Singh said, "It was not so much about Gujarat. In fact, it had nothing to do with Gujarat. It was a handful of... they were really shouting slogans for Khalistan."
"They wanted a Khalistan, but I don't know who was responsible for it," he added.
Singh, who was in Washington to appear at a Johns Hopkins University event with Strobe Talbott, the ex-Deputy Secretary of State in the Clinton Administration, who was his former counterpart in the US-India strategic dialogue that followed after India's Pokhran nuclear tests in May 1998, said he had no idea why this issue had been brought up as a form of protest before a speech he was slated to deliver on the rise of India and China as Asian powers.
"I don't know why," he said he was being heckled, "I am not pro-Khalistan. But they (the protestors) seemed to have all kinds of other issues -- everything."
More than 50 protestors, including what was reported as local Sikhs and Muslims as well as several Berkeley students, had stormed the hall just as Singh was preparing to deliver his speech, and surrounded him, shouting, "You cannot apologise for genocide,' obviously referring to the Gujarat riots that took place on the watch of the Vajpayee administration of which he was a part.
They delayed the event for over half an hour, distributing leaflets among the audience of about 100 people, ignoring the efforts of the organisers who implored them to leave.
When one member of the audience, incensed over the interruption shouted, "This is a democracy, we have an invited guest so let him speak," a dissenter had screamed right back that giving Singh a platform to speak was like giving the floor 'to a Nazi criminal'.
Police was called, but had not immediately intervened, and Randeep Singh, a philosophy major at Berkeley, who led the protest was allowed to speak for a few minutes to denounce the human rights violations of minorities in India, on the condition that after he said his piece, Singh would be permitted to deliver his lecture without any interruptions.
Singh, then in his opening said, "I am honoured to be here despite the excitement of the beginning," and after his speech even though he had insisted on taking some questions from the audience, was advised by security officials that it was better he leave.
He had initially resisted, saying, "This is an educational institution, (and) I have never requested special security arrangements and I certainly will not now," but ultimately relented and had been escorted by about 10 police officers through a rear exit, while the demonstrators waited outside the main entrance of International House on the university campus to heckle him further.
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