by Kuldip Nayar
She had to eat humble pie and tell the president that she had not been able to muster sufficient support. Her image took a bit of a beating but she put up a brave face. Her inability to form the government resulted in fresh elections in 1999 with Vajpayee in charge of the interim government. This was the practice followed earlier.
18
The BJP at the Helm
The Kandahar Hijack, the Kargil War, and the Gujarat Riots
The elections of 1999 did not give any party an absolute majority. This had now began to be a pattern and it inevitably started an era of coalition polities. I welcomed it from one point of view: the states would have a say in the formulation of countrywide policies and not be treated as a supplicants by the Centre. However, I was concerned that an all-India perspective would weaken and with time the states might become so powerful that the centrifugal elements might assert themselves. India’s unity was not a major worry but emotional integration was.
The BJP emerged once again as the single largest party. It realized more than ever that it could not form the government on its own. This time it was able to persuade the RSS that if the BJP was to come to power it would have to hold in abeyance two of its major planks, the mandir issue and abrogation of Article 370 giving Kashmir a special status. Reassurance on these two issues persuaded some regional parties to join the BJP-sponsored coalition, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). A surprising catch was Ram Vilas Paswan who had denounced the BJP communalism at every given opportunity.
I was not therefore surprised when a woman BJP member roundly abused him when he became a minister in the NDA government. Sitting in a row next to me in the House, she asked me how he had the gumption to become an ally of a party which he had abused all the time.
The bonhomie which Vajpayee had developed after the accord with Pakistan’s Nawaz Sharif during his last government plummeted because of the release of terrorists by the BJP government at Kandahar on 31 December 1999. Some seven days earlier an Indian Airlines airbus had been hijacked by Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, a Pakistan-based terrorist group. There were some 170 passengers on board. The plane landed at Amritsar for refuelling because Captain Anil Sharma had told the hijackers, whose guns were pointed at him, that he had insufficient fuel to fly to Kandahar.
The authorities at Amritsar, where the plane landed for refuelling, bungled badly as did Delhi. They were unable to place an impediment on the runway at Amritsar to prevent the plane from taking off fearing that the hijackers would shoot them from the plane itself. Pakistan, on close terms then with the Taliban government ruling Afghanistan, fuelled the plane at Lahore and allowed it to fly to Kandahar despite repeated requests by India that they detain the plane.
The hijackers initially demanded the release of 35 Islamic militants in Indian jails and $200 million in cash but the Indian negotiators succeeded in persuading the hijackers to reduce their demands to the release of three prisoners. These were Maulana Masood Azhar (who founded Jaish-e-Mohammed in 2000 which gained notoriety for its alleged role in the 2001 attack on the Indian parliament), Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh (arrested in 2002 by the Pakistani authorities for the abduction and murder of Daniel Pearl), and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar (who trained Islamic militants in Pakistan-administered Kashmir). The government agreed to release the three terrorists who were in a jail in Jammu. No rules were followed and despite protest by jail authorities, the hostages were whisked away and in Delhi put on the plane bound for Kandahar.
It was a hard decision for the Vajpayee government to take, having earlier declared that it would not release the terrorists at any cost. The government relented when relations of the passengers sat in dharna outside the residence of the prime minister.
The cabinet met and decided that it had no option but to meet the demands of the terrorists. Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh travelled in the plane carrying the three terrorists claiming it was his personal decision: Indeed, it was. ‘Hum se to kisi ne poochha nahi [nobody asked me],’ Vajpayee told me at an iftar party at Hyderabad House on the day Jaswant Singh flew to Kandahar. It was understandable that BJP had no choice when the hijackers threatened to kill all the passengers on board and had stabbed one dissenting passenger. What was not however comprehensible was Jaswant Singh travelling in the plane as if he was escorting the terrorists to Kandahar. The nation felt horrified even though relieved that the hostages had been released.
