By Mohd Aasif | Caravan Daily | INDIA |
NEW DELHI – “Waheguru has asked me to come in here and start the langar,” says advocate DS Bindra who practises law at the Karkardooma court and is now a prominent presence at Shaheen Bagh. His langar service on the lines of the free food service by the Sikh community is continuing at the protest site for many days now, and he is doing his best to help the sit-in protesters here.
Initially he didn’t think the sit-in protests would continue for very many days. Now, he is short of funds to organize the langar on a daily basis for longer periods. He would not leave this half-way, and decided to sell one of his flats to raise money for continuation of the langarl’.
About a hundred metres away from the protest site, under the foot over-bridge at 13A Road, Bindra with his wife and son runs the free food distribution programme.
While the anti-CAA protest in Shaheen Bagh has received tremendous support from across the country and members from different communities kept coming to the site to demonstrate their solidarity with the protesters, the langar service is seeing many men and women lining up under the over-bridge every day. Recently, a group of Sikh farmers from Punjab came to participate in the ongoing protest sit-in.
An advocate-turned social worker, Bindra believes that a particular community is being targeted by the BJP government at the Centre. “Muslims are being humiliated and downgraded more, in comparison to the members of other communities,” said Bindra, extending his support to the sit-in protest.
While leaders of the BJP have been spewing communal venom over the Shaheen Bagh sit-in campaign, Bindra says he wants to highlight the fraternity that exists between Sikhs and Muslims.
The act is simply to turn the slogan of ‘Hindu-Muslim-Sikh Isayi, aapas me hain bhai-bhai’ (We are all brothers) into meaningful actions. “It’s easy to raise a slogan but not so easy to implement it,” notes Bindra.
Read full story, ‘Sikh-Muslim Fraternity Will Be Remembered: Bindra Who Sold Flat for Langer at Shaheen Bagh’ (The Caravan Daily, 9 Feb 2020), here.
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