‘Call for Khalistan by misguided elements’

LONDON : A UK-based Indian-origin businessman has criticised what he called a handful of misguided and unelected Sikhs for claiming to speak on behalf of the wider diaspora in making a demand for Khalistan.

In a letter forwarded to the editor of the London-based The Asian Voice, Raminder Singh Ranger, 70, founder of Sun Mark, an international marketing and distribution company, and chairman of British Sikh Association, said he is sad to see the demand for Khalistan rearing its head once again in the West “where some Sikhs can make statements about Khalistan without realising the consequences or feeling the effects of their actions on the Sikh community in Punjab and the rest of the world”.

“A handful of unelected Sikhs claim to speak for the wider diaspora and demand a kingdom for themselves which the Sikh gurus never did,” he says in the letter.

He said these self-proclaimed leaders, acting as greater visionaries than the Sikh gurus, were damaging the interests and respect of Sikhs across the world. “They project us (Sikhs) as antiIndia separatists when most of us are not that at all and are proud to be Indians and Sikhs like the Hindus, Muslims and Christians of India are. Sikhs have always been, and still are, in the forefront of India’s defence and integrity,” Ranger, a recipient of the Commander of the British Empire (CBE) gong, said. ANI