Already stung by the Kargil war, India linked the Kandahar incident to Pakistan’s hard and unfriendly policy towards New Delhi. It was a total betrayal of trust when General Musharraf initiated the Kargil war. He gave me no explanation when I met him later except that the 1971 debacle at Bangladesh was still fresh in the mind of the Pakistani armed forces.
During the brief conversation, he said that he had kept the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif informed about Kargil all along. The later stoutly denied this when I met him at Jeddah, banished from Pakistan. Nawaz Sharif said that what Musharraf had told him was that a few teams of soldiers had been sent to Kargil to exert pressure on India to solve the Kashmir issue. This reminded me of Ayub’s complaint that Bhutto never told him about infiltrators sent to Kashmir in 1964.
There was a great deal of anger in India over Kargil. People were particularly incensed that the Indian government had failed to detect the positioning of militants and the Pakistan army at key points along the border. It appeared that Musharraf had begun the operation as soon as Vajpayee returned to India from Lahore.
There were demands from senior quarters that India should make a surgical air strike to destroy the militant training camps in Pakistan and ‘Azad’ Kashmir. Vinod Putney was in charge of the proposed operation. I met him somewhere to inquire how the operation was going because the rumour was that Pakistan had cut off our supply line to Kashmir. He contradicted that but regretted that his request for a surgical strike into Pakistan had been rejected. Vajpayee had himself turned it down fearing that the strike might escalate into a full-scale war. The air force pounded Pakistan’s entrenched positions in Kargil but did not go beyond that. (After the Kargil war ended, the air chief complained that the army had informed the air force only when the former was in the midst of hostilities. The complaint was not new because no army chief had ever taken either the air or naval chiefs into confidence before initiating any operation.)
In parliament there was uproar over Kargil and many demanded an attack on Pakistan. Vajpayee rejected the demand but promised to take some firm action later. After few reverses India was able to recapture Kargil and many Pakistani soldiers were isolated and under attack on the Kargil heights.
Nawaz Sharif told me how Musharraf came running to him and begged him to seek US intervention to enable peaceful withdrawal of the Pakistan army. Nawaz Sharif said that even though it was 4 July, US Independence day, he called President Bill Clinton and sought an appointment that very day. Clinton immediately contacted Vajpayee and persuaded him to let the Pakistani army retreat.
The Pakistan government lost face but it was more Musharraf’s bravado that was defeated. He explained to Nawaz Sharif that there had been a miscalculation, and that the strategy had been sound. People in Pakistan felt let down because they had been fed on a false story that Kargil had been forcibly seized from India by the Pakistan army.
Nawaz Sharif punished Musharraf by removing him from the position of chief of army staff when he was still on a trip to Sri Lanka. Musharraf’s loyal commanders, however, staged a coup and Pakistan was back under military rule. Nawaz Sharif and his brother Shabaz Sharif were arrested. Nawaz Sharif described his six months’ detention as the worst torture anyone could have inflicted upon him. ‘It was like a black hole,’ he said, describing the prison to me.
Nawaz Sahrif’s imprisonment, and even more so the imposition of military rule in Pakistan, dismayed New Delhi. Vajpayee was at his seat in the Rajya Sabha when I went to him to ask what had happened. Nawaz Sharif, he said, paid the price for his ‘friendship with us’. Vajpayee was concerned for Naw
az Sharif’s safety but volunteered information regarding the behind the scene talks on Kashmir: ‘Kuldip we were almost there; almost 80 per cent.’ When I asked him to elaborate on the 80 per cent, Vajpayee remained silent.
Niaz Naik was Pakistan’s representative and R.K. Mishra represented India at the back-channel discussions. Niaz told me that they were discussing the Chenab line which meant the entire Valley was to be jointly administered by India and Pakistan. I asked him to tell me more. He promised to do so at our next meeting but that never took place because he passed away. R.K. Mishra was very reticent and died without revealing anything.
