Midnight's Descendants

by John Keay

  The reason given for this last twist was that Farooq Abdullah, though the state’s Chief Minister, was flirting with dissident Kashmiris whom the Indian government believed to be backed by Pakistan. Similar accusations of accepting Pakistani support had been levelled at Bhindranwale but were never substantiated. In reality the Prime Minister’s hostility to Farooq seems to have been more personal. Primed on a lifetime of electoral triumphs, she took defeat as an affront to her authority. The affront had to be repaid, her authority reasserted. Like the 1980 electoral victory of the Akali Dal in Punjab, that in 1983 of Farooq’s National Conference in Kashmir could not be allowed to stand. Farooq was also throwing his weight behind a group of opposition parties elsewhere in India who were minded to fight the imminent national elections as a coalition. This recalled the Janata Party’s ganging up on her. He had to go.

  Advised by a crisis-management team that now included Rajiv instead of Sanjay, Indira picked the amenable Ghulam Mohammad Shah, Farooq’s brother-in-law, as her candidate to replace Farooq. Since the Governor of Kashmir – the man who would have to handle the switch – was her own cousin B.K. Nehru, it looked straightforward. The battle lines were drawn for another round in the inter-family feud. But when instructed to dismiss Farooq, B.K. Nehru put his foot down. A distinguished and impartial diplomat who had once dared to criticise Sanjay Gandhi’s forced sterilisations, BK declared any such move purely vindictive and wholly unconstitutional. Thus it was he who had to be removed first. He was replaced as Governor by Jagmohan Malhotra, once Sanjay’s right-hand man in clearing Delhi’s mostly Muslim slum-dwellers and later a member of the BJP. Millions of rupees were then bagged and despatched to Srinagar, there to be disbursed to enough National Conference members of the state legislative assembly to erode Farooq’s majority. He was then summoned by the new Governor and without so much as a vote of no confidence relieved of the chief ministership. The unctuous Ghulam Mohammad Shah took over at the head of a coalition formed between his breakaway Awami National Conference and Congress.

  Happily. G.M. Shah was never likely to turn into another Bhindranwale. But Mrs Gandhi’s penchant for disastrous interventions seemed undiminished. The installation of Governor Jagmohan, a Hindu with an anti-Muslim record, boded ill for communal relations in Kashmir. Likewise, the toppling of another Abdullah was seen by Kashmiris as yet further evidence of Delhi’s bad faith. This alienation of the Valley’s Muslims led inexorably to their radicalisation. Some looked abroad: a Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front had been founded in the UK by Amanullah Khan, a Pakistani citizen born in the Northern Areas who in 1984 had been held responsible for the kidnapping and murder of India’s Assistant High Commissioner in the UK. Others looked nearer to home, and to parties with an Islamist agenda like the Jamaat-e-Islami. When five years later a veritable intifada plunged J and K state into its bloodiest crisis yet, this last of Indira Gandhi’s ill-judged interventions would be remembered as the turning point.

  As if to set the seal on her Kashmiri handiwork, on 27 October 1984 Mrs Gandhi paid a flying visit to Srinagar. It was four months since Operation Blue Star, but two weeks since Margaret Thatcher, a friend and fellow Prime Minister, had narrowly escaped death from an IRA bomb in a Brighton hotel. Mrs Gandhi caught the Valley at its autumnal best: the lakeside willows wept with gold, and each giant plane tree stood rooted in a carpet of ruby-red leaves. Between briefings with Governor Jagmohan on the worsening security situation, she visited temples and consulted a holy man. The holy man sized up the moment. ‘He felt death very close to her,’ remembered one of her acolytes, not without the benefit of hindsight.

  Four days later, back in Delhi, Indira Gandhi bustled past the bougainvillea along the garden path between her residence and her office. It was just after nine on the morning of Halloween. At the garden gate she joined her hands in a namaste greeting to the duty guard. He too raised his hands, but to aim a revolver. Five shots rang out, followed by a stutter of machine-gun fire from another bodyguard. The Prime Minister slumped to the ground bleeding heavily. Despite the rush-hour traffic, she was bundled into a car and taken to hospital. Sonia Gandhi, Rajiv’s Italian-born wife, nursed her on the back seat. But she never recovered consciousness. That afternoon the doctors declared her dead.

