The Good, the Bad and the Ridiculous

by Khushwant Singh

  ‘To whom?’ I asked.

  ‘To Protima Bedi,’ he replied.

  Protima had two grown-up children by Kabir Bedi. She had not yet made a name as an Odissi dancer, but had gained wide publicity by streaking on Juhu beach. The pictures of her running across the sands without a stitch on had appeared in many papers. She had a most fetching figure. Johar was at least thirty years older than her, a grandfather in daily communication with his ex-wife, Rama. However, I went along with my photographer.

  There were dozens of photographers and press people present. Johar was dressed in a beige silk kurta-pyjama, with his hair freshly dyed jet-black. Protima was decked up in a bridal sari, with a lot of gold jewellery on her. With one eye, you could see that this was a publicity lark for both of them. The next morning’s papers had them on their front pages.

  They were back in the news. No marriage followed. Johar talked no more about Protima Bedi.

  I had a farewell dinner of sorts before I left Bombay for good. It was like old times. Rama, Pheeno and me, with Johar joining us later with Chinese food. By now, Pheeno had taken to snuggling in my lap and grunting with contentment. ‘She seems to be fonder of you than me,’ remarked Johar. ‘Would you like to take her?’ I agreed to accept Pheeno. I would take her with me to Delhi to my family, every one of whom was passionately fond of animals. ‘It is like having to give my daughter away. I can’t do it,’ Johar said by way of explanation. I understood his feelings.

  I continued to communicate with Rama long after Johar went out of my life. All said and done, I was fonder of her than her ex-husband. However, I felt a pang of anguish when I read of Johar’s death in Bombay. And I wondered what became of Pheeno.

  INDIRA GANDHI

  (1917–1984)

  In 2009, the twenty-fifth death anniversary of Indira Gandhi occasioned a flood of literature and huge media coverage across the country. That was as it should have been because she was, in fact, the Queen Empress of India for long years and changed the face of the country by ruthless plastic surgery. She made the Congress subservient to her wishes, nationalized banks, deprived princely families of their unearned privy purses, inflicted a humiliating defeat on Pakistan and liberated Bangladesh. Dev Kant Baruah was not much off the mark when he hailed her thus: ‘India is Indira, Indira is India. Tere naam ki jai! Tere kaam ki jai!’ However, it must not be forgotten that there were two distinct sides to her character—the public persona, and the private. She was a great public leader, but at the same time she was very petty in her private life. She was undoubtedly a most beautiful woman, but she disliked other good-looking women and humiliated them, among whom were Tarakeshwari Sinha and Maharani Gayatri Devi. And the number of people she and her family put behind bars during the Emergency makes one sick. But she was able to get away with what she did because India’s poor millions loved her as ‘Amma’—Mother.

  I first met her when she was still unmarried and had stopped in Lahore on her way to Kashmir. I must have been about eighteen years old then. Indira was staying with friends who brought her over to our house. She appeared very shy and would not talk much. I remember thinking of her as a ‘goongi gudiya’—a mute doll. Years later, when I met her in Delhi, she did not seem to recollect that meeting, though I have pictures of her at our house.

  Indira Gandhi was a very good-looking woman—not the pin-up kind but an indescribable aristocratic type. She reminded me of Hilaire Belloc’s lines:

  Her face was like the King’s command

  When all the swords are drawn

  I have been asked if I ever wanted to get close to her in the physical sense; the answer is no. There was something cold and haughty about her. Not my type at all, for I like women who are vivacious and spontaneous. But she had her set of admirers. Amongst the many men who were bowled over by her looks was President Lyndon Johnson of the United States. Just before a dinner hosted by the Indian ambassador B.K. Nehru and his wife for Indira, at which Vice President Hubert Humphrey was to be the guest of honour, Lyndon Johnson stayed on tossing glass after glass of bourbon on the rocks while talking to Indira. He readily agreed to stay on for dinner, to which he had not been invited. At a reception at the White House, Lyndon Johnson asked her to dance with him; she refused on the grounds that it would hurt her image in India. The president understood. He wanted to see ‘no harm [come] to the girl’ and sanctioned three million tons of wheat and nine million dollars of aid to India.

  The only person on record who made derogatory references to Indira’s looks and intelligence was her aunt, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit. Indira never forgave her (or her daughters) for slighting her and denied her senior diplomatic assignments. Indira Gandhi never forgave anyone who said anything against her.

