‘Mrs Gandhi’s place in history is assured. No one person in the history of the world, neither dead nor living, neither man nor woman, held the destinies of so many people for so long a time in her hands as did Indira Gandhi. No monarch ruled over so vast a territory inhabited by so numerous a people as diverse in race, creed, language and ways of living as did Indira Gandhi. She did not inherit an empire nor was sat upon a throne by a set of courtiers. She was put on the seat of authority by the free will of her own people. She wore no crown save the crown of thorns that rulers often have to wear. She bore the awesome burden of office with conscientious responsibility, fortitude and cheerfulness. I recall how in the 1979 election campaign, she toured the country by plane, jeep, bullock cart and on foot, nonstop and without rest or sleep for thirty-six hours or more, and arrived at a social function looking as fresh, smiling and as radiantly beautiful as she always did. I know of no other woman who combined in her appearance regal dignity with feminine charm as she did and answered Hillaire Belloc’s description of a really beautiful woman:
Her face was like the king’s command
When all the swords are drawn.
‘She took the hazards of life with unparalleled courage, and ultimately paid the price for it with her own life. As the bard said: “She and comparisons are odious.” Before her the great figures of history, the Ceasars of Rome and the Tsars of Russia, the Bonapartes of France and the Kaisers of Germany, the monarchs of England, the presidents and prime ministers of our times pale into littleness. ‘She was not of this age but for all time.’ We will not see the likes of her in our lifetimes. About her we can say with conviction: she will forever be honoured, forever mourned.
‘Mrs Gandhi did not subscribe to any dogmas. Her one political commitment was to keep the country united. That persuasion and belief ripened into faith and that faith became a passionate intuition.
‘While paying my personal tribute to Mrs Indira Gandhi, I cannot overlook mentioning the fact that her killers were men entrusted to watch over her safety. They betrayed their sacred trust because they were blinded by fanatic hate after what had happened in Amritsar in the first week of June.
‘I have no hesitation in condemning this dastardly act in the strongest of terms. I have, on several occasions, described Operation Bluestar as an error of judgement and I am convinced that but for that one error of judgement, we would not have had to pay so heavy a price as the loss of a prime minister we loved and respected and the loss of thousands of innocent lives that followed. Rulers have many hard decisions to take and Mrs Gandhi must have weighed all the consequences before she made that fateful decision. However, I have not the slightest doubt in my mind that nothing would have hurt her more than to see that for a crime committed by two or more individuals, their entire community would be stigmatized. I fervently hope that our new rulers will honour the memory of our leader by seeing that the Sikhs are once again rehabilitated as trusted and loyal citizens of their motherland.
‘And finally, since the nation has chosen Mrs Gandhi’s son to lead the country, let me assure him that as long as he treads the right path we will lend him our unstinted support in his endeavour to lead the country to prosperity. Let this be our prayer: “Today he puts forth the tender leaves of hope, tomorrow may he blossom and may the fruits of honour come thick upon him.”’
However, hardly a word of it was reproduced in the press, All India Radio or Doordarshan because in between I had also lashed out in angry condemnation of the deliberate and planned massacre of thousands of innocent Sikhs in towns and cities of northern India. This holocaust hardly stirred the emotions of either the Congress or the opposition MPs. Once again I felt isolated and alone.
Despite my deep-seated reservation against the policies of the ruling party in dealing with Punjab’s problems, when Rajiv Gandhi signed the accord with Sant Longowal, I applauded it as the birth of a new dawn. Twice I had occasion to speak on the resurgence of terrorism - the transistor bombs in Delhi and the chain of killings following Tohra’s abduction of authority by handing over the Golden Temple complex to the Damdami Taksal, and gangsters of the United Akali Dal. Besides condemning them as common criminals, I recommended forcible entry into the Golden Temple to oust illegal squatters; peaceful if possible, by force if necessary. I roundly condemned the hoisting of Khalistani flags as acts of treason and warned the authorities that Punjab was ready for another bloodletting but the sooner the surgical operation was performed, the less bloody it would be; the longer it was delayed, the greater would be the danger of the cancer spreading. This is for the record of those who glibly describe me as a Sikh communalist.
