Khushwant Singh writes from Toronto

SIX years ago it was SARS virus and now it is the SWINE (pig) flu which is turning into a wide spreading world wide epidemic across at least 9 countries so far. Swine flue which originated from Mexico has already claimed 159 lives in the country and has put officials across its borders especially in the U.S. and Canada at a very high alert.

Swine influenza (also known as swine flu) refers to influenza caused by any strain of the influenza virus endemic in pigs (swine). Swine flu is common in swine and rare in humans. People who work with swine, especially people with intense exposures, are at risk of catching swine influenza if the swine carry a strain able to infect humans. However, most of these strains seldom are able to pass from human to human. Rarely, Swine influenza virus mutates into a form able to pass easily from human to human. The strain responsible for the current 2009 swine flu outbreak in humans is believed to have undergone such a mutation.

In humans, the symptoms of swine flu are similar to those of influenza and of influenza-like illness in general, namely chills, fever, sore throat, muscle pains, severe headache, coughing, weakness and general discomfort as well as curly cue (aka Pig-tail) feces.

Majority of the European countries including Canada and the U.S. have issued a warning to their tourists not to visit Mexico at all if possible. To add fuel to the already decaying and on fire tourist industry, leading Canadian tour operators cancelled flights to Mexico for the next four to five weeks, rescheduling holidays for thousands of travelers for later dates or offering different sun destinations for those wishing to avoid Mexico entirely because of the swine flu outbreak.

The number of confirmed cases of swine flu in Canada as of Wednesday April 29, 2009 has risen to 16 as hundreds of potential victims were being monitored across the country. In Ontario, three women and one man, all in their 20s and all of whom recently travelled to Mexico, have tested positive for the virus. Another 20 individuals in Ontario who have mild symptoms of the flu and who also recently returned from Mexico are being monitored.

Among other provinces in Canada, British Columbia and Alberta also have also reported confirmed cases of swine flue. In British Columbia, the presence of swine flu virus was confirmed in a young woman who returned from Mexico. Similarly in Alberta, the two victims of confirmed swine flue are men and both have recently visited Mexico.

As the number of confirmed cases of swine flue are increasing daily in Ontario health authorities in Ontario has again set up the province's Emergency Operations Centre – a hub for managing any emerging situation – similar to the one which was set up during the spread of deadly SARS virus six years ago.

The United States confirmed 66 cases of the virus as of Wednesday April 29, 2009 with one child death in Texas due to the swine flue. The child along with his family had previously visited Mexico. While most of the effected people are being taken care of at their residences, five of those are hospitalized. New York city’s health commissioner reported that hundreds of New York school children were reported to have fallen sick with suspected swine flu.

Acting director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said “As this moves forward, I fully expect we'll see deaths from this infection,” The White House in the U.S. is asking for $1.5 billion from Congress to fight the swine flu outbreak. American President Barack Obama has written a letter to legislators, asking for a spending plan to build drug stockpiles and monitor future cases of the deadly virus. The money will also be used to help international efforts to control the outbreak.

Originating form Mexico, spreading to U.S., Canada and now Germany, Israel, Spain, the U.K., New Zealand and Australia have confirmed cases of swine flue. A number of other countries are still monitoring the suspects.

In an effort to control the spread of swine flue, Malaysia has asked the World Health Organization to bar people who are ill from leaving Mexico, while South Korea, China, Indonesia and the Philippines banned or restricted imports of pork products from North America. China’s national tourism bureau ordered travel agents to suspend tours to Mexico, and advised Chinese travelers heading to Spain, the U.K., Israel and New Zealand to be more aware of personal hygiene and avoid crowded areas.

Japan said yesterday it will suspend visa-free entry for Mexican nationals and advise its own citizens to defer trips to the Latin American nation. A news agency reported that the Egyptian government has ordered all the pigs to be slaughtered in the country immediately.

The World Health Organization has urged countries to prepare for a possible pandemic. Acting assistant director-general for health security and environment at the World Health Organization, told reporters the situation is becoming more serious. Scientists are still learning more about the virus and WHO officials predict that it might be more than 6 months from now until a vaccine could be engineered to control the swine flue.

Canadian scientists at the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, said, the virus appears to have an incubation period of two to seven days. There is evidence it is capable of second- and third-generation infections, as the person initially infected gives the virus to a second person who then gives it to a third.

