by Amarjit Kaur
A positive sign today is the fact that the farmers are now beginning to show that they are more concerned about their economic problems than the religious ones. While all the arrests were taking place over the kar seva of the Akal Takht, the farmers in my district held big demonstrations outside the district collector’s house. These farmers were demanding more short-term loans, and a reduction in the power tariff. They did not mention any religious demands!
The Kheti Bari Union which later merged with the Bharatiya Kisan Union is becoming a major force in Punjab and none of the office bearers are allowed to be affiliated with any political party. These farmers are also aware of the fact that the Akalis exploited them.
It will take some time to remove the feelings of mistrust welling up between the Hindus and Sikhs. The division between the two communities is there. But I cannot understand why Sikhs are hesitant to face facts. We knew what was happening inside the Golden Temple: it had become a fortress and was no longer a gurdwara. Yet, there was this reluctance on the part of many Sikhs, especially after the army action, to be objective.
There seems to be a mental block, particularly amongst the intelligentsia. The intellectuals should know where things went wrong. Most of them however have been carried away emotionally; they do not want to listen to reason, to believe what is true.
I am in the process of trying to understand this closed-door attitude of the Sikh intelligentsia after the army action. The Sikh intellectual tends to see Hindu communalism behind every bush. He aggravates this feeling of insecurity by immersing himself even further in ritualistic dogmas, adhering to the letter rather than the spirit of the law. He is deliberately throwing himself backwards in time to the seventeenth century just at the moment when we are on the threshold of the twenty-first century.
Can the intellectuals deny the fact that when any brave and democratic Sikh stood up to question the barbaric acts, duly sanctioned by the author of the ‘hit lists’ living in the safety of Akal Takht, he was called a traitor to the community and shot dead. The shooting of the Sikhs by this fanatic was part of a design to subvert the inherent courage of the Sikh community as a whole and to reduce us to a community of cowards in subjugation to this fanatic.
The ‘hit list’ stopped the thought-process in the minds of many Sikh intellectuals. It conjured up the picture of the menacing shape of the loaded Stengun which stopped dead in its tracks any resistance to what the terrorists had set out to achieve.
Many Sikh intellectuals may have seen the signs of communalism emerging in the Sikh community; but they conveniently looked the other way – they preferred to take shelter under the argument that Akali demands were Punjabi demands and the only solution possible was for the government to surrender to the dharamyudh of the Akali Dal.
A large number of Sikh intellectuals may have spoken out against terrorism in Punjab, but they did so from the safety of their homes and offices. Why did they not go alone or in a sangat of tens, hundreds, thousands to the Akal Takht to demand that Bhindranwale and his murdering henchmen vacate their sacriligious occupation of our most sacred gurdwara. We Sikhs should have had the courage to solve this problem ourselves. I am also as guilty as the next Sikh because I was quite content to let the government cleanse my home. I should set my own house in order.
Amarinder Singh resigned from the Congress(I) after the army action because he had no alternative. His family had links with the sixth guru Hargobind Rai who built the Akal Takht. The sixth guru had blessed the Patiala family: he had said: Tera ghar so mera aas hai. It was because of this personal link that Amarinder Singh had to resign.
Amarinder had said earlier that if the army entered the Golden Temple, he would have to leave. But nobody knew that the army was going to enter the temple’s premises.
The Akali Dal and the SGPC have, by not throwing out Bhindranwale from the premises of the Golden Temple, lost the right to speak for and on behalf of the Sikhs. The Sikh community as a whole expects that the head priests at least should be above the fear of man. But these head priests became soundless wonders.
And for them to now insist that the kar seva should only be done under their guidance is a bit hypocritical, to say the least. A big thing is being made of the Sikh sangat after 6 June 1984. But how is it that prior to this date nobody ever mentioned it? One heard the names of Sant Longowal and Bhindranwale as someone superior to him.
The discredited appointees now want to impose their newly-found will on the Sikh sangat. This is really the time for the Sikh intellectual to ‘break out of his mental block and come out of his home as well and lead the community – to instil in it some common sense.