In the six years I was member of the House I reckon I made an average of two major speeches and at least half a dozen other interventions during the question hour, or as special mentions in every session. Whatever satisfaction that gave me, I became more and more aware of the irrelevance of Parliament in directing the country’s affairs. Primarily, it is the fault of the members themselves because they do not take Parliament seriously enough. Almost every day the hall empties after the question hour and the zero hour. In the afternoon there are seldom more than two dozen members present. Ministers pay scant attention to what members are saying and are usually busy whispering to their cronies or reading their files. The press is equally guilty of indifference. No sooner members file out of the House, they disappear from the press gallery leaving only the PTI and UNI representatives to record whatever they can or wish. Without exception, most reporting of Parliamentary debates which appear in our national newspapers under the caption ‘From Our Parliamentary Correspondent’ are tinctured rehashes of versions put out by the wire services. I know this from experience as an editor and a parliamentarian. It is not surprising that there is no follow-up of suggestions made by the members.
Once, when I was feeling particularly frustrated with Parliament, I vent my feelings in the column I wrote for The Hindustan Times. I was emboldened by one article written by Auberon Waugh in The Spectator in which he had many nasty things to say about British MPs: useless, arrogant, illiterate were some of the expressions he had used in describing them as dogsbodies.
I concealed my real feelings by prefacing each paragraph with the sentence ‘Dare I use the following words for our own MPs?’ and liberally quoted Waugh. Very promptly Satpal Mittal, Congress MP from Punjab, had a large number of his party colleagues sign a privilege motion against me and presented it to M. Hidayatullah, demanding that I be hauled up for contempt of the House. Hidayatullah gave his ruling a few days later. He first read out what I had written, then the construction put on my words by Satpal & Co., then proceeded to dismiss their understanding of my words in his usual witty and erudite manner.
Instead of hauling me up, he poked fun at them for lacking in a sense of humour. He said everything short of calling them a pack of assess. In his farewell speech to the House he referred to this privilege motion against me as the most enjoyable and memorable event in the six years of his chairmanship.
Despite the growing feeling of disenchantment with the relevance of Parliament to national affairs, I was anxious to get a second term either by nomination or election from the Punjab. If nothing else, being an MP makes you a member of the elitist of clubs in India. Once having tasted the privileges and perks that go with it, I was loath to lose them. I made half-hearted attempts to get back into the Rajya Sabha on the plea that my voice still mattered more with educated Punjabis than that of any other individual. I must have overestimated my importance. Neither the president nor the prime minister shared my self-esteem and did not think I deserved a second term. They may be right. What difference does it make whether or not an MP opens his mouth? The caravan marches on.
Khalistan
Sikhs who form under 2 per cent of the population of India are nevertheless a formidable minority. Unlike the other minorities like the Muslims and the Christians who are scattered in different parts of the country, almost 85 per cent of the Sikh popu
lation is concentrated in Punjab on India’s sensitive border with Pakistan. They are the most prosperous agricultural community of India, form at least a tenth of India’s defence forces and have more representation in civilian services than warranted by their numbers. They are also more conscious of their rights and, being somewhat aggressive by nature, when roused can become a major problem to the administration. Almost two decades ago, a section of them started a movement demanding an independent sovereign state of their own - Khalistan. It was a movement with enormous potential for mischief.
Ever since the initially pacifist Sikh community founded by Guru Nanak (1469-1539) was baptized by the last of its ten Gurus, Gobind Singh (1677-1708), into the militant fraternity called the Khalsa (pure) in AD 1699, every congregational prayer in Sikh temples (gurdwaras) has ended with a chant ‘Raj kareyga khalsa’ - the Khalsa will rule. In actual fact the Sikhs ruled Punjab for barely fifty years till 1849 when their kingdom was annexed by the British and made a province of India. Since then the resolve to become rulers was regarded by the Sikhs themselves as no more than a ritual chanting of a pious but improbable hope.
