by John Keay
This changed somewhat in the early 1980s. With the Akali Dal now out of office, some of its leaders rediscovered an appetite for inflammatory rhetoric and extra-parliamentary tactics. The Anandpur Sahib demands were rejigged, with greater emphasis being given to that for Chandigarh plus another in favour of the cancellation of plans to divert excess water from Punjabi agriculture to other, drier states. An agitational Front was formed; mass demonstrations and religious stunts mobilised support. The Congress leadership, fearing defeat in Punjab in the next nationwide election, cast about for a response that would undermine the Akali threat.
Since discrediting the Akali Dal had been a Congress priority ever since 1977, Sanjay Gandhi had already hit on an answer. Fresh from his vasectomy crusade and even less wary of betraying his party’s secularist credentials than his mother, he had opted for the tactics that had succeeded against the BJP in Jammu, namely outbidding the agitators by stealing their thunder. Thus to expose the Akalis as tepid opportunists, he gave free rein to a formidable stalking horse in the shape of the ferociously doctrinaire Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale.
How much actual contact Sanjay and his mother had with Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale is unclear. Sanjay seems to have been the prime mover in the original plan, but he died in October 1980. While pulling another stunt, this time an aerobatic one in the skies over Delhi, he had looped-the-loop once too often and crashed to the ground within a short stroll of the prime ministerial residence. His masterplan for the Sikhs, though, had acquired a life of its own. Mark Tully, doyen of the Delhi press corps and voice of the BBC in India for as long as anyone can remember, identifies none other than the Home Minister and soon-to-be President of India, Zail Singh, himself a Sikh, as Bhindranwale’s co-handler. Together, says Tully, it had been Zail Singh and Sanjay who chose Bhindranwale and then ‘found for him a cause which was both political and religious’.6
At the time the youthful and generously bearded Bhindranwale enjoyed only a modest reputation as an effective rural preacher and a stern champion of Sikh orthodoxy. Posthumous portrayals of him as ‘bin Dranwale’, a prototype bin Laden, owe much to a physical resemblance but belie his modest origins. His new role required him to adopt a much higher profile: he was to take on the Akali Dal in their religious citadel of Amritsar.
It so happened that the Akali Dal leadership had authorised members of the Nirankari sect to hold a convention in Amritsar. Though claiming to be good Sikhs, the Nirankaris controversially revered a twentieth-century Guru, rather as the persecuted Ahmedis in Pakistan revered a nineteenth-century Prophet. Bhindranwale’s not uncongenial job was to protest against such heresy in the name of Sikh orthodoxy. He duly did so, but in such inflammatory terms that a fracas broke out in which three Nirankaris and twelve of his own supporters died. Bhindranwale thus acquired the first martyrs to his cause; and the Akalis had been exposed as less than zealous in their commitment to the doctrines of purist Sikhism.
This was in 1978. In the 1980 elections Bhindranwale campaigned actively for the Congress while stirring up more hatred of the Nirankaris. But when the Nirankaris’ leader was murdered, there began a catalogue of unexplained shootings in which the targets were all too frequently Bhindranwale’s opponents and critics. In 1981 the gunning down of a respected newspaper owner in his own home finally produced a warrant for Bhindranwale’s arrest. Yet he still somehow evaded capture, then coolly negotiated for his voluntary surrender in front of massed supporters at a time and place of his own choosing. A firefight ensued at this custodial rally, quickly followed by a string of terror attacks including train derailments, a skyjacking and numerous motorcycle pillion shootings. Innocent parties, Hindus as much as Nirankaris, were now being killed, and the perpetrators rarely captured. Evidently some of Punjab’s largely Sikh police sympathised with Bhindranwale; other policemen seemed either intimidated by him or under highly ambivalent direction.