  Indira Gandhi’s greatest triumph was the way she handled the Bangladesh crisis, wherein all her skills came together. She made a complete fool of the Pakistanis. India was being flooded by refugees entering the country. She tried to garner international support and went around the world, telling people what was happening. When she realized that the crisis had to reach a climax, she proved very astute. It was perhaps on her advice that the Indian Army built up the Mukti Bahini. By the time that President General Yahya Khan realized what was happening and declared war, the Indian Army was well inside Bangladesh. In less than a fortnight, the Pakistani Army surrendered. It was, by all accounts, a masterful strategy, and Indira Gandhi very deservedly got the Bharat Ratna.

  At the end of the crisis, The Illustrated Weekly was the only Indian journal to persist in pressuring the government to release the 93,000 Pakistani prisoners of war. I took a delegation of four members, including one-time Indian ambassador to the US Gaganbhai Mehta and the writers Khwaja Ahmed Abbas and Krishan Chandra, to call on Indira Gandhi in an attempt to facilitate the release of the prisoners. Mrs Gandhi snubbed Gaganbhai, calling him an American stooge, and silenced Abbas and Chandra. Then she turned on me and said that my writings were embarrassing her. I replied that the object of my exercise was indeed to embarrass her and I was glad to know that I was succeeding. She fixed me with a look of contempt and said, ‘Mr Singh, you may regard yourself as a great editor. But let me tell you, you do not know the first thing about politics.’ I said, ‘Mrs Gandhi, what is morally wrong can never be politically right. Holding prisoners of war after the war is over is morally wrong.’ She again turned her large, dark eyes on me. ‘Thanks for lecturing me on morality,’ she said and dismissed us. I was convinced that she would never speak to me again. But a few days later, when she was in Bombay, she sought me out at a large and crowded reception and chatted with me in a friendly manner. I knew then that I had driven my point home.

  In 1975, with accusations of corruption in the government soaring and the opposition calling for total revolution, the country was fast sliding into chaos. Every other day, there was a bandh of some kind. Schools and colleges stayed shut for days. Large processions marched through streets, smashing shop windows and wrecking cars. Indira Gandhi was driven to despair. Her position became further vulnerable when the Allahabad high court held her guilty of electoral malpractices and disqualified her from Parliament membership. Persuaded by advisors such as Siddhartha Shankar Ray and Sanjay Gandhi, she imposed Emergency on the country. My attitude to the Emergency was ambivalent. I supported the move to clamp down on law-breakers (including Jayaprakash Narayan, whom I otherwise admired), but I felt that the censorship of the press would prove counter-productive as it would deprive editors like me, who supported Mrs Gandhi, of credibility. For three weeks, I did not publish The Illustrated Weekly and, when forced to resume publication, gave instructions that no photographs of Mrs Gandhi or her ministers were to be used. I was treated gently, as I was regarded as a friend by Mrs Gandhi and Sanjay, and summoned to Delhi to meet her. I had my say, protesting against the censorship, and told her before leaving, ‘My family is sure that if I spoke my mind you would have me locked up.’ She smiled and bade me goodbye. The Weekly was treated as a special case and I pu
blished articles by critics of the Emergency and pleaded for the release of political prisoners.

  There was, as I have said, a strong streak of vengefulness in Indira Gandhi. A lot of people who were jailed during the Emergency were victims of the spite of the Gandhis. Despite repeated requests and pleas for the release of such prisoners, Mrs Gandhi refused to relent—including in the case of Bhim Sain Sachar, ex-chief minister of Punjab, then in his seventies. One thing that Indira Gandhi did not suffer from was compassion. Her pettiness was particularly evident in her dealings with her younger daughter-in-law, Maneka. After Sanjay—whom Mrs Gandhi both loved and feared—died, she made Maneka unwelcome in her home and showed a marked preference for Sonia.

  Another characteristic she developed after years of being in power was to snub people who least expected to be. At my repeated requests, she agreed to see Kewal Singh, who had been her foreign secretary and ambassador in Washington. Then she proceeded to give him a dressing down till he broke down. She did the same to Jagat Mehta, whose posting as ambassador to Germany she cancelled after it had been accepted.