Many years later, the back channel between India and Pakistan was restored. By this time the Congress-led government was in power and India’s former high commissioner to Pakistan, Satish Lamba, served as the back channel. He too said that substantial progress had been made but assured me that it had been agreed that no division of Jammu & Kashmir would take place on the basis of religion and that the present borders would not be changed, although they could become ‘irrelevant’.
Another confirmation of a settlement of sorts came from Pakistan’s foreign minister Khurshid Kasuri who said at a reception at the Pakistan high commissioner’s residence at Delhi that the Kashmir issue had been settled and that an agreement would be signed ‘soon’ by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at Islamabad. When I met Kasuri, then out of power, in Lahore, he said that the agreement could not be signed because of the lawyers’ agitation in Pakistan. The scenario changed after the lawyers’ agitation was over: the Pakistan People’s Party had assumed power in Islamabad.
In 2010, I asked Pakistan Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir, when he came to Delhi to meet his counterpart Nirupama Rao, whether Kashmir had figured in their discussions. He replied in the affirmative, but the most significant remark he made was in reply to my inquiry whether the ground covered behind the scenes would have to be once more retraced. He said they would pick up the thread from where it had been left off. ‘We will resume from the stage already reached,’ said Bashir. I thought I would make my suggestions in the light of the experience I had gained after following the Indo–Pakistan relationship for sixty years.
My formula on Kashmir is that both India and Pakistan should integrate the areas they occupy in their country and soften the border between the two Kashmirs. New Delhi should transfer all powers, except defence and foreign affairs, to the state of Jammu & Kashmir with Islamabad following suit in Azad Kashmir. The elected members of Jammu & Kashmir should sit in the Pakistan National Assembly and the elected members of Azad Kashmir in the Lok Sabha. This should be the full and final settlement, with a withdrawal of the complaint pending before the UN.
The Vajpayee government had been four years in power when the Gujarat riots broke out (28 February 2002). The former cabinet secretary, Zafar Saifullah, rang me up suggesting that we should immediately go to Baroda and Ahmedabad where Muslims had been killed by the hundreds. Md. Arif Khan, former central minister, accompanied us. We flew to Baroda where a few NGOs, human rights activists, and Gandhians had gathered to discuss how the riots had suddenly engulfed parts of Gujarat. They warned us that the police could come at any time and imprison all. Fear was writ large on their faces.
One NGO who had come from Ahmedabad told me how the entire city had been mapped out locality by locality within a few hours of the Godhra incident where some forty-nine kar sevaks had been burnt alive in a train bound for Ahmedabad. Areas, houses, shops, and factories owned by Muslims in Ahmedabad were marked out and the specific task of killing, looting, and burning was assigned to different groups. They were in touch with ‘their bosses’ who directed them over mobile phones. A pamphlet was distributed to urge Hindus to boycott the Muslims economically and refuse to buy anything from their shops and to conduct no transactions with them.
The police behaved as if the force had been given instructions ‘not to interfere’. The then President Narayanan wrote a letter to prime minister Vajpayee and chief minister Modi to call the army immediately and order it to shoot at sight. He did not get even acknowledgments for his letters to the two leaders. Subsequently, a top police officer said in an affidavit that he was present when Chief Minister Narendra Modi had ordered the killing of Muslims. During the riots, the New York Times had got hold of transcripts of conversations between the police control room and officers on the streets. The advice was to allow Muslim houses to burn and to prevent aid from reaching the victims. Elsewhere in Gujarat it was worse. The police instigated and protected the rioters. Seeing the plight of the victims and the refugee camps I wept profusely.
The day of Partition was recreated before my eyes. At that time too the police were hand in glove with the rioters, or for that matter, the killers. What was perceived as ‘the call of religion’ had transformed thousands of ordinary people into a horde of criminals engaging in atrocities that even hardcore criminals would scarcely dare to engage in.