Arrested at his own convenience, Bhindranwale was detained on his own terms, then released without trial in less than a month. The release order reportedly came from either Home Minister Zail Singh or the Prime Minister herself. Bhindranwale celebrated his charmed existence with a victory parade of heavily armed followers through the heart of Delhi. Sikhs sympathetic to his call for a rejuvenated Punjab now hailed him as ‘a hero who had challenged and defeated the Indian government’. The stalking horse, in other words, was breaking its traces and running amok, its handlers floundering in its wake, carrots outstretched, sticks out of sight. ‘By surrendering justice to petty political gains the government itself created the ogre who was to dominate the last years of Mrs Gandhi and to shadow her until her death,’ says Tully.7
As in Assam, on–off negotiations throughout 1982–83 got nowhere. The Akali leadership was both divided as to its objectives and apprehensive about Bhindranwale; at one moment they welcomed him into their Front, at the next they disclaimed him. He, as was his way, favoured invective over discussion; though his student affiliates continued to promote the idea of an independent Khalistan, he merely taunted the government and incited the Sikhs to fight for an undefined ‘liberation from Hindu enslavement’.
Meanwhile Mrs Gandhi and her go-betweens waxed hot and cold. Aided by her elder son Rajiv, lately an Indian Airlines pilot but now reluctantly shoehorned into Sanjay’s seat as co-pilot of the Congress Party, they offered concessions which were promptly withdrawn, plus threats which were not carried out.
The 1982 Asian Games in Delhi came and went without incident. Rajiv surprised everyone by getting the stadia built on time; Bhindranwale’s call for Sikhs to disrupt the Games was frustrated by highly intrusive security checks on all transport links between Punjab and the capital. He nevertheless contended that Sikhs had been humiliatingly excluded from the Games, a claim that joined the string of others in his long cartridge-belt of grievances.
For greater security he was now occupying part of a large hostel complex immediately adjacent to the Golden Temple in Amritsar. When Tully interviewed him there in early 1983,
he was sitting on a string bed … surrounded by young men, some armed with automatic weapons, some with old-fashioned Lee-Enfield rifles … and some with traditional spears. His answers to my questions could best be described as enigmatic.8
Although the hostel did not partake of the Golden Temple’s status as a recognised place of sanctuary, the authorities found it convenient to pretend that it did. Here, safe from arrest, Bhindranwale held court, directed operations, amassed a formidable armoury and afforded safe haven to various wanted persons, among them bank robbers, Marxist revolutionaries (‘Naxalites’), people-traffickers and even some smuggled Bihari Muslims trying to make their way across India from the refugee camps of Bangladesh to a new life in Pakistan.
In April 1983 they were all joined by a man who, in the main entrance to the Temple, had just shot dead the state’s Deputy Inspector-General of Police. Despite a national outcry – one in which most Sikhs joined – no one came to arrest the murderer. Bhindranwale and his people appeared immune, their reign of terror unstoppable. Besides working their way through a hit-list of enemies, his killing squads began waylaying interstate buses, segregating the Hindus on board and massacring them by the roadside. Separatism seemed not just about seceding from India, but separating Sikhs from non-Sikhs in a communal bloodbath. Hindus in neighbouring Haryana duly retaliated.
Under growing pressure to act, Mrs Gandhi at last did so. She dismissed her own Congress government in Punjab by imposing President’s rule. The President in question was now Zail Singh, he who with Sanjay Gandhi had sponsored Bhindranwale in the first place.
Meantime the Akali Dal, still trying to recapture the radical agenda, raised its own game. With Harcharan Singh Longowal, the most consistent of the Akali leaders, already holed up in a nearby hostel, fights broke out between the two factions, and Bhindranwale’s men faced the threat of expulsion. Their leader responded by shifting his headquarters across the road – from the hostel to the sacred precinc
ts of the Golden Temple itself. Neither the Akalis nor the police saw fit to prevent this move, although its enormous religious and tactical significance was known to all.
For Bhindranwale had chosen as his new quarters the Akhal Takht. A large and ornate four-storey building with a golden dome, the Akhal Takht overlooked the rectangular Holy Pool in the midst of which stood the Harmandir Sahib, the gilded sanctum sanctorum of the whole Temple complex. It also commanded the parikrama, the marble-paved walkway that surrounded the Pool, along with most of the Temple’s other buildings. Second in sanctity only to the Harmandir Sahib itself, it was from the Akhal Takht that directives were issued to the Sikh faithful and that war parties had anciently been despatched. Its symbolism was as unassailable as its position; desecrating it was unthinkable.
