Notes On the Great Indian Circus

by Khushwant Singh

  I am particularly pained at L.K. Advani’s role in the affair by leading the rath yatra to the disputed site. I hold him in great respect as an able, clean and far-sighted politician and statesman. Whatever the political motives behind the move, he must know that however exalted he becomes in the lumpen element of Hindu chauvinists, the Muslims and the vast majority of educated non-Muslims will never forgive him. He has let down intellectuals of the country. It is very naïve of him to pretend that it is not a communal issue. What else can it possibly be except a Hindu-Muslim confrontation when it involves the destruction of a mosque and the building of a temple in its place?

  The Hindustan Times, 27 October 1990

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  The Third Gandhi

  We hang our heads down in shame. We shed tears of sorrow for what has come over our ill-starred country. Our hearts go out to Sonia and Rahul and Priyanka. Their loss is our loss; we will mourn Rajiv’s going as long as they.

  It is strange that three Gandhi’s lives should have had such tragic ends. Though the Mahatma was no relation of the other two, he was their Bapu as he was ours. If he could be murdered by one of his own children, it should not have surprised anyone that Indira Gandhi would meet her end at the hands of men to whom she entrusted her life and who were physically closest to her. And that the third Gandhi, Rajiv, should have fallen to a bomb planted by people for whose security he had committed his country’s armed forces. It is significant that in the cases of all the three Gandhis, their assassins had no personal enmity against their victims; they killed them for what they stood for.

  I had the good fortune of meeting Rajiv Gandhi many times. He was my daughter’s contemporary at Cambridge. A couple of times I was a passenger in the plane piloted by him and recipient of cups of tea he sent me. His manners were impeccable and his charm irresistible. I had several meetings with him when he became prime minister. When he signed the Punjab accord with Sant Longowal I went up to him in Parliament to congratulate him for the courage he had shown by taking the Punjab bull by the horns; I told him that for what he had done for the nation, he deserved the Bharat Ratna. When he reneged on the accord, I denounced him in Parliament and in these columns. I told him that though he was a perfect gentleman, he was a poor politician. He took both praise and criticism with a smile. The last time I met him was in my own home when he dropped in to join my son’s 50th birthday party. What adds poignancy to the tragedy is that he should have gone at a time when it seemed that the prime ministership of the country was once again within his grasp. He was a gentleman-politician who did not realize that the two don’t go together.

  The Hindustan Times, 25 May 1991

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  British Loot from India

  All victorious armies plunder, rape and kill. Some go on the rampage without the slightest concern about public opinion, but the British did it with finesse and more thoroughness. It was during my years in London as a student and then with our High Commission that I saw some of the loot they had taken from the Punjab. There was of course the diamond Koh-i-noor taken from the boy Maharajah Dalip Singh, the youngest son of Maharajah Ranjit Singh. It was cut into three: one piece each in the crowns of the King and Queen of England and one piece in the Tower of London Museum. There was Ranjit Singh’s gold-leaf-covered throne in the Victoria & Albert Museum. There are innumerable weapons: cannons, muskets, swords, spears, shields and chain-coat shirts in the War Museum. Manuscripts, documents, miniature paintings, scriptural texts, ceremonial robes—you name them, they had them, looted from all parts of India in the process of expanding their empire from the Arakan to the Indus. More than what could be seen in the museums were priceless artefacts taken by Governor Generals, army commanders, residents and senior civil servants. These were in private collections in castles and country mansions now divided between descendants of the predators. There is little hope of our ever getting any of these back to our country.

  Why I bring this subject up now is the arrival of a BBC team this week to do a radio documentary on relics of the Sikh Raj in private collections in England. The spadework was done by Harbans Singh who was a colleague in India House. His daughter Rani accompanies the team with the producer of the programme Nigel Acheson. Mark Tully, now a freelance journalist, will elicit opinions of Indians including myself.

  Harbans Singh has been able to locate many more relics than I was aware of. The biggest haul was made by Lord Dalhousie who annexed the Punjab after Sikh Darbar’s troops were finally defeated in the battle of Gujarat on Feb 21, 1849. On March 29, 1849, the Koh-i-noor which British envoys had seen earlier was handed over to the English.

  Then followed systematic loot of everything worthwhile in the Punjab. Queen Victoria desired certain objects for Windsor Castle; directors of the East India Company wanted their share, Dalhousie wanted to keep a lot for himself; other English officers took whatever was left. Some of these items were recorded in the correspondence which passed between Calcutta and London. But of most of what was pocketed by English officers, both military and civilians, there is no record.

  In the correspondence on record is a letter dated 19th December 1850 from Dalhousie to directors of the East India Company stating that he was forwarding to them two swords—one given by Holkar to Ranjit Singh and another known as ‘Rustum’ which had the genealogy of its wielders written on the blade in letters of gold. He added ‘with these also, I have sent some singular documents worthy of preservation in England.’ Among them a copy of the Dasam Granth handwritten by Guru Gobind Singh. In the same letter he asks whether they would be interested in having ‘the golden chair in which the Burra Maharajah held his state’, spear and sword which ‘according to the Sikh traditions belonged to Gooroo Gobind’ and ‘a silver bungalow’. If the directors were not keen to have them, could Dalhousie keep them for himself?

