NEW DELHI: The Sikhs For Justice (SFJ), a banned
Khalistan terror group, has expressed support for Congress leader
Rahul Gandhi's recent remarks about the religious freedom of the Sikh community in India.
During an event in Washington DC, US, Gandhi said, "Fight in India is whether a Sikh will be allowed to wear turban and kada, go to gurdwara." Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, the co-founder of SFJ, released a statement saying that Gandhi validated SFJ's global Khalistan Referendum campaign.
Pannun described Gandhi's comments as "bold and pioneering". "Rahul's statement on 'existential threat to Sikhs in India' is not only bold and pioneering but is also firmly grounded in the factual history of what Sikhs have been facing under successive regimes in India since 1947 and also corroborates SFJ's stance on the justification for Punjab Independence Referendum to establish Sikh homeland Khalistan," Pannun said in the statament.
During his address to a gathering of Indian Americans, Rahul Gandhi accused the RSS of considering certain religions, languages, and communities as inferior to others. He said that the fight in India is not about politics but about the rights of individuals to practice their religion freely. Gandhi specifically asked a Sikh attendee, "What is your name, brother with the turban," and then said, "The fight is about whether a Sikh is going to be allowed to wear his turban in India or a kada in India. Or he, as a Sikh, is going to be able to go to a gurdwara. That's what the fight is about. And not just for him, for all religions."
"Fight is also about, I can see here in the crowd, people from
Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Haryana, Telangana, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Kerala. When I say Kerala, I have been a Member of Parliament for Kerala. When I say Kerala, Kerala is a simple word, and Punjab is a simple word, but these are not simple words. This is your history, your language, your tradition. Your entire imagination is in these words,” the Congress leader said.
Rahul is currently on a four-day visit to the United States. His first stop was in Dallas on Saturday, and he arrived in Washington DC on Monday.