  Both the assassins were Sikhs, and both had lately returned from Punjab. The job complete, they downed their weapons and accepted arrest. ‘I have done what I had to,’ said one. Whether or not they acted on their own account, there was no question that it was in retribution for Blue Star. Many in Punjab were already celebrating. In New York some wealthy Sikhs were filmed toasting the killers in champagne; ‘in Vancouver, it was a party … with Halloween firecrackers, bhangra dances [and] sweets distribution’.13 When one of the assassins was shot in custody and the other hanged, they, like Bhindranwale, were hailed as ‘martyrs’ by many Sikhs. And their dependants being obvious vote-winners in Punjab, more than one of them was fast-tracked to electoral success and a seat in the Punjab state assembly.

  If this was predictable then so was the reaction of many non-Sikhs. Within minutes, grief over Indira’s death found expression in a blood-hunt for anyone with a beard and a tightly-tied turban. The anti-Sikh pogrom swept through several cities, but nowhere did it rage more violently than in the capital itself. While Congress met in conclave to coopt Rajiv as its leader and install him as Indira’s uncontested successor, across town Hindus baying for revenge torched Sikh homes and businesses, massacred their inmates and desecrated Sikh shrines and gurdwaras. For three days the mobs raged unchecked by the authorities, indeed encouraged by them.

  Often they were led and directed by Congress politicians: metropolitan councillors, members of parliament, even Union [government] ministers. The Congress leaders promised money and liquor to those willing to do the job; this in addition to whatever goods they could loot. The police looked on or actively aided the looting and murder.14

  By the time a belated deployment of regular troops brought the situation under control, either 2,733 (the official figure) or 3,870 (that of the victims’ legal team) men, women and children of Delhi’s Sikh community had perished horribly at the hands of their fellow citizens. Thousands more had found refuge in makeshift camps or fled the city. Yet in the midst of this mayhem, just twenty-six people had been arrested – and all of them were Sikhs. Worse still, a quarter of a century later and despite interminable enquiries, those officials who were allegedly responsible for inciting and directing the mobs had yet to be prosecuted.15 Instead, like the families of the Prime Minister’s assassins, three of the four officials named as complicit in the atrocities were selected by Congress to contest the upcoming elections. All won handsome majorities.

  Official connivance in sectarian violence was nothing new. Like the massacres themselves, it stirred memories of Partition and horrified not just Sikhs. But the government’s reluctance to pass a vote of condolence for the victims, and its failure to bring the culprits to justice rankled no less. The violence in Punjab was not about to end.

  *

  In the December 1984 national elections Congress again swept the board. Not even Nehru or Indira had won over four hundred seats in the Lok Sabha. A combination of sympathy for Indira’s family and deep concern over the plight of the nation had brought a closing of ranks. To some minds Congress still represented the democratic commitment and confessional neutrality of Pandit Nehru; to others its appeal lay in its recent stand against separatist dissent, especially in Punjab. Either way, it posed as the only party whose nationwide roots could hold the country together. As its posters reminded the voter, his or her mark could make the difference between ‘unity and separation’. Now led by the young and presentable Rajiv at the head of a team of managerially-minded associates, it promised less confrontational tactics and more inclusive decision-making.

  True to this billing, within three years Rajiv had signed a string of conciliatory agreements, or ‘Accords’. One was with the Asom Gana Parishad, the political wi
ng and successor of the All Assam Students’ Union which in the elections had bucked the national trend and won a majority in the Assam state assembly. Among the issues addressed in the Accord was the critical question of the cut-off date in the registration of immigrants, after which their status could be challenged. Both sides settled on 1986. But the scrutiny process would prove a farce, the troubles were far from over, and the Accord, signed in 1985, could just as well have been reached in 1982. Nellie need never have happened.

  Another of the Accords, signed in 1986, was with the warring parties in Sri Lanka. In addition to some constitutional concessions to the Tamils, Colombo accepted the offer of an Indian Peace-Keeping Force (IPKF) to monitor a ceasefire agreement with the Tamil guerrillas. Since the guerrillas’ stronghold in the north was currently under pressure from government forces, the Accord pleased Tamils in India and was generally welcomed by both sides in Sri Lanka. Initially the peacekeepers numbered under 7,000. Two years later they had grown to 100,000, which was around half the size of the force that had liberated Bangladesh. Sucked into hostilities with the LTTE (Tamil Tigers), the IPKF had then fallen out with the government and was suffering heavy casualties. It was withdrawn amid much head-shaking in 1990. Fighting between the Colombo government and the Tamil guerrillas resumed almost immediately.