The Akalis were not really concerned with the welfare of the Sikhs; they could not see beyond their own political concerns. In the early 80s many of the Sikhs who lived outside Punjab used to tell me that the movement for Khalistan had made them feel insecure. Some of them were bureaucrats and each time they went to Punjab, they were asked if they were indeed going back to Khalistan. Or they were continually mocked about when Khalistan would be born.
I went to see Tohra about this fear. I told him that I had come to see him as a Sikh and not as a politician. But when I expressed concern about what Sikhs outside Punjab felt, he merely said that nothing could be achieved without qurbani.
This was not too different from what Bhindranwale voiced in his tapes. The Sikhs who lived outside Punjab were traitors for him. ‘Let them die,’ he had said, ‘for they do not do our work.’
Tohra does not believe in any religion. He has ruined the image of the Sikhs. In fact, I hold him responsible for the tarnished image of the Sikhs. I cannot stay in the Harmandir Sahib or in the SGPC without his permission.
Why should there be an office of a political party in any gurdwara? Nine crore of SGPC money was misused for political purposes.
I would also hold the leadership of the Akali Dal responsible for what has happened because they turned out to be so weak. They had known Tohra’s game all along and did nothing letting themselves be outmanoeuvred by the extremists. Towards the end they even appealed to the government to save them because they feared that the extremists would blow up the gurdwara.
Tohra is really the evil genius behind a lot of the disruption which has taken place in Punjab, in fact both Tohra and Harkishan Singh Surjeet. The latter has been chief adviser to Tohra since at least 1978. The way he brought Harkishan Singh Surjeet into the Rajya Sabha appears most illogical. Why should the Akalis support a CPM leader as a Rajya Sabha member rather than one of their own men?
When Harkishan Singh Surjeet began to criticize the Akalis and project the CPM, Badal realized Tohra’s game. His eyes were opened. Tohra was responsible for planting CPM card holders as Pracharaks, (junior granthis) in nearly 75 per cent of the gurdwaras in Haryana and Punjab during the late-70s.
The education department, as such, was dominated by the CPM since the mid-70s. But the CPM had not been too successful in spreading their culture through education in Punjab because those very school children who had been brainwashed by the CPM teachers in school would return home each day (usually to land-owning families) and all that brainwashing would be nullified.
Thus, the strategy of ‘if you cannot lick them join them’ began to be implemented. Sikh religion also teaches that everybody is equal: there is no high or low, everybody should help each other. This outlook on life married well with the CPM message. In 20 years these juniors would become head granthis. Politics would then really be played from the pulpit. The CPM would ride piggy-back on the provincial parties.
The reason why I keep coming back to the point of the Akalis not being sincere about doing something for Punjab is the fact that during their three years in power from 1977 onwards, they were silent about the demands which suddenly emerged after they lost the elections in 1980. Never had there been such an opportunity for the Akalis. They were in power in Punjab and at the centre. In
the Janata ministry, there were three Akali ministers: Prakash Singh Badal (until he went to Punjab as chief minister), Surjit Singh Barnala, and Dhana Singh Gulshan. In fact, when Mr Barnala was in charge of agriculture and irrigation at the centre, why did they not think of solving these problems? Why did they not do something about Thein Dam? Would the SYL (Sultlej-Yamuna Link) solve the issue? It would still not have been enough. Why did they not ask for an atomic power station?
The welfare of Punjab was certainly not the main concern of the Akalis. When the 400th anniversary of Amritsar was celebrated in 1978 why did the Akalis not declare it a ‘holy city’? Why did they think of all these things once they were out of power?
They are always ready to criticize Mrs Gandhi. Morarji Desai never even talked to them. At least Mrs Gandhi listens to them.
What will happen in the future is difficult to say. Many of the Akalis are in jail. There is yawning gap in the leadership. One can only pray that a sensible leadership emerges and that it will pass from the sants to educated and far-sighted people.