Even then, as in Gujarat, there was little remorse on the part of society at large. I for my part felt a spontaneous kinship with the refugees. They too had left behind their hearths and homes, friends and dreams as I had done when I left my home town, Sialkot. Their plight was however more harrowing because they were refugees in their own country like the Kashmiri Pandits. I was also reminded of the 1984 riots in Delhi where 3,000 Sikhs were butchered in broad daylight.
We also visited the site where the Godhra incident had taken place. Reconstructing the tragedy, we found that the train had left Godhra station at 7.50 a.m. on 27 February 2002. Some kar sevaks were still on the platform washing their faces or teasing some vendors. One kar sevak pulled the chain to stop the train. When the train started moving after five minutes, the chain was pulled again at 7.58 a.m., this time in three different compartments. The authorities had yet to identify who was responsible for this. When the train halted at a distance of 800 metres from the station, the train was stoned and the bogie S-6 was set on fire.
An inquiry committee instituted by the railways headed by Justice U.C. Banerjee placed the responsibility on the kar sevaks. However, the Justice Nanavati Report said that it was a pre-planned conspiracy by local Muslims in collaboration with the ISI. Haji Umarji, a local cleric, presided over the meeting of Muslims where this conspiracy was hatched. They bought 140 litres of petrol, cut open the vestibule between S-6 and S-7, spread the petrol and burnt the coach. Nanavati arrived at this conclusion without even a single eyewitness to the burning of the train.
I have no doubt that the attack was well planned, otherwise it would not have been possible for a mob of 500 carrying petrol and kerosene to assemble in three minutes in an area that can only be reached by running through thorn-bushes. I have walked in the area adjacent to the rail track.
Godhra however pales into insignificance when compared with the ‘retaliation’ in Ahmedabad, Baroda, and some other cities, and even in the countryside. Ten districts out of 23 in Gujarat were affected. The official figures of those killed is put at 800. Nearly one lakh men, women, and children were forced to live in inhuman conditions in what are called refugee camps.
Why the Centre merely hummed and hawed and did nothing was understandable bearing in mind the infighting within the BJP. It was a confrontation between the hawks and the doves. That also explained why the prime minister did not immediately go to Gujarat.
Many in the BJP believed that occurrences such as in Gujarat, would consolidate Hindus on its side. A few like the prime minister and Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh believed otherwise but they remained silent. They were afraid of the RSS hardliners who had initiated the thesis of Hindu consolidation and found no fault with Modi, an RSS pracharak.
I wrote a letter to the prime minister in which I said:
the riots in the state were not Hindu–Muslim clashes in the sense of two communities fighting each other. It was really a pogrom; a well-planned and executed scheme … I found that the bureaucracy and the police had been communalized. There are instances to show th
at the government machinery was biased as if there were unwritten instructions not to act against the rioters. Chief Minister Narendra Modi should have been asked to resign long ago.
I suggested that the one-man commission be expanded to a three-member panel to be presided over by a Supreme Court judge. The CBI, not the state security establishment should be given the charge of the investigation. Of course, I received no reply.
Vajpayee however rang me up on the eve of his visit to Gujarat. He asked me what he should do when he had already delayed a visit to the state. I told him that he must admonish Modi in public and deliberately lose his temper in order to let the people know how angry he was about his lapses. I told him I could understand his dilemma: he could not, on the one hand, dismiss the Modi government and, on the other, could not condone what he had done.
Vajpayee did more or less that. He lost his temper when he visited refugee camps and gave the chief minister a piece of his mind in public hearing. His visit went down well, but later when he flew to Goa, he was brainwashed by Arun Shourie and Arun Jaitley who were sitting on either side of him. The speech he made at Goa referred less to the riots and more to Islam. He said that ‘Hindus were living peacefully everywhere but wherever Muslims are they do not want to live peacefully’.
The Gujarat riots would have gone unnoticed as just another riot in the country had the English language dailies and 24×7 TV networks not followed up the carnage to demonstrate that it was a case of genocide. They were able to confirm the impression that the killings and looting were pre-planned and Modi and his ministers were behind the atrocities.