The partition of India in 1947 found the Sikhs equally divided with almost half their population in Pakistan. They were driven out of Pakistan with considerable violence and in their turn drove out Muslims in East Punjab with bloody slaughter. Then for the first time in their history the Sikhs found themselves in a majority in certain districts of Indian Punjab. Taking advantage of the principle of demarcation of state boundaries on the basis of language they pressed for a unilingual Punjabi-speaking state. After much agitation, a Punjabi suba (Punjabi-speaking state) was conceded in 1966 in which they formed 55 per cent of the population with the Hindus, who were also Punjabi speaking, reduced to a minority of 45 per cent. Ever since, Indian Punjab has, except for a short period of six months, been ruled by a Sikh chief minister.
The Sikhs’ grievances against the government are basically propaganda material for political parties. Before Partition they were a community of landlords; after Partition they were reduced to small holders who had to till their own lands. They enjoyed several privileges during British rule: they formed almost a quarter of the British Indian army and were well represented in the British colonial police; their abolition of separate electorates put them on par with other religious communities. Sikh politicians found many grievances against the government which they could air to gain political leverage: Punjabi-speaking subdistricts in neighbouring Haryana, Himachal and Rajasthan have not been incorporated into Punjab; Punjab has to share its capital, Chandigarh, and its high court with Haryana; Sikh squatters in the Nepal Terai (Uttar Pradesh) have been served with notices of ejection after they had cleared the malarial swamps and made them productive; Punjab has not been given the control of hydroelectric complexes like Bhakra-Nangal which lie in its territory and substantive portions of the river waters which run through it have been allocated to other states; Punjab has hardly any heavy industry and much of its income invested elsewhere. And so on. Along with these grievances, which have some substance, they have added others, mainly against the government’s interference in the religious affairs of the Sikhs by manipulating elections to governing bodies of their innumerable gurdwaras.
Thousands of Sikh gurdwaras scattered all over India are governed by an apex body, the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC) located in the Sikhs’ holy city, Amritsar. Ever since its inception in 1925, it has been controlled by one or the other faction of the Akali party. The SGPC wields enormous patronage. The annual income from the gurdwaras is over tens of crores per year. Apart from appointing priests, hymn singers and caretakers to these gurdwaras, there are dozens of colleges and hundreds of schools and orphanages run by it. The president of the SGPC enjoys a unique religio-political status. The jostling for power requires every group to outdo the other in championing Sikhs’ grievances. Waiting in the wings is the Congress party which also has a sizeable following among the Sikhs. But having to keep up the pretence of being secular it has not been able to openly enter the fray over control of religious institutions.
The demand for a sovereign Sikh nation was first raised in 1971 by Dr Jagjit Singh Chauhan, one-time minister of an Akali government of Punjab. No one in India took much notice of it and the best Chauhan could do was gather a few supporters among Sikh emigrants living in Canada, the United States and England. He also got some encouragement from the Pakistani government. He was received both by the late Mr Bhutto and General Zia-ul-Haq. Pakistan radio, which beams a regular service consisting of chanting of Sikh hymns to India, has always highlighted this demand.
The movement slowly gained adherents among some Sikh intellectuals. At a meeting of the Akali party in 1973 in Anandpur, where Guru Gobind had first baptized the Khalsa, a resolution demanding a self-determined status for the Sikhs was passed. The sentiment was taken a step further when the SGPC presided over by Tohra declared the Sikhs to be a nation apart from the Hindus. Subsequently, the Sikh Educational Conference, a body known for its conservatism allowed Ganga Singh Dhillon, a prosperous businessman living in Washington, DC to introduce a resolution to the effect that the Sikhs should apply to the United Nations for recognition as a separate nation and be granted ‘associated status’. Although the organizers of the conference later rescinded the resolution, the mischief had been done. For the first time the government took serious note of this new development in Sikh politics. Both Chauhai and Dhillon have since been refused entry into India.