  These are only some relics of the Sikh Raj. Much more was taken from Madras, Karnataka, Bengal, Avadh and the Marathas both by the East India Company and thugs like Clive and Warren Hastings. Even after the winding up of the East India Company, viceroys and governors received valuable gifts from Indian princes when they visited their states. Some of them went to the treasure, some to line pockets of the recipients. All the loot taken from India is now in England.

  Is there anything we can do to get some of it back to our country? Our best bet is to persuade the United Nations or one of its ogranizations like UNESCO to pass a resolution that items of historical or artistic value taken as war booty should be returned to the countries of their origin.

  The Hindustan Times, 19 August 1995

  Baisakhi of the Khalsa

  Comes the great day, 1st of Baisakh (April 13) and all roads leading to Anandpur are crammed with pilgrims arriving on foot, cars, trucks and tractors converted into double-decker buses. The local administration is prepared to cater for 30 lakh visitors. Thousands of tented colonies, canteens and first-aid clinics have sprouted around the town. The bandobast has to be very pucca: one untoward incident and the situation could turn very ugly. A near stampede situation exists all the time at the entrance of the main shrine. Early this morning an old patriarch going up the steps could not bear the crush of humanity around him and died. ‘He could not have asked for a better death than on the threshold of the Guru’s darbar’, says everyone. ‘They won’t have to take his ashes too far, Kiratpur is barely four miles from here’.

  I am lucky. This time I do not have to do the journey by road. My granddaughter, Naina, and I are accommodated on a chopper ferrying VIPs which include Dr Jaspal Singh, General Jagjit Singh Arora and the Ahluwalias, Montek and his wife Isher. To make sure we are not left out, we are the first to arrive at the airport. We are welcomed by our pilot, Colonel A.P.S. Dhanoya. We are the first to scramble up into the chopper and fasten our seat belts. The journey that took four hours by road yesterday, takes us a bare 15 minutes. But dust-haze makes visibility very poor and we are unable to see anything of the spectacular sight of the marble-white gurudwara townshi
p or the temple of Naina Devi on the peak above. In a swirl of dust, we touch down on the grounds of Dashmesh Academy. Dhak (flame of the forest) and neelam (jacaranda) bloom in the forest. We are given half an hour to freshen up before we leave for the pandal where men and women who bought honour to the Khalsa Panth are to be decorated.

  The short drive from the Academy Guest House through the town and to the pandal is a not-to-be-forgotten experience. There were happy crowds of men, women and children draped in saffron and blues going from nowhere to nowhere. Although there is a lot of jostling, no one loses his or her temper. The police are uncharacteristically polite, saying ‘Behnjee, bhaijee’, etc. Nihangs display their outlandish uniforms and periodically raise the war cry ‘Boley so nihaal!’ Everyone seems to be well fed and hearty.

  We arrive at the main pandal. It has over 80,000 men and women, a sea of saffron, blue and white. I can spot many celebrities: Yogi Bhajan with a contingent of American Sikhs, Namdharis in flat white turbans and many Hindus with scarves covering their heads. Agriculture Minister Gurdev Singh Badal is holding forth on the microphone. After regailing the audience with self-manufactured dialogues that took place between Guru Gobind Singh and the Pajn Piaras, he tells us how Jayalalitha celebrated her foster son’s marriage by having it performed in an airplane, and how a Bombay industrialist who wanted to outdo her had his son’s (or daughter’s) marriage performed at the bottom of the sea in a submarine. And how Guru Gobind Singh let his wife, Mata Sundari, arrange betrothals of all their sons without any fuss and without consulting him. A few times, Captain Kanwaljit Singh Dhindsa, MP, taps him on the shoulder and asks him to wind up. He goes on and on. He has a captive audience and is enjoying himself hugely. He is said to be the chief minister’s favourite, and from the same village. At long last, the audience gets restless and he ends his long-winded, pointless oration.

  The real business of awarding scrolls of honour and mementos to men and women who did the Khalsa proud begins. It is a long list comprising soldiers, airmen, conquerors of Everest, freedom fighters, writers, artists and social workers. Most have been recognized posthumously: their widows or descendants come to receive the awards on their behalf. Many of the living awardees are decrepit and have to be helped up to the stage. Much the loudest applause (the Khalsa don’t clap, they bolo-jaikaras) goes to Sant Baba Virsa Singh who arrives with his latest 200 disciples, including B.L. Sharma and Prem. Virsa Singh is a mountain of a man who looks more mountainous with his huge white turban and a snowy-white long, flowing beard. The pandal resounds with round after round of ‘Boley so Nihal! Sat Sri Akal!’

  Some Chandigarh pressmen accost me and ask, ‘How do you react to all this? You admit to being a non-believer’.