Efforts should now be made to do something about the youth who were misguided because of increasing unemployment. Bhindranwale was able to influence the AISSF boys by convincing them that once Hindus were sent out of Punjab there would be enough jobs for them. False hopes were aroused in the youth, a false vision was given to them.
In the rural areas, farmers have suffered and agriculture should now be given maximum help. Youth should be employed in agro-based industries. It is absolutely essential to set up small industries in rural areas. Rural credit should be increased. The farmer has really been given low priority until now. To help bridge the increasing chasm between Hindus and Sikhs all secular forces should come forward.
The Akalis hate me. They think that I am anti-Sikh. I am not anti-Sikh: I am anti-Akali. They have ruined the image of the Sikhs. For the first time the differences between the Hindus and Sikhs has taken such an ugly turn.
We did have the Fateh Singh agitation; but hatred was never there. The Sikhs are known for their tolerance. They respect other religions. Guru Nanak Dev even sent people to Mecca. The Sikhs are very liberal; but, these Akalis made us feel as if we were intolerant.
The Akali agitation has done incalculable damage to the Sikh community. The Akalis now call me a traitor to the Sikh community. There is so much pressure on me from my friends as well. But I am confident that I am right and I hope that other Sikhs will see reason and try to face facts.
Where is the danger to the Sikh community? What was the need for the dharamyudh? Who is asking us to change? Who is converting us?
The extremists converted us into a community of cowards. Bhindranwale was more worried about the Sikhs who were not with him; he felt that the Hindus were much easier to handle. Consequently 55 of every 100 people killed were Sikhs. Sikhs were killed to silence us.
We are now shouting and screaming after the army action. We say our sentiments are hurt. These are hollow sentiments. Where were these sentiments when Hindus and Sikhs were being killed? Why were we silent when Hindus were pulled out from buses and shot like dogs on the street?
Actually the blow to the Sikh community has been quite profound. We are a very proud community. We thought we were the cat’s whiskers, the saviour of all. But now it was seen that we did not have the guts to face the situation. We, the Sikhs, should have been the ones to throw Bhindranwale out of the premises of the Golden Temple. We are now finding it difficult to admit our own failure. Our so-called dynamism and bravery has disappeared.
Still, I am optimistic. Time is a great healer. The Sikhs have to search within themselves. The healing touch should come from the Sikhs themselves. I must search myself for a healing touch, and finding it, must help others to do so.
Terrorists in the Temple
TAVLEEN SINGH
It was a week after Operation Bluestar and the Golden Temple still smelled faintly of death. The bodies that had been laid out in rows in white marble corridors had been removed but the temple had the atmosphere of a mortuary. Everything was cold, white, empty. Even the soldiers, who wandered around barefoot, heads covered with handkerchiefs, went about their work with a chilling silence as if talking was somehow forbidden.
We had come to Amritsar by road and in the villages and towns we passed through the Bhindranwale myth had assumed alarming proportions. His ‘martyrdom’ had made him a saint to many and superhuman to many others. There were those who believed that he had not died and that he had escaped to Pakistan dressed as a soldier. Those who believed that he had died spoke of his shaheedi in hushed tones and said it had taken over 70 bullets to kill him. Outside, in the Punjab countryside, his presence had loomed over everything more ominously than ever before, but inside the temple it was his absence that was everywhere as if an era had ended. A chapter of history closed.
In the days when he was alive it was not possible to enter the Golden Temple without becoming instantly aware of the existence of Bhindranwale. He had stamped everything with his own slightly warped brand of Sikhism and because he always thought of himself as an undeclared heir to Guru Gobind Singh. He created inside the temple the medieval world that must have existed in the days of the tenth guru.
The youths in his entourage dressed almost invariably in traditional loose kurtas, caught at the waist by a sash, and the long shorts associated with the Khalsa uniform. Their turbans tended to be blue, black or saffron and along with their Stenguns and carbines most of them carried traditional weapons like kirpans, swords or spears.
