More on “Sikhs in Malaya: Gone but not forgotten”

| Malaysia | 24 April 2017 | Asia Samachar |

The Editor Asia Samachar

The Editor Asia Samachar

Dear Sir/Madam,

More on “Sikhs in Malaya: Gone but not forgotten”

Today (22 Apr 2017) I returned to the Article/opinion by Ranjit Singh Malhi on the news item “Sikhs in Malaya: Gone but not forgotten” and the accompanying video, to look for Comments, and found that the write-up by Malhi is no longer available. All I get is:

Ooops… Error 404

Sorry, but the page you are looking for doesn’t exist.

And yet I am able to access all other articles/news items by Asia Samachar, including the news item on “Sikhs in Malaya: Gone but not forgotten”See here.

I truly hope this is some kind of “computer/internet error” and not a question of Asia Samachar deliberately removing the page. If it’s the latter then Asia Samachar’s journalistic integrity will be severely bruised and questioned, unless a reasonable explanation is forthcoming. In fact, if there is a reasonable explanation it should have been given immediately.

What little I know about the history of Sikhs in Malaya, and I am no historian, whether by training or self-taught, tallies with what Ranjit Singh Malhi wrote, but not everything said in the video may be attributable to Harchand Singh Bedi. It must be appreciated that the video is produced and narrated by StarTV, as mentioned at the end of the video discussion and reflected in the Asia Samachar news report on the video. It is quite possible that the video title is the work of the production team and that Bedi had no hand in deciding on the title.

I know Bedi, and am certain that his intentions are noble; I know he is greatly involved in local Sikh history, but his facts were indeed wrong.

Ranjit Singh Malhi is a local historian of repute whilst Harchand Singh Bedi is a “Local self-taught historian” as mentioned in your report; and that perhaps is telling. It would have been good if Malhi had been consulted.

In any case Malhi’s comments are already in the public domain and making the rounds via WhatsApp (see here).

Finally, as mentioned by the writer in the first comment in the original article, “The Sikhs who were involved in the Battle of Kampar were part of the 11th Indian Infantry Division. They were not recruited in Malaya”.

Dato’ Dr Sarjeet Singh Sidhu

Ipoh, Malaysia

EDITOR’S NOTE: Ranjit Singh Malhi had shared with Asia Samachar a letter he had sent to The Star with comments on a video entitled “Sikhs in Malaya: Gone but not forgotten”. Asia Samachar had published a story to highlight the video. We thought we may have jumped the gun by publishing the letter before allowing The Star to do so. Hence, we decided to pull back the letter to allow Ranjit to deal first with the original publisher of the video.

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