  Just as promising and ultimately just as counter-productive was the Kashmir Accord. Rajiv had no personal animosity towards Farooq Abdullah. Both in their forties and both keen to make a new start, they thought they could work together. An opportunity arose in early 1986 when Mrs Gandhi’s unpopular G.M. Shah ministry was dismissed after the army had to be called in to quell communal rioting. An interlude of direct rule under the hardline Governor Jagmohan proved even more divisive, and was ended by the Accord. It provided for the installation of a coalition Congress–National Conference government with Farooq back as Chief Minister.

  But this went down badly in Kashmir. Once again the state government had been changed without the electorate being consulted; it was a turnaround too many for most of the Valley’s Muslims. ‘Overnight, Farooq was transformed from hero to traitor,’ according to the journalist Tavleen Singh. ‘People could not understand how a man who had been treated the way he had by Delhi … could now be crawling to it for accords and alliances.’16 In 1987 the new coalition did win a popular mandate, but the poll was marred by widespread accusations of vote-rigging. ‘Voters were intimidated, opposition politicians were harassed, and ballot boxes were tampered [with].’17 Incensed by the result, a Muslim United Front which had been formed to contest the election quickly disintegrated into warring factions, some demanding self-determination, others secession, and nearly all in favour of a more central role for Islam.

  By now Amanullah Khan, the UK-based leader of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), was back in South Asia. Though acquitted of murdering the Indian diplomat in the UK, he had nevertheless been deported to his native Pakistan. There as of 1987 his JKLF began training militant young Kashmiris and despatching them across the Line of Control into Indian-held Kashmir. India accused General Ziaul Haq’s regime of arming and supporting them; Pakistan denied this and contended that such rumours were planted by RAW, the Indian intelligence agency.

  Both sides had good reason to ratchet up the tension. India, anxious to demonstrate that the situation in Punjab had not left it vulnerable to a Pakistan attack, conducted manoeuvres along the Pakistani border in 1986. Pakistan then over-responded with a show of force of its own. Meanwhile, along an undemarcated section at the eastern extremity of the Kashmir Line of Control (the former ‘Ceasefire Line’), troops from both sides exchanged fire whenever visibility permitted. This followed the pre-emptive Indian occupation of the Siachen Glacier in 1984. Seventy-five kilometres of moraine and ice at a mean altitude of around 6,500 metres, the Siachen Glacier was surely the most inhospitable and worthless battlefield ever contested. Yet the dispute over its status, like the glacier itself, would groan on indefinitely. Further icy skirmishes were recorded in 1990, 1995, 1996 and 1999. By the time a ceasefire was agreed in 2003, an estimated 2,000 lives had been lost in the contest for this ‘third Pole’, mostly from frostbite, pulmonary oedema and climbing accidents. Avalanches also took a heavy toll, one in 2012 burying 120 Pakistanis.

  Against this background of hostilities in the mountains and manoeuvres in the plains, the situation in the Kashmir Valley steadily worsened. Farooq Abdullah’s motorcade was attacked in 1987, and the following year bombers targeted first Srinagar’s combined telegraph and television station, and then its police chief. Tourist numbers, a fair barometer of Kashmiri confidence, plummeted. ‘Anti-Indian feeling within the Valley was mirrored by a surge of support for Pakistan.’18 Instead of celebrating India’s Independence Day on 15 August, thousands turned out a day early, in other words on Pakistan’s Independence Day. The fortieth anniversary of the Indian takeover of the state on 27 October was mourned as ‘Occupation Day’. Demonstrators carried Pakistan flags; vehicles were burnt and police attacked.

  India blamed the JKLF and its presumed Pakistani backers. The possibility that poor employment prospects, heavy-handed policing, widespread disillusionment with the democratic process and its own obduracy had alienated a new generation of Kashmiris was loftily discounted. But the JKLF also faced competition from its supposed constituency. Its violent but essentially secular agenda of ‘liberating’ the whole of what had once been the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir was in danger of being upstaged by a bewildering array of locally-based groupings, many of them armed and abetted by elements of the radical Islamist resistance to the Soviet presence in Afghanistan.