Precautionary measures are being taken by the Canadian health authorities. The schools across the country are being urged to remain closed if any expected case of the flue is reported in the school. People across the country are scared and still have not recovered form the SARS outbreak and only time will tell how deep scars will the Swine flue leave.

Meanwhile, as scare spread across Europe, the government has begun stockpiling drugs to fight the deadly disease. Britain leads rest of other countries. This leaves poor countries at greater risk as they can not have medicines. The airlines already struck by economic slowdown, worst in fifty years are losing passengers to Latin America and other countries.

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To the most powerful woman of India

Gurpreet Singh

Mrs. Sonia Gandhi
The President,
All India Congress Committee
New Delhi

Dear Mrs. Sonia Gandhi,

KINDLY accept my heartiest congratulations for running a minority government in India for its full five year term. As India is heading for another election and your party hopes to be reelected to power, let’s accept that you were running a coalition government with the help of several other secular parties and yet were unable to keep up its commitment to protect secularism.

Though your determination to keep the fascists out of power with the help of the communists, who helped your government from outside was appreciated by the secularists in the beginning, the break up between you and them over the controversial Indo US deal came as a big disappointment.

Everything looked so good when the United Progressive Alliance came to power. While the secular credentials of the communist parties of India cannot be questioned, this was not true for your party.

The Congress has always been known as a secular party, but the history has proved it more than once that this party has never been able to distance itself from religion.

Mrs. Gandhi I am writing this letter on behalf of the victims of the 1984 anti Sikh massacre and the people who lost their loved ones in the 1985 Air India bombing. As we are heading to the 25th anniversaries of the two tragedies, we need to look back and introspect for a better future.

In my opinion, the Air India bombing was an attack on the secular India. Among the dead were the Hindus, Muslims, Christians and the Sikhs. The perpetrators of this heinous crime claimed to be the defenders of Sikh religion, but they killed their own brethren too. The copilot of the plane was also a Sikh who had fought two wars for India.

Being a victim of terrorism yourself, you can understand the pain of the victims of Air India tragedy.

The whole world knows that the Tamil terrorists widowed you. Mrs. Gandhi, each tragedy has to be remembered to make sure that we as human beings do not repeat the mistakes and the cycle of violence and vendetta must not be allowed to go on like this.

We are happy that the Congress led coalition government had ministers like Lalu Yadav, who had deterred the attempts of the Hindu fascists from communalizing his native state of Bihar. Whenever the Hindu nationalist groups like RSS or Vishav Hindu Parishad had tried to exploit the religious sentiments of the majority community in Bihar, Lalu Yadav had prevented them from disturbing the peace with all his might.

He as a Railway Minister was also determined to find out the truth behind Godhra incident that sparked anti Muslim massacre in Gujarat in 2002. The enquiry that was ordered by him had proved that the Muslims at the Godhra railway station did not burn the train full of Hindu passengers.
Still following the death of the Hindus in the incident, thousands of innocent Muslims were killed and their women were raped by the fascists who had the blessings of the Hindu nationalist BJP government of Gujarat. The massacre of Muslims in the birthplace of Mahatma Gandhi, an international icon of peace was certainly a national shame.

This enquiry had proved that the Godhra episode was an accident that was calculatedly blamed on the Muslims. Lalu Yadav did what he had promised by exposing the agenda of the BJP to turn the whole country into a laboratory of Hindutva.

Your government had done another commendable job by firing the communal scholars who were hired by the previous BJP government in Delhi to rewrite the history of the country. Had they succeeded in their nefarious designs, our children would have been taught that the Muslims came to India as invaders. They would have been taught that every Christian missionary in this country is luring poor Hindus for conversion. The assassin of Mahatma Gandhi, Nathu Ram Godse another Hindu fascist would have been portrayed as a Hero of the nation. The saffron history BJP wished to write would have filled every Hindu child with hatred against Muslims and Christians.

They would have been prepared to raze all the ancient Muslim tombs and mosques as was done in Ayodhya, where the Hindu extremists had demolished the Babri mosque in 1992. Hindu nationalists still claim that the site of the demolished mosque belonged to Ram Temple. They have already set their eyes on Taj Mahal claiming it was a Siva temple that was destroyed by the Muslim rulers.