Regardless, Bhindranwale turned the Akhal Takht into his command-and-control centre. The Akali Dal responded by calling a Temple rally of Sikh ex-servicemen. This backfired when several of the veterans offered their services to Bhindranwale. Among them was Major-General Shahbeg (Shubeg) Singh, a hero of the Bangladesh war who had trained the Mukti Bahini. The deficit of military experience in the Akhal Takht was remedied. The command centre had acquired a commander.
During April and May 1984 the death squads issuing from the Temple upped their strike rate. Terror atrocities multiplied, and some eighty killings claimed increasingly high-profile figures. The ineffectual state police had to be augmented by units from the more disciplined Central Police Reserve Force; and it was this Force’s efforts to waylay the terrorists that led to the first rooftop exchanges of fire. Bhindranwale and General Shahbeg Singh had by now seen fit to fortify the Akhal Takht with sandbags and slit apertures. They had also established sniper positions in vantage points in and beyond the Temple. Resistance was becoming open defiance. As well as introducing more police, Mrs Gandhi alerted the army.
Last-minute talks might yet have averted catastrophe. Despite the flying of the odd Khalistan flag, Bhindranwale continued to deny that he had any political ambitions, and to scout round the issue of secession. The government was now offering concessions on Chandigarh and most of the other Anandpur Sahib demands. It insisted only that the awards be made by a specially appointed commission. Bhindranwale seemed tempted, yet baulked at the fig-leaf of a commission. He wanted a public climbdown by ‘the Pandit’s daughter’ herself. Failing that, he welcomed the prospect of a long siege, in the expectation that it would bring the Sikh faithful rushing from all over Punjab to the defence of their spiritual capital.
In response the Akali Dal also sought to widen the struggle. With immaculate ill-timing, in May 1984 its leaders announced that all grain shipments from the Punjab’s ‘breadbasket’ would be halted as of 3 June. This was the final straw for the government. Bhindranwale’s defiance affected only Punjab; a stoppage of cereals threatened the entire nation. Next day police marksmen took up positions around the Temple. Then on 2 June, the day before the grain stoppage was due to come into effect, ‘Operation Blue Star’ got the go-ahead. Mrs Gandhi went on the radio; the army advanced on the Temple.
The next day was for Sikhs the anniversary of the martyrdom of their fifth Guru. Pilgrims piled into the Golden Temple to commemorate the event even as the military opened up with machine-gun, mortar and rifle fire. The significance of the day was not lost on the martyrs-in-the-making either. Bhindranwale’s arsenal responded with deadly effect, and the disposition of Shahbeg Singh’s sharpshooters convinced India’s General Brar that a surrender was unlikely. The Temple would have to be cleared by force. Storming it under cover of darkness was the only solution; and this might mean bringing in heavy artillery.
Operation Blue Star was supposed to avoid damage to the Temple, and to be all over within forty-eight hours. It failed on both counts. Not until the stiflingly hot night of 5 June did the big guns open fire and the tanks begin forcing a way in. And not until 7 June were the defenders silenced and the bodies of Bhindranwale and Shahbeg Singh found among the dead in the ruins of the Akhal Takht.
By then the Temple looked as if it had been struck by an earthquake. Tank tracks had chewed up the marble parikrama, shells had demolished a whole frontage of the Akhal Takht, and bullets had pocked even the isled jewel that was the Harmandir Sahib. The military claimed to have killed around five hundred ‘terrorists’ for the loss of eighty-three men. As usual, unofficial calculations suggest otherwise. The troop losses were almost certainly higher, as were those of the ‘terrorists’, including an unspecified number of non-combatant pilgrims.
*
Operation Blue Star had done its job: the Golden Temple had been cleared of ‘terrorists’, Bhindranwale killed and the Akali leaders taken into custody. The army had shown, in the words of one account, ‘that the Indian state was strong enough to deal with secession and terrorism’.9 But in many eyes the appalling destruction and desecration within the Temple bore greater testimony to the courage of the defenders. Many Sikhs who had been horrified by Bhindranwale’s previous antics now applauded his ‘martyrdom’. His defence of their holiest shrine atoned for his past; the army’s sacrilegious assault ranked as a greater outrage. Bhindranwale, who in life had become a liability, in death became a legend.
