India: A Million Mutinies Now

by V. S. Naipaul

  Amarinder himself had no problems of adaptation. He was born in 1942; he was five when independence came. ‘I’ve been brought up in a modern environment.’ There was a palace education: an English nanny, a German kindergarten tutor, and training by ‘a great master’ in Sikh scriptures, legends and folklore. There was also a full education outside the palace, in preparatory schools in Simla and Kasauli, in a famous Indian public school, and then in the Indian Military Academy at Dehra Dun. He joined the army, enlisting in the oldest Sikh regiment, directly descended from the two battalions raised in Patiala in 1846. He loved army life, and would have liked an army career. But he had to leave the army to look after the affairs of the family. He later ‘grew into politics’ – exercising, perhaps, something of the skills of his 18th-century ancestors during the early days of the Patiala state.

  Then the preacher Bhindranwale appeared. There was a terrorist crisis; and the army that Amarinder loved was ordered to move on the Temple he held sacred.

  ‘When the chips were down I couldn’t let 300 years of history go. It was the Sikhs who made Patiala. The two Gurus have blessed us. I had to stand with our people.’

  When I went back to Chandigarh I saw Gurtej again. It was then that he told me – what I suppose was common knowledge – that after Operation Bluestar, the code-name for the army action at the Golden Temple, he had gone underground for more than four years. For the first time he spoke in some detail about Bhindranwale. Kapur Singh, the dismissed ICS officer, had been Gurtej’s first hero and mentor; Bhindranwale was the second.

  ‘He was always a religious man. To the very end. He was the son of a small farmer in Faridkot district. The district was named after Farid, a Muslim Sufi saint of the 13th century; his couplets appear in our scriptures. Bhindranwale was born in 1947. He was one of nine sons. He was the son of a second wife. The father had seven sons from the first wife, two sons from the second wife. The father couldn’t support all the sons, and at an early age, four or five, Bhindranwale was sent to the seminary.’

  Gurtej was also born in 1947. He, too, had been sent away to a boarding school when he was four or five. And he too came from a farming family, though his grandfather had been rich, with 3000 acres.

  The father had a little land, and there was no intensive agriculture at that time. One son went to the army; he is retired now as a captain. Another son went to Dubai and is now back, well-to-do, still farming. Others are also farming.

  ‘Bhindranwale spent all his years in the seminary, and we never heard anything about him until 1976. By then he was married, with two sons. His wife would have stayed in the village; it was an arranged marriage. Bhindranwale was known as a contemplative man, totally unconcerned about the world around him. Sometimes he would go to work in his family fields, and he was known as a very hard worker. Cutting starts on the 13th of April. It’s a very hot period; the sun shines harshly. Bhindranwale would start cutting in the early morning and go at it right until the evening, without food or drink. He was a very determined man. This was told me by one of his brothers.’

  And not for the first time Gurtej, talking about the life of the village, the life of the fields, fell – easily – into a lyrical strain.

  ‘In 1977 the head of the seminary died. He had nominated Bhindranwale to succeed him. The head of the seminary died during the Nirankari controversy.’ The Nirankaris: reformist Sikhs to some, heretical to others. ‘His legacy to Bhindranwale was the continuation of this struggle.’

  The following year, on the day of the spring or harvest festival, an important day in the Sikh religious calendar, there was a clash between the two groups in Amritsar, and a number of Bhindranwale’s followers were killed. With this event Bhindranwale became a figure.

  Gurtej said, ‘I got to know him in 1980. The high priest who had given me amrit in 1974 had died, and I went to his village for the last rites. And there I met Bhindranwale. He was a very truthful man, a man of his word. He never went back on what he said. He was a man of God. He had unbounded faith in God. While taking decisions he only consulted his conscience. He lived the life of a mendicant.

  ‘In 1980 the head of the Nirankaris was killed in his own place in Delhi – just like Indira Gandhi later – and he was allegedly killed by somebody who had been employed as a carpenter there. The Arya Samaji press blamed Sant Bhindranwale for the killing and demanded his arrest. Shortly after that, the head of the Arya Samaji press was killed near Jalandhar, and it was in this connection that warrants were issued for the arrest of the Sant.

  ‘The Arya Samajis control the Hindu press of Punjab. The history of Punjab in this century is full of controversies between Arya Samajis and Sikhs, the essence of the trouble being that the Arya Samajis were attacking the separate identity of the Sikhs. At the beginning of this century the Arya Samajis publicly converted some chamar’ – untouchable – ‘Sikhs back to Hinduism at Jalandhar. And their hair was cut off, plaited together into a rope, and the rope was sold at a public auction. The idea was to ridicule Sikhism and Sikhs.

  ‘At the time the warrants were issued for the arrest of the Sant he was preaching in a village in Haryana. This information was given to him there, perhaps by the Haryana administration, who didn’t want any trouble in their area. The Punjab police party arrived after the Sant had left, and they became so angry they burnt his buses and destroyed his holy books. After this, his arrest was enforced at Mehta Chowk, at the seminary. A big crowd had collected on the day of his arrest. After he had been taken away he appealed to the people to be peaceful. The police resorted to firing – at the town itself – and 34 people were killed. The police claimed they had been attacked with swords.

  ‘These three things upset him: the burning of his buses and holy books, his being accused as a conspirator, and the killing of his people. He was in jail for some months. Then he was released unconditionally. In 1982 he went to the Golden Temple. The circumstances were like these. Two or more of his followers had been arrested. And then the people he sent to supervise the legal protection of these men were themselves arrested. That was when he decided to launch an agitation.