Your government acted wisely by removing the BJP appointed governors in different states. Among them were the people who come from the RSS background. The Indian constitution is based on secularism and the state governors are bound by its principles. These governors would have turned their offices into branches of the RSS. Several reports suggested that these governors performed mass Hindu rituals in their official residences.

The Indian voters became conscious about the dangers of a BJP government in future that is why they voted your party to power. They did not want the whole India to be turned into Gujarat, where the Christians and Muslims were being treated as third class citizens by the BJP government. Actually, they never trusted the BJP. That was the reason, why BJP has not been able to form a majority government until now. Each time the BJP came to power, it was short of majority. After the Gujarat massacres, the BJP got the boot from the voters.

But that doesn’t mean that the Congress has won the ninety percent support of the voters. The party, which has ruled this country for almost 50 years since independence lost the public confidence because of self-contradictions.

Your party did not win the hearts of the public. It was the misrule of the BJP that left a power vacuum, which has now gone to the Congress.

Mrs. Gandhi, the voters are smart. They had given your government a fractured verdict and they watched the actions of this government in the last five year. Your party might come back to power with heavy majority, but you will have to pay your dues.

Well done for stepping aside when you could have easily become the Prime Minister of India. By giving this opportunity to a Sikh you have won the hearts of minorities. Dr. Manmohan Singh is an able person. By allowing him to become the first Sikh Prime Minister, you have tried to assuage the feelings of the Sikh community that suffered the wrath of the Congress when your mother in law late Mrs. Indira Gandhi and your husband late Mr. Rajiv Gandhi were the prime ministers of the country.

The Sikhs were subjected to racial profiling by the police. While Sikh extremists were also responsible for this, the Congress run state machinery had virtually branded them as traitors. By letting Dr. Manmohan Singh address the nation from the Red Fort on the Independence Day, you have wiped off the stigma on the entire Sikh community.

However, I would have been much happier if you had become the Prime Minister. As a leader of the Congress party you were the obvious candidate for this post. I am really sad that bowing to the pressure of the Hindu fascists you decided not to take this responsibility. So what if you were born in Italy? Your foreign origin should not have been the reason for anybody except you to become the Prime Minister.

I live in Canada, where Mr. Ujjal Dosanjh, currently a Liberal MP was nominated as the first Punjabi Premier of the British Columbia province. The Whites did not threaten to shave their heads. They did not go on fasting like the Hindu nationalists did. They did not raise any hue and cry about his foreign origin. He is not the only Punjabi politician who has made it to the Canadian parliament. There are many other politicians of Indian origin who have made it to the parliament.

Canada is also diverse like India. Perhaps, Canadians are more tolerant than the Indians. I was ashamed the day you decided not to become the Prime Minister.

Despite small but significant steps your government took, there were indications of soft peddling by the Congress on communal matters. I am no body to educate you, but being concerned about the future of my home country I have a right to tell you that your party should do a bit more to ensure that under no circumstances secularism will be compromised.

It was your mother in law, Mrs. Indira Gandhi, who as a Prime Minister of this diverse country tried to please the Hindu majority by storming the Golden Temple in 1984. I personally believe that the Sikh militants were responsible for the desecration of the temple. Rather they had desecrated it much before the army went in by stockpiling the arms, by building the bunkers inside the temple and fortifying the place meant for worshipping. The death squads were often dispatched from the temple to slay innocent people. It was the religious terrorists who prompted the Indian Army to attack the Golden Temple.

Mrs. Indira Gandhi could have avoided that situation even before the terrorists organized their base inside the Golden Temple complex. But the situation was allowed to slip out of hands as part of a calculated political move.

Later, her two Sikh bodyguards assassinated Mrs. Gandhi. Of course this was an act of treason by the people, who were supposed to protect her. But does that justify the punishment to all the Sikhs? The Congress government engineered the anti Sikh massacre in different parts of India. Thousands of Sikhs were murdered. These two developments fueled more terrorism. In 1985, the Sikh terrorists avenged these crimes by bombing the Air India jet killing 329 innocent passengers.

You were really upset with what happened to the innocent Muslims in Gujarat. But how can you forget that the Congress did the same to the innocent Sikhs in 1984? How can you forget what your husband said while reacting to this mass murder? I will quote Mr. Rajiv Gandhi here. ``When a big tree falls, the earth around it shakes’’.