Meanwhile, yet another extremist faction rose under the leadership of an almost unknown and semi-literate head of a religious group located in village Bhindranwale near Amritsar. This was thirty-seven-year-old ‘Saint’ Jarnail Singh who had been conducting parties of hymn singers to different Sikh villages and persuading Sikhs who had been straying from the spartan traditions prescribed for the Khalsa (to wear their hair unshorn, not to smoke, etc.) to be rebaptized. Bhindfanwale’s followers clashed with followers of a Sikh subsect called the Nirankaris who revere a living guru as a reincarnation of the founder of the faith, Guru Nanak. This is unpardonable heresy for orthodox Sikhs. There were several bloody encounters between Bhindranwale’s armed men and the Nirankaris with killings on either side. On 24 April 1980 the Nirankari guru, Baba Gurbachan Singh, was slain in Delhi. His assassins are still untraced. The murder was followed by the slaying of other Nirankari leaders and wild spree killings of innocent Hindus by Sikh extremists, including Lala Jagat Narain, an aged proprietor of a chain of Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu papers which had vociferously opposed Khalistan. By fortuitous circumstances Bhindranwale came to be associated with the demand for Khalistan and the leader of Sikh crusaders against Hindu domination. He was arrested on 20 September 1981 but only at a place and time of his own choosing. He was later released for lack of evidence connected with the slayings. An Indian Airlines plane was hijacked by his followers demanding his release and recognition of Khalistan. Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale emerged as the most powerful force in the Sikh community.
Khalistan had no support among Indian Sikhs living outside Punjab. It gained some adherents in the central districts of Punjab and amongst young hotheads of the Sikh Students’ Federation. It continues to draw most of its sustenance from Sikh emigrants in the United States, Canada and England who have hardly any stake in its establishment. And it continues to be exploited by both its supporters and its opponents to extract concessions from the government.
There is a strong element of emotional insecurity behind all the demands of exclusiveness that have from time to time been voiced by Sikh leaders. The vast majority of Sikhs are converts from Hinduism and their relationship with the Hindu community continues to be very close. Till recently, many Hindu families of north-western Punjab and Sind brought up one of their sons as a Khalsa Sikh, gave their daughters in marriage to them and more often than not preferred to worship in Sikh gurdwaras rather than Hindu temples. The borderline between Sikhism and Hinduism was always very bl
urred: a Khalsa Sikh who cut off his long hair and beard became, for all practical purposes, a Hindu belonging to Sikhism. Professor Lorimer, a well-known philologist, once lecturing on the religious communities of northern India was asked, ‘We’ve heard about Hindus and Muslims, but who exactly are the Sikhs that you have been speaking about?’ The learned professor replied, ‘It is awfully hard to define a Sikh; he is a kind of vicious Hindu.’
Since independent India opted for secularism and abolished privileges based on religious affiliations which the British had given to the Sikhs, an ever-increasing number of young Sikhs have been giving up the external forms of the Khalsa and relapsing back into the Hindu fold. It has been surmised by some scholars of Sikhism that if the pace at which young Sikhs are abandoning their Khalsa tradition continues, it will not be long before Sikhs become a subsect of Hindus. This fear has haunted the orthodox leadership which tries to harp on differences and whip up resentment against discrimination practised on Sikhs by the Hindus. One of the commonest is that Hindus look down upon the Sikhs as a naive, stupid people. The Sikhs, they allege, because they have long hair bound under heavy turbans feel the heat excessively and lose their wits at noon time. All one has to say to a Sikh is bara baje (it’s twelve o’clock) and see his intemperate reaction to the insult. A whole genre of Sardarji jokes are current. Though many are manufactured by Sikhs themselves, heaven help a non-Sikh who takes the liberty of cracking one in their company. The latest on Khalistan is about a dialogue between a Hindu and a Sikh. Asked the Hindu: ‘Why are you Sikhs demanding Khalistan? Don’t you realize how dangerous this demand can be for the unity of India?’
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