  When it came to Operation Blue Star, I believe Indira Gandhi was misled. From my years of acquaintance with her, I know that she had no prejudice at all against any community—not against Muslims, not against Sikhs. She consulted people about handling Bhindranwale and got contradictory advice from different sides. She didn’t trust President Zail Singh, so she turned to the army. She was assured by senior officials that once the army went in and surrounded the Golden Temple, no fight would be put up and Bhindranwale would surrender. I know that when she went to the temple two or three days after the operation, she was horrified because bodies were still floating in the sarovar and there were bloodstains that were being cleaned up. She turned to Major General K.S. Brar and asked, ‘What is all this?’ She had believed the army when she was told that there would be no fighting.

  I was still a Member of Parliament when Mrs Gandhi was assassinated on the morning of 31 October 1984. Despite my differences with her, I was deeply distressed to hear of her dastardly murder at the hands of her own security guards, both Sikhs. She had many shortcomings, but perhaps that alone was what made her human. She may not have been a likeable person, but she was, in her own way, a woman to be loved and admired.

  JARNAIL SINGH BHINDRANWALE

  (1947–1984)

  Through the 1970s and ’80s, Hindu-Sikh tensions continued to bedevil the Punjab. They came to a head with the rise of Sikh fundamentalism under Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, who led terrorist activities aimed against Punjabi Hindus in the early 1980s.

  In an attempt to get better acquainted with Punjab politics, I decided to go to Amritsar on the day the Akalis launched their Dharam Yudh Morcha in 1982. I had strong reservations about it. In the morning, I met leaders of the Congress and the BJP. In the afternoon, I walked up to the Manji Sahib Gurdwara adjoining the Golden Temple to listen to Akali leaders and take in the scene. There must have been over 20,000 Sikhs sitting on the ground and another five to ten thousand standing around. On the dais, beside the Granth Sahib, sat the elite of the Akali party: Sant Harcharan Singh Longowal, Jathedar Tohra, ex-chief minister Prakash Singh Badal, ex-finance minister Balwant Singh, ex-Members of Parliament Balwant Singh Ramoowalia and Nirlep Kaur, as well as the sitting MP Rajinder Kaur. The shining star of the galaxy was Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale.

  Tohra spotted me standing in the crowd and sent two men to fetch me. Very reluctantly, I allowed myself to be dragged along and found myself seated in the front row between the Granth Sahib and the microphone. Most of the speeches that followed were directed at me. I find it very painful to sit on the ground and had to keep shifting my position to give relief to my aching knees and bottom. As one fiery speech followed another, the crowd became restless and clamoured for Bhindranwale. At last he came to the microphone, amid thunderous cries of ‘Boley So Nihal—Sat Sri Akal!’ He was a tall, lean man with an aquiline nose, fiery eyes and a long, flowing beard. In his left hand he held a silver arrow, the sort seen in pictures of Guru Gobind Singh and Maharaja Ranjit Singh. A bandolier charged with bullets ran across his chest. He had a pistol attached in its holster and held a four-foot-long kirpan in his right hand.

  Bhindranwale had never seen me. I heard him turn to one of his cronies and ask: ‘Eh kaun hai?’—who is he? I heard my name mentioned. He knew about me and what I had written against him. I had issued instructions that the prefix sant (saint) was not to be used with his name in any reference to him in the paper I edited. An Australian pressman had told him that I thought that Bhindranwale was aiming to become the eleventh Guru of the Sikhs. ‘If that fellow really said that,’ Bhindranwale had replied, ‘I will have him and his family wiped out.’ The Australian had quickly recanted in order to save our lives.

  Like those of the others, Bhindranwale’s speech too was addressed to me. ‘I don’t know this Sardar Sahib sitting near my feet,’ he started. ‘They tell me he is the editor of some English paper called the Hindustan Times. I can’t speak English. I am told he writes that I create hatred between Sikhs and Hindus. This is a lie. I am a preacher. I go from village to village, telling Sikhs to come back to the path of the tenth Guru. I tell them to stop clipping their beards, to refrain from taking opium and smoking tobacco, I baptize them into the Khalsa Panth.’ There were loud cries of ‘Sat Sri Akal’ to express approval at this. Bhindranwale warmed to his theme. ‘If I had my way, you know what I would do to all these Sardars who drink whisky-shisky every evening? I would douse them in kerosene oil and set fire to the bloody lot.’ The announcement was greeted with prolonged cries of ‘Boley So Nihal—Sat Sri Akal’. It was ironic that the vast majority of the audience applauding him were Sikh Jats notorious for their addiction to hard liquor. I turned to Badal and Balwant Singh, both of whom had taken Scotch at my home and said, ‘What Chief Minister Darbara Singh has been unable to do with all his police, this chap will do with one matchstick.’ They sniggered.

