Master Tara Singh, the acknowledged leader of the Sikhs since at least the eve of Partition, was a cofounder of the Vishva Hindu Parishad in 1964.
The strongest evidence for Hindu-Sikh unity is certainly the fact that no matter how hard the Khalistani separatists of the 1980s tried, they could not get Hindu-Sikh riots going. Though Hindus became wary of Sikhs, they never responded to the Khalistanis selective massacres of Hindus with attacks on Sikhs, nor did ordinary Sikhs ever start the kind of attacks on Hindus commonly witnessed as the opening scene of Hindu-Muslim riots. The Khalistani episode was a confrontation between Sikh separatists and the police and army of the secular Indian state, not one between Sikhs and Hindus. The surprising fact is that there were no communal riots in Punjab even in the worst days of terrorism .82
The massacre of Sikhs by activists of the secularist Congress Party in Delhi after Indira Gandhi s murder by her Sikh bodyguards in 1984 was not a Hindu-Sikh riot, in spite of secularist efforts to rationalize it as one. Even Khushwant Singh admitted that RSS and BJP activists had saved many Sikhs while Congress secularists were killing them: It was the Congress leaders who instigated mobs in 1984 and got more than 3000 people killed. I must give due credit to RSS and the BJP for showing courage and protecting helpless Sikhs during those difficult days. No less a person than Atal Bihari Vajpayee himself intervened at a couple of places to help poor taxi drivers.
