TORONTO: A miffed journalist. A flying shoe. A politician who ducks - just barely. Sound familiar? An Iraqi reporter hurled two shoes at former president George W. Bush in Baghdad last December. Four months later, a Sikh journalist tossed a shoe at an Indian federal minister in New Delhi. The ensuing furor made both men poster boys for their communities - all for throwing a shoe.

"I didn't plan it - it just happened," says Jarnail Singh, 36, who hogged the headlines after he threw a white Reebok runner at India's Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram.

"All I wanted was to highlight a wrong that was done years ago. I don't know how it came to this."

'This' is a downtown hotel room in Toronto, where he will be honoured at this weekend's seventh annual Spinning Wheel Film Festival, which showcases films by and about Sikhs.

It's the furthest he has ever been from his hometown of New Delhi, but then nothing has been the same since the April 7 incident. Jarnail has been offered money, jobs and even a chance to run in parliamentary elections.

All because he was asking questions - tough questions, he says.

The journalist, working then for Dainik Jagran, a widely read Hindi language newspaper [with a daily circulation of approx. 3.2 million], was at a news conference and he says his question was simple.

"All I said was there seemed to be a conspiracy that two politicians accused in the massacre of Sikhs had been exonerated so soon before elections."

He was talking about Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar, two former Congress Party Ministers who are two of the main people accused in the 1984 anti-Sikh pogroms in northern India, which killed thousands of Sikhs. Some have put the number of dead at 3,000 in India‘s capital alone.

The pogroms followed the assassination of then-prime minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards [in response to the military assault she had ordered of The Golden Temple in Amritsar, which also killed thousands of innocent men, women and children.].

Some time before the parliamentary elections in India this May, the two former ministers were nominated to run.

At the news conference, Jarnail Singh questioned that, too. He says he felt humiliated when Chidambaram accused him of using the "platform for my own agenda."

That's when, Jarnail says, he took off his shoe - the right one - and hurled it at the home minister.

"I did it to remind him of his duty."

Within seconds, Jarnail Singh was led away by officers.

"I wasn't scared," he says. "I knew if they kept me in jail, I would not let anyone post bail. I would protest from (within)."

But he was let off without any charges and within days, the Congress Party withdrew the nominations for the two men.

Singh became a hero.

Birinder Singh Ahluwalia, co-founder of the film festival, says the journalist's actions are being honoured. "He was courageous and stood up for the community. People are very keen on meeting him."

Jarnail Singh, meanwhile, has lost his job, but has been offered others. He is working on a book about the riots [called "I ACCUSE", soon to be released both in English and Punjabi.]

He knows people in Toronto will ask him dozens of questions about the incident. He will tell them about the heat of the moment and offer this advice: "Don't do it."

Courtesy; Sikhchic.net

The above article, in its original form, was first published in The Toronto Star.