Respected Punjabi activist arrested after stand against anti-Sikh RSS school

Respected Punjabi-Sikh activist Lakha Sidhana was arrested after exposing anti-Sikh activities in a Punjab school earlier this month.

Sarvhitkari Vidya Mandir School is a school in Mansa (Punjab) which is openly run by RSS, the Hindu extremist group known to push fanatical nationalist and bigoted ideologies. After locals highlighted anti-Sikh activities in the school Lakha Sidhana led a protest outside it on Tuesday (07.11.2023). A heavy-handed response from police than saw Lakha arrested.

Lakha, a respected community activist who gained global support for his pro-Punjab stances during the #FarmersProtest, was released late the same night, though the arrest is seen by many as a warning towards him continuing this kind of grassroots mobilisation. Lakha Sidhana was a close associate of Deep Sidhu, the actor and Sikh activist who died in suspicious circumstances in February 2022.

The protest against the school evidence that the school came after Sikh pupils reported being told to remove their dastaars (Sikh turban) and karas, along with teaching disinformation about the Sikh faith which dilutes it into Hinduism. The Punjab based school was also said to be preventing pupils speaking in Punjabi, including by imposing punishments on pupils found speaking it. The school was found enforcing Hindi and Hindu prayer in the mornings on non-Hindu pupils. There is also concern about the fact the school requested some pupils to attend evening classes outside of school hours, a request parents viewed suspiciously.

Many Sikhs have accused India of imposing a cultural genocide in Punjab for decades now. Since Indian independence,
Sikhs have not been recognised as a separate religion from Hinduism in the constitution, and the well-documented efforts to have Hindi the main spoken language of India is seen as an attempt to erase the unique identities within India which are apparent from state-to-state. Various incidents of Punjab based schools trying to force Hindi on pupils have been reported for decades.

Activists like Lakha Sidhana are seeminlgy perceived as threats to the Indian establishment in the ways that they have called out the Indian government for this cultural genocide.

In response to the backlash, the school’s management decided to criticise Madrassas (Islamic seminaries) as the real issue in India. This kind of inflammatory petty discourse is demonstrative of Hindu extremist tactics to distract from their own issues by making accusations about minorities of India.

However, in recent days there seems to have been some change coming out of the protesting. Vidya Bharti Punjab, the umbrella organisation which owns the school, has posted in Punjabi on their facebook page. Lakha has also released videos saying he is unfazed by the arrest and will continue his fight to ensure Punjabi remains the prominent language of Punjab. Wider Sikh efforts to clamp down on anti-Sikh disinformation in Indian schools continues.