  Over time, Bhindranwale’s speeches became more acerbic and contemptuous of Hindus. He would refer to Mrs Indira Gandhi as ‘Panditan di dhee’ or ‘Bahmani’—‘that Pandit’s daughter’ or ‘the Brahmin woman’. Hindus were ‘dhotian, topian waley’—‘those who wear dhotis and caps’. In one speech, he exhorted every Sikh to kill thirty-two Hindus—not thirty-one, not thirty-three, only thirty-two, he said—in that way, the entire population of Hindus would be accounted for.

  Through the course of my attempts to document the recent history of the Punjab and Sikhs, the one thing I have been unable to understand to my satisfaction is the phenomenon of Bhindranwale. When he first burst onto the Punjab scene, I had dismissed him as one of the hundreds of rustic preachers who are found all over a countryside where sants are a dime a dozen. By the time he entrenched himself in the Golden Temple complex and launched his anti-Hindu tirades, I was describing him as a ‘demented hate-monger’. I do not know why more Sikhs did not denounce him as a homicidal maniac.

  During the days when he was making his hateful utterances, I called on Sant Longowal, nominal head of the Dharam Yuddh Morcha, in his room in the offices of the SGPC. The meeting did not yield much copy; I sensed that he was unhappy with Bhindranwale but was unable to do anything about him. Bhindranwale was entrenched in the Akal Takht, and his armed bodyguards had the run of the Golden Temple complex and were more than eager to bump off anyone their leader wanted out of the way. I asked Longowal why he allowed Bhindranwale to say nasty things about Hindus from the sacred precincts of the Akal Takht. Longowal replied, ‘O tay saada danda hai’—he is our stave [to hit the Congress government with].

  The Bhindranwale chapter in Indian history is a perfect illustration of the disastrous results of not keeping politics separate from religion. Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale was a creation of the Congress and the Akalis. Indira Gandhi was advised by President Zail Singh that this small-time ‘kattar’—hardline Sikh preacher—should be built up as a leader to counter the ruling Akalis in Punj
ab. But soon enough, the Akalis tried to woo Bhindranwale away from their rivals and propped him up. In time, he became a monster who would turn around and destroy the very people who created him and plunge Punjab and much of the country into chaos.

  How is it that a man who had so little to say that made sense and said so much that was hateful came to gain so much popularity? The Congress tried to exploit his popularity; so did the Akalis. Both parties were thoroughly mauled by him. Longowal’s ‘saada danda’ belaboured both the Akalis and the Congress government.

  Perhaps the most plausible explanation of the Bhindranwale phenomenon comes from a compilation of essays, Punjab Today, edited by Gopal Singh of Himachal University. A paper on Sikh revivalism by Pritam Singh of Punjab University gives the background of the conditions which made the Bhindranwale phenomenon possible. Believe it or not, most of it was due to the prosperity that came with the Green Revolution. With prosperity came degeneration—the spread of uncontrolled alcoholism, smoking, drug addiction, gambling, pornography, fornication. The worst sufferers of this degeneration were women and children—wives and offspring of peasants who could not smoothly digest their prosperity. On this scene arrived Bhindranwale, preaching against such Western evils and carrying on a vigorous campaign of ‘Amritprachaar’.

  Bhindranwale’s popularity among Sikhs has an interesting lesson for our times, when Hindu fundamentalists are becoming increasingly popular among middle-class Hindus who are materially better off now than they have ever been.

  Everywhere he went, Bhindranwale baptized Sikhs by the thousands and made them swear in front of congregations that they would never again touch alcohol and drugs and so on. These baptized Sikhs did not break their oath. Money previously squandered was saved. Time previously wasted in drunkenness or being stoned was spent on more careful tillage—bringing more money. It was the women and children, their menfolk suddenly reformed, who first acclaimed him as a saviour and a saint. To this image, Bhindranwale added the macho gloss of a tough man: bandolier charged with bullets across his hairy chest, pistol at his hip, in his hand a silver arrow. The crowds loved him when he mocked Indira Gandhi and referred to the Central Government as ‘bania-Hindu sarkar’. Unemployed young men who passed out of college but could not be absorbed into their ancestral farming business were impressed by his fiery speeches and became his followers.