It was said he had somehow survived and would rise again. Journalists in Punjab found ‘Khalistan’ flags much in evidence, and the people ‘sullen and alienated’. Heavy-handed ‘mopping up’ operations by the military didn’t help. Of the 5,000 arrested over the following weeks, many had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. In Delhi President Zail Singh, who had been kept in ignorance of the attack on the Temple till the last minute, threatened to resign.
The tension was augmented by rumours, soon confirmed, that some Sikh units within the Indian army had mutinied in sympathy with their brethren in the Temple. This was the nightmare feared by every South Asian ruler to this day – that of intercommunal conflict infecting the nation’s defence agencies. Sikhs constituted some 10 per cent of the Indian army, and formed the entire complement of two regiments. Worst affected was the Sikh Regiment itself. On the day after the Golden Temple fell, men of the regiment’s 10th Battalion stationed on the Pakistan border rose up. Following the example of the Indian mutineers of 1857, they first raided the regimental armoury, then ‘drove through the streets of Ganganagar shouting “Long Live Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale” and firing indiscriminately. A policeman was killed and another injured.’10 The mutineers then split up, half heading for Delhi, the others for Pakistan.
Mark Tully filed a report on this incident for the BBC. It was heard in India, and four days later sparked a copy-cat insurrection at the regimental depot in distant Bihar. Again the mutineers, this time 1,500 strong, helped themselves to arms and ammunition, killing their brigadier in the process. They then set off in convoy for Amritsar, over 1,200 kilometres away. Helicopters scoured the highway, but it was the roadblocks that halted them. In the final shoot-out near Varanasi some thirty-five were killed. The rest were rounded up, as were the earlier mutineers; and later outbreaks in Jammu and Pune (Poona) came to nothing. ‘The most serious crisis of discipline the Indian army had faced since Independence’ fizzled out in dissension over whether or not it would be wise to court-martial the offenders. But at least the nightmare scenario had been pre-empted. India was not about to experience the military in-fighting that racked Bangladesh.
Further afield, the Sikh diaspora responded to events in Amritsar with less fear of the consequences. In Vancouver the ‘We Love Bhindranwale’ bumper stickers were replaced by ‘Death to Indira’ ones. Five thousand Sikhs demonstrated in Toronto, 3,000 in New York’s Madison Square Garden and 30,000 in the UK’s Birmingham. From London Dr Jagjit Singh Chauhan renewed the diaspora’s financial support for Bhindranwale’s pro-Khalistan students and announced the formation of a Khalistan government-in-exile. He also informed one of the BBC’s domestic channels that Mrs Gandhi’s life would be forfeit. She and her family might expect to ‘be beheaded … in a
few days’, he said, adding, ‘That is what the Sikhs will do.’ The Thatcher government reprimanded him for incitement.
Similar threats reverberated in certain Sikh circles in India. Privately Mrs Gandhi heeded them: in a handwritten testament she mused about dying the ‘violent death … some fear and a few are plotting’. But publicly she dismissed such thoughts. ‘I do not care if I live or die,’ she told a rally in Orissa.11 When advised to replace Sikh members of her personal bodyguard with non-Sikhs, she retorted, ‘Aren’t we secular?’12 The putdown was delivered without a hint of sarcasm.
A political animal to the last, she promptly picked another fight with Sikh orthodoxy over the repairs to the damage in the Golden Temple. Its management insisted that on religious grounds the work must be done by Sikh volunteers; she insisted it be performed by the government, which might then claim the credit for it. It was business as usual, in other words. Within a month of Operation Blue Star she was engineering the downfall of another state government.
The victim this time was the administration of Dr Farooq Abdullah in Jammu and Kashmir. Relations between the Abdullah family and the Nehrus merit a book of their own. Both were proud to call themselves Kashmiris, yet neither did much to resolve the ambiguities of Kashmir’s status. Just as Pandit Nehru had valued Sheikh Sahib’s friendship yet kept him in detention, so Indira had engineered his National Conference’s return to power only to turn against it.