  The JKLF was therefore happy to claim responsibility for the most high-profile outrage to date: in December 1989, within days of a general election that would oust Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress government, the daughter of the newly appointed Home Minister was kidnapped. A twenty-three-year-old Muslim, Rubaiya Sayeed had somewhat unwisely been serving her medical internship at a Srinagar hospital. Returning home after a shift, she was snatched from a vehicle and disappeared.

  Her captors immediately let it be known that they would negotiate: they would trade her freedom for that of five imprisoned JKLF militants; and since this demand was phoned to a local newspaper, the press were onto it from the start. For days Rubaiya’s fate was headlines throughout India. While a refusal to negotiate would please hard-line Hindu opinion yet antagonise many Muslims and inflame the situation in Kashmir, capitulation would discredit the new government and also inflame the situation in Kashmir. Farooq advised against any deal; but by now confidence in his handling of the troubles was as rock-bottom as his popularity. After five days the new government in Delhi caved in. The militants were released to a hero’s reception, and two hours later Rubaiya Sayeed was freed.

  This affair had unexpected consequences. The government responsible was that of Vishwanath Pratap Singh, formerly Rajiv’s high-minded Finance Minister. To win the 1989 elections, V.P. Singh had formed a Janata-like ‘National Front’ that relied on the support of the resurgent BJP. After the Rubaiya fiasco, this new administration urgently needed to redeem its reputation and placate its BJP partner. To that end, in early 1990 ‘it made the worst mistake it could have’ by sending ex-Governor Jagmohan back to Kashmir.19 There were to be no more deals with the terrorists, no more concessions to Kashmiri exceptionalism. As of 1990, Rajiv’s Accord was a dead letter. Farooq resigned immediately. ‘The attempt to find a political solution to Kashmir’s problem was put aside in favour of a policy of repression.’20

  Within a couple of weeks, Governor Jagmohan’s house-to-house searches and mass arrests had provoked the action that would define the Kashmir conflict for the next decade. In the heart of Srinagar a large unarmed demonstration against Jagmohan’s crackdown converged on one of several bridges over the Jhelum river. When the crowd pushed forward onto the bridge, the police opened fire from all sides. Maybe a hundred died, some by drowning in the river, som
e from gunshot wounds.

  The worst massacre in Kashmir’s unhappy relationship with India brought thousands more onto the streets. Whatever support India still enjoyed in the Valley was now lost. From the minarets the cry of ‘Allahu Akbar’ was bracketed with shouts of ‘Azadi … Azadi’: ‘Freedom … Freedom’. Jagmohan replied with a curfew, the expulsion of foreign correspondents and blithe indifference to appeals for an inquiry. The kidnappings, killings and bombings resumed. So did the arrests, the ‘encounters’ (often a euphemism for unprovoked killings by the police) and the interrogations (often under torture). The vast encampments of the Central Police Reserve Force (CPRF) and the army, the latter’s presence being in part a reaction to increased tension with Pakistan, left the visitor in no doubt that Kashmir was under occupation. ‘By the end of 1990 there were as many as 80,000 Indians in uniform in the Valley.’21 While rarely described as a war, the new Kashmiri intifada would rank as one of the dirtiest non-wars on record.

  *

  And then there was the Punjab Accord. Back in 1985, this had been Rajiv’s topmost priority, more urgent than Kashmir and much more menacing than Assam. The high-voltage tit-for-tat of the previous year – Bhindranwale’s terror reign, Operation Blue Star, the army mutinies, Indira’s assassination and the Delhi massacres – had left the dangling wires of separatist sentiment in Punjab arcing against Hindu resentment elsewhere. Rajiv moved swiftly to defuse them. The restoration of the Golden Temple was meticulously conducted, the Akali Dal’s leaders were released from detention, and the stalled talks on vexed issues like Chandigarh were resumed.

  These were nearing conclusion when on 23 June 1985 someone’s suitcase exploded at Tokyo’s international airport: two baggage handlers were killed and others injured. Fifty-five minutes earlier, on the other side of the world and as yet unreported, Air India Flight 182, a Boeing Jumbo jet with 307 passengers and twenty-two crew, had disappeared off the radar as it entered Irish airspace in the eastern Atlantic. The two incidents were not immediately connected. Though hijackings were commonplace, the world was as yet unaccustomed to airliners being blown up in mid-air. No Jumbo had been targeted in this way. Multi-pronged terrorist attacks that were globally coordinated were unknown.