  I answer honestly. ‘I am overwhelmed by the reception. I know my time to meet my Maker, if there is one, is drawing near. On His own, He is not likely talk to me. I will not need to talk to Him. I will show Him my award and tell Him the Khalsa Panth has given me a passport to paradise signed by Parkash Singh Badal. I do not need a visa from you.’

  The Tribune, 8 May 1999

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  The Way We Are

  To Fit The Crime

  Some time ago a Delhi judge sentenced a rapist to life imprisonment. At the time I had suggested that the more appropriate sentence could have been to give the convicted man option between spending the rest of his life in prison (in India a life sentence may mean no more than 10 years in jail) or undergo surgery which would forever deprive him of the power to indulge in sex. A doctor friend tells me that there is no need to resort to such drastic measures as castration as there are drugs available which substantially reduce man’s sex urge. Their only side-effect is enlargement of male breasts to female sizes—no great calamity. The chief difficulty in imposing these more rational forms of punishment is the absence of sanction of the law. Framers of the Indian Penal Code could not think of punishments other than fine, imprisonment or hanging. It would not be a bad idea if we re-evaluated the equation between crime and punishment and took advantage of modern medicine to rationalise their relationship. I have no doubt it would reduce the incidence of certain kinds of crime without resorting to brutality such as amputation of limbs practised in some Muslim countries as well as substantially reduce expenses incurred in keeping convicts in jail for long periods. To start a public debate on the subject, I recommend the following: First, punishment for murder should not be death but imprisonment with hard labour over a period of years with the convict’s earnings going to the family of the deceased as well as confiscation of his personal property which should also be passed on to the family of the victim. Second, punishment for crimes of which do not result in death but grievous bodily injury should also entail forfeiture of property and earnings while in jail (which should not exceed three years) which should go to the injured person. Corporal punishment like lashing in public should be introduced. Three, crimes of sex, child abuse and attempted rape should be punished by compulsory administration of drugs that reduce sex drive and actual rape, by castration. Four, for crimes of violence and recklessness caused by excessive and habitual intake of liquor, punishment should include compulsory administration of drugs like Antabuse which produce very unpleasant reactions if followed by alcohol. A person who takes a drink after Antabuse can get violently sick and have a hangover of an intensity which would make him swear never to touch it again. I can recommend it to wives who have to suffer humiliation and violence at the hands of hard-drinking husbands.

  Readers’ reactions to these suggestions will be welcome.

  Sunday, 26 January 1985

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  Neither Heaven Nor Hell

  Mankind continues to cherish the illusion of divine justice; if not in life on earth, then in life hereafter. I who do not believe in life hereafter, continue to be obsessed with the prevalence of injustice in the world. I would like to ask believers in afterlife: Where is Bhindranwale now? Roasting in the fires of hell as his detractors hope, or seated beside the throne of the Lord as his followers believe? Where are the thousands of innocents who were massacred in the anti-Sikh riots in northern India or perished in the embrace of poison gas in Bhopal? What about the living who perpetrated these crimes? It is evident that none of them will be punished on earth; on the contrary, all of them are free, many still in possession of loot and some holding positions of importance. Will they meet their just deserts only after demise?

  Even the Hindu family of religions (Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism) which do not subscribe to notions of heaven or hell as places of reward and punishment but in samskara, the unending cycle of birth, death and rebirth, have succumbed to the notions of swaraga and narak. Although theologically they stick to the idea of moksha as release from the process of being born, dying and being reborn, in fact that bera paar (life’s boat reaching the opposite shore) is regarded as attaining vaikunth—paradise where their souls mingle with God.

  To get out of the dilemma of injustice perpetrated by a God assumed to be just, men of religion indulge in convoluted logic. Mother Teresa explains the famine in Ethiopia as an opportunity to give in charity ‘till it hurts’. If she is right, God makes Ethiopian children die of hunger so that the living feel the hurt caused, by parting with money for charity. This makes no sense to me.

  Christians are bothered by the idea of everlasting damnation. Surely even the vilest sinner should be given a chance to atone for his misdeeds and gain forgiveness! ‘Yes indeed!’ they answer. ‘For the small-time sinner there is the purgatory where he is purged of his evil deeds and made wholesome enough to enter paradise.’ One of the joys that the righteous are promised in afterlife is a free seat to watch sinners being tormented. That, apparently, is the justification for public floggings, tortures and executions which are regarded by many as good entertainment. Christians divide sins into two categories: those that can earn forgiveness, and those that entail endless punishment. The Bible says: ‘When the wicked man dieth, his expectations shall perish and the hope
of the unjust man perisheth (Book of Proverbs).’ To this statement the venerable Bede added, ‘When the righteous man dies, his hopes do not perish.’

  So there is a place in afterlife which is neither heaven nor hell. You are in limbo as if in a railway station waiting room awaiting the arrival of the right train. The pure board the air-conditioned Rajdhani for paradise; the unpardonable are herded in the cattle-truck train bound for eternal damnation. A third train, a slow passenger train, stops at every station where minor sinners are purged of their minor sins and ultimately also arrive at paradise.