Zindabad' on his lips. He, along with Sukhdev Thapar and Shivaram Rajguru, bombed the Central Legislative Assembly not for personal glory but to awaken a sleeping nation. He threw his life away fighting the same British Empire that Khalistanis claim to oppose — yet they brand him a collaborator. The cognitive dissonance is staggering," the Khalsa Vox report detailed.

Highlighting that any attack on Bhagat Singh constitutes an assault on the very notion of sacrifice, the report said Khalistani extremists distort history for young Sikhs in Punjab, Canada and UK by falsely portraying a man who laid down his life at the age of 23 for the country he loved.

"The tragedy is compounded by the fact that all mainstream Sikh institutions and the vast majority of Sikhs in India still revere Bhagat Singh as their own. It is only the overseas Khalistani fringe — often funded, radicalised, and sheltered in Western democracies by external powers such as Pakistan — that feels compelled to drag his name through the mud. Their 'madrassas', as one recent X post sarcastically called them, are teaching children that a Sikh revolutionary who defied the British is a traitor, while simultaneously demanding 'freedom' from the very country Bhagat Singh died to liberate," the report noted.

"Bhagat Singh’s blood was shed for every Indian, Sikh or not. The latest videos do not diminish his legacy. They only diminish those who utter the insults — and expose, once again, how far the Khalistan project has fallen from any claim to honour, dignity, or truth," it added.

--IANS

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