As my Sikh friends and I no longer felt welcome, we left Jallianwala Bagh. I asked them, "Why did those guys do that? I mean, why are they pretending to set the rules for everyone visiting the site? Do they do this all of the time?"
I was told that this rarely happened, and there certainly were no such rules about taking one's shoes off in that park. (These Sikhs lived nearby and visited all of the time.)
The Sikhs simply added, "These Hindhu nationalists come here to stir up trouble only sometimes.
SHOOTING DEATH & SIKH RESPONSE IN MUMBAI
A few days before my visit to Amritsar in June, in the large city of Mumbai there were a series of protests by Sikhs. The first one was an attack on an MTV station due to its showing of a poster of one female Sikh giving a massage. The Sikh community in Mumbai found this degrading.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/17/sikhs-protest-mtv-office_n_107590.html
It should be noted that Mumbai is situated in the state of Maharashtra, which has been governed by Hindhu political parties in recent decades. The second set of protests by Sikhs in Mumbai a few days later were more serious. According to most newspapers in the area, the Sikhs had real reason to be up in arms this time:
"In a show of solidarity, hundreds of Sikh protesters of Andhra Pradesh today took out huge protest rally and burnt the effigies of controversial . . . guru of Dera Saccha Sauda chief Baba Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh whose bodyguards killed an innocent 42-year-old Sikh, Barkarar Singh Bhatti in Mumbai during a protest against the spiritual guru by a Sikh group in Mulund." http://www.sikhnet.com/daily-news/dera-row-sikh-protest-cripples-mumbai
The Dera leader referred to fled the scene and state of Maharashtra after the unwarrented shooting of the Sikh, Barkarar Singh Bhatti, in a public shopping mall. The police in Mumbai made no move to stop the Dera leader's flight.
By the way, "guru" means teacher, so a Hindu guru like Singh is equvalent to an imam in Islam. I should also note that one or two of the Mumbai editorialists did not take the Sikh protest well and complained it was all just another example of sectarianism out of control. http://www.livemint.com/2007/12/05225220/Punish-rioters-not-writers.html
This criticism of all ethnic protests may be because an editorial writer in Gujarat had been arrested earlier this year for making fun of some Hindhu political leadership. (The court freed the man and critized the Gujarati government for its not taking criticism well.) http://churumuri.wordpress.com/2008/06/01/a-disgraceful-assault-on-media-freedom/
BOMBINGS IN INDIA AND AFGHANISTAN
Now, in summer 2008, India is facing a new wave of bombings. Again, the trend seems to be one of religious bullies attacking others of another faith--or of various sorts of nationalists attempting to provoke war or civil war.
This last weekend there were a series of bombings in Ahmadedbad. http://sathyasaibaba.wordpress.com/2008/07/27/indian-bombings-bomb-blasts-in-india-pray-for-peace/ On that day, July 26, there were at least 16 bombs in all and about 50 people were killed and another 150 were injured in apparently sectarian violence in Ahmadedbad City. The same group who has claimed to have undertaken these bombings in Gujarat, this month also claimed that it had undertaken similar bombings in Jaipur in Rajistan several months earlier.
This particular group claims to be Jihadist, i.e. Islamic nationalist, but the Indian police and security forces are being cautious in releasing any findings, as it is not unknown for Hindu nationalist groups to stage riots or violence and then blame it on Muslims or other minorities in the country. http://www.newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp?ID=IEH20080726112619&Page=H&Title=Top+Stories&Topic=0 Likewise, occasionally other minorities, Hindu organizations, and/or nationalist groups do things to antaganize the rest of society.
For example, there were a series of train strikes in many states of northern India this month caused by a power struggle over property in Jammu state. http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/story.aspx?id=NEWEN20080055520 (I was caught in one of those strikes and observed other trains delayed by up to 14 hours coming from the north one weekend.)
