Bad Name

The killed Sikh protesters are almost invariably referred to, in the non-Sikh Press and the other national media, as "nihangs", "armed with traditional weapons", and the killers are, with tender solicitude, described as nirankaris, "the worshippers of the form-less God." Weapons can kill the innocent and the unarmed, but words are even deadlier, for, the Word was in the Beginning and the words cannot only conceal the murder but make the murderer look like injured innocence itself.