It was like entering a portion of medieval India caught in a time warp and a little as if Khalistan had already come into being and this was its capital.
It was the day after DIG, Avtar Singh Atwal, was shot dead outside the Golden Temple on 25 April 1983 that I met Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale for the first time. He lived at the time in room 47 of the Guru Nanak Niwas and the entire building had been taken over by his entourage. Armed youths had been positioned at strategic points but these were early days and the atmosphere of violence, that later hung over the gurdwara like a pall, was not yet perceptible.
Bhindranwale was busy so I was ushered into a sort of anteroom, adjoining his in which a couple of young, rather pretty women, wearing kirpans and their hair knotted on top of their heads under their duppattas attended to various domestic chores. One stirred boiling hot milk in a stainless steel cauldron of enormous proportions and another was involved in bathing a small boy. The room had the congenial atmosphere of a village home. Hot milk was served to everyone with a herb called banuksha in it. Bhindranwale was rabidly against intoxicants so even tea was forbidden.
After about fifteen minutes Rachhpal Singh, Bhindranwale’s bespectacled, scholarly-looking secretary, arrived and indicated that I should follow him into the next room. Bhindranwale reclining on a bed appeared to be giving a discourse on religion to a rather large group of elderly Sikh men. After a cursory greeting he ignored me and continued with his lecture. The room had two or three beds in it, a large picture of Guru Gobind Singh and a couple of tape recorders.
Finally he turned to me and said that I could now ask him what I wanted to. What did he have to say about the murder of DIG Atwal? ‘The Sikh does not believe in violence especially not in front of the Harmandir Sahib; no Sikh can ever believe in this. This has been done deliberately to make the dharamyudh morcha unsuccessful. It is a conspiracy to lay the grounds for the police to enter the Darbar Sahib. This could only be the work of the government.’
Did he not think Punjab was well set on a road to destruction? ‘It is up to the government to decide what it wants to do, it is in their hands to bring peace or destruction. It is the government’s job not mine. I am for peace; I believe there should be peace in the country.’
There were a few more terse answers to questions about the morcha, the Anandpur Sahib Resolution and the Akalis. He liked to answer questions as briefly as
possible till he was brought on to his favourite subject, the oppression of the Sikhs. It was not difficult to get him onto the subject anyway since he seemed to wait for any question that would give him a chance to get started on it.
This time it was because I asked him whether he really believed that the Sikhs had been treated unjustly. Within seconds the calm manner had disappeared and his tone changed from a disinterested drawl to something resembling the rattle of machine-gun fire. ‘Do you need proof of this?’ he shouted, ‘Write, I’ll tell you. A Sikh girl was stripped naked and paraded around Dao village by policemen. They caught a Sikh granthi, and a policeman sat on him and smoked bidis and spat in his mouth and put tobacco in it. The name of the Sikh was Jasbir Singh, village Chupkiti, tehsil Moga. They caught another Sikh and when they did not find anything on him, they cut his thigh, tore the flesh out and poured salt into the cut. Name: Jagir Singh, village: Ittanwali, he lives in Moga. Is this not wrong? During the Asian Games they drew a line and said that anyone with Singh attached to his name couldn’t go to Delhi at all. Did they stop anyone else? Is this not injust 8ice to the Sikhs? Has anyone ever said that a jenoi cannot be more than a particular length. Then why is there a restriction on our religious symbol? Is this not discrimination?’
Once he got started there was no stopping him. Within seconds he had managed to whip up a frenzy. ‘Call Leher Singh,’ he shouted, ‘You want to know what they do to the Sikhs, let me show you.’ A few minutes later, a rather large man of about 30 was brought in. He was dressed in traditional Sikh clothes but his beard had been hacked off, as if with a knife. He said that he was from Jatwali village in Fazilka and that Thanedar Bicchu Ram of Sadar Police Station had held him down and chopped his beard off and told him to go and tell Bhindranwale. Six months later Bicchu Ram was shot dead by terrorists and it was then that I realized that I had witnessed the signing of the death warrant.