I am sure you have forgotten all that. That’s why you nominated Sajjan Kumar and Jagdish Tytler as Congress candidates in the previous election. Both were seen inciting the mobs involved in the anti Sikh pogrom. They both got elected. The Sikhs kept opposing their nomination, but the Congress did not bother. To add insult to the injury Jagdish Tytler was appointed minister in your government. Good you have booted him and Sajja Kumar out after the Nanavati Commission named them in its report for inciting the mobs. But we all understand your party did that only after being compelled to do so by your coalition partners and the communists.

After all it was the communist government in Bengal that did not let mobs attack the Sikhs during the 1984 carnage while the Congress ruled states burnt. That itself explains that the carnage was not a natural reaction as your party describe it.

Even this time your party was bent upon nominating both Tytler and Kumar for the election. Thanks to Jarnail Singh, a journalist of conscience who threw his shoe on the Home Minister bringing the whole episode into the international limelight.

It’s nice that you made the Prime Minister apologize to the entire nation for the anti Sikh massacre.

But that was not enough. The victims want justice. They don’t want a symbolic Sikh Prime Minister or a Sikh President. The 1984 carnage happened when India had a Sikh President. Zail Singh’s car was also vandalized by the mobs in Delhi. So what was so special about Manmohan Singh’s appointment?

It was rather shameful for the pro Congress Sikh leaders to press the Sikh MPs to help your minority government led by a Sikh Prime Minister in the time of crisis generated by the withdrawal of support by the communists on the nuclear issue.
Your party still has to prove that you are not pseudo secularists. Any sign of hypocrisy will never go unnoticed. I am shocked why your government came to the rescue of Narinder Modi, the Gujarat Chief Minister. The US government denied him visa to visit their country. He was not charged for any crime.

But being a Chief Minister he was responsible for whatever happened in Gujarat. Wasn’t he? Your party flayed him bitterly after the Gujarat violence. What had happened all of a sudden that your government turned so sympathetic towards him? He was advised by the Prime Minister’s office not to visit UK either. He was right when he recently commented that why the Congress government in Delhi has not acted against me if I was involved in the post Godhra riots?

When Pakistan cricket team refused to play in Gujarat, the Congress again came to Modi’s support.

Apparently, the Congress fears this might happen to its own leaders like Sajjan Kumar or Jagdish Tytler. The courts may not have sufficient evidence against them, but the human rights bodies will always block their way, wherever they will go. That’s a good reason to help Modi eh?

In Punjab, the Chief Minister Capt. Amrinder Singh had admitted Harminder Singh Gill in your party.

Gill was a staunch supporter of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, who had fortified the Golden Temple complex. He was very close to Amrik Singh, another Sikh militant who had died with Bhindranwale.

These people openly spewed venom against Hindus. Has Gill become secular after joining the Congress?

Your government had refused to grant citizenship to the Bangladeshi writer, Taslima Nasreen. Why? Doesn’t our secular government know that she is facing death threats from Muslim extremists in her home country? She loves West Bengal and wish to make India her home. What’s the hitch? Ah! This will annoy the Muslims – the trusted vote bank of the Congress party.

Recently your party had opened its doors to Sanjay Nirupam, the former leader of Shiv Sena, a party that glorifies the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi. Nirupam openly spitted venom against the Muslims.

Just because Shiv Sena had kicked him out, he became a secular person. He is not the first person to defect to the Congress party from Shiv Sena, a known Hindu extremist group. Earlier, your party welcomed Chagan Bhujbal, who was expelled from Shiv Sena. Bhujbal had openly praised Gandhi’s killer, Nathu Ram Godse.

Mrs. Gandhi I respect you because the people of India love you so much. That’s why they elected you from two different ridings. I also sympathize with you for being a victim of terrorism. Your husband was assassinated. Being a victim of terrorism you have to understand what many other ordinary victims have lost at the hands of the Hindu, the Muslim and the Sikh extremists. The whole world remembers how a Tamil Hindu bomber assassinated your husband. Good that the Congress never targeted the innocent Tamil Hindus like the innocent Sikhs for the murder of your mother in law.

Come what may; do not succumb under any pressure from religious extremism. To save India from going into the hands of religious robots, be cautious about the actions of your party. You have a long way to go to win the trust of the Indians. Only then we can save India from another 1984, another Air India or another Gujarat.

Regards,
Gurpreet Singh
Vancouver

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