  ‘He was a tall man, six feet one inch, as tall as I am, and a lean man. A very forthright man, outspoken. He had very simple habits. He ate very little. In this he was unlike Sardar Kapur Singh, who liked his food. He had an incisive mind. You could discuss things with him. He knew, for instance, that I ate meat, but he didn’t mind. He never asked me to stop eating meat. I had a long argument with him about whether it was according to the tenets of Sikhism to eat or not to eat meat. This was in January 1983 at the Akal Takht in the Golden Temple. The discussion lasted two hours. He kept on telling me in a good-humoured way, “You prove it to me that it is according to the tenets of Sikhism to eat meat, and I will polish off one and a half kilos in no time.”

  ‘He used to call us for discussions several times, sometimes just for the interpretation of passages in the scriptures. The seminary supported the traditional interpretation. The seminary interpretation is nearer to the Hindu understanding of the scriptures, and it is all expressed in Hindu terminology. Most of the examples are from Hindu mythology. I used to support the more recent, scientific interpretation, established in 1960 or so.’

  I asked about this scientific interpretation.

  ‘It was by Sahib Singh – the interpretation of the scriptures according to the grammar of the language. He was a saintly man, a teacher.’

  This statement – I took it down without understanding it fully, and considered it only many weeks later – cast a little light on a difficult sentence on the first page of Kapur Singh’s pamphlet, ‘The Trial of a Sikh Civil Servant in Secular India’: ‘The basis of grammar and language are certain metaphysical postulates, cultural patterns and human propensities, the logical demonstration of which may not be possible, but without acceptance of which, neither language nor grammar can be properly studied or understood …’

  And I wondered whether, in these religious discussions in
the Golden Temple, Kapur Singh’s ideas might not have filtered through Gurtej to Bhindranwale, and encouraged him to go against his seminary training and to say to the BBC radio correspondent, when the Golden Temple crisis was worsening, that Sikhs were not like Hindus but were more like Jews and Muslims and Christians, people of a prophet and a book.

  In that interview Bhindranwale also said – in English, in a voice breaking with passion – that Sikhs were subject to such persecution in India they had to ‘give a cup of blood’ to get a cup of water. This kind of exaggeration from a religious leader had puzzled me; but at that time I hadn’t yet begun to enter the Sikh ideas of the torment and grief of their Gurus.

  What Gurtej went on to say now gave me some idea of Bhindranwale’s state of mind in the airless, imprisoned atmosphere of the Golden Temple during the last days.

  Gurtej said, ‘He was most enamoured of the personality and sacrifices of Guru Gobind Singh. The last days of Guru Gobind Singh he remembered by heart. He remembered the day-to-day doings of the Guru. He really lived it out. If you met him in December on a certain day he would say, “On this day the Guru was doing such-and-such.” In fact, he would remember it by the time of the day. It was very remarkable. He would look at his watch and say, “In another two hours the Guru would have been getting his sons ready for the battle.” And so on. In the month of December the Guru’s sufferings began, because that was when he left his fort at Anandpur Sahib.’ Anandpur: the town where the Guru’s mother, and the Guru’s two young sons – to be bricked up later – were captured by the Moguls.

  Shut up in the Golden Temple, Bhindranwale must have begun to see himself as the 10th Guru besieged in Anandpur.

  Gurtej said, ‘People didn’t go to him to talk about history or scriptures. His family rarely visited him. Whenever they came, they came as devotees. He had no time for his family in this period.

  ‘I used to go to see him at the Temple once a month. Never less than two hours. There was some degree of mutual understanding between us. Once he said, “You should come to see me more often.” I said, “I have to look after my family.” He said, “How many children do you have?” I said, “Two.” He said, “I have two children too. God looks after children.” And he quoted a passage from the scriptures about migrating birds who leave their offspring behind. He said, “They fly for thousands of miles, and God sustains them.” ’

  I asked Gurtej about the killings done in Bhindranwale’s name, and the killings he was said to have given orders for.

  ‘They were made-up stories. The purpose was to defame him.’

  After Operation Bluestar – the army assault on the Temple, in which Bhindranwale and many of his followers died, and many soldiers as well – it was given out officially that Gurtej was among the people killed. This alarmed Gurtej. ‘A case of sedition had been registered against me in connection with a booklet about Sikh human rights. The meaning of giving me out as dead was that instructions had been given to the forces to eliminate me.’ So Gurtej went underground, and stayed in hiding for more than four years.

  ‘My obituary also appeared in the Indian Express. It was flattering by and large. But it said that I didn’t eat with Muslims – which is wrong, totally. I wrote a letter to the Indian Express saying, “Let any Muslim prepare a tasty vegetarian meal and invite me.” ’ Vegetarianism wasn’t the issue. Gurtej wasn’t a vegetarian. ‘But I don’t eat meat killed in the Muslim or Jewish fashion. It’s a commandment of the 10th Guru, when we take amrit. Such taboos in religion often have a deeper meaning.’

  The point about the Express obituary must have been that Gurtej adhered strictly to his Sikh vows. Kapur Singh had written a big book about the significance of Sikh vows; Gurtej had given me a copy of the book. And now – leaving to one side the question of his life underground after Bluestar – he told a story to explain the 10th Guru’s injunction to his followers against having relations with Muslim women.

  ‘One of the stories appearing in one of our Sikh texts, The Fundamentals of Sikhism by Sewa Dass, relates to a person who had been forcibly converted to Islam in the 1700s. He went to the Guru, who was presiding over the congregation, and said, “I have been forcibly converted.” “How have you been converted?” “I’ve been made to eat cow’s meat.” “That doesn’t make you a Muslim.” “I’ve been circumcised.” “That can’t make anybody a Muslim.” “I’ve been made to repeat the Kalma.” “That’s the name of God. It doesn’t make you a Muslim.” Somebody in the congregation was surprised. He asked the Guru, “How does one become a Muslim then?” And the Guru said, “By marrying a Muslim woman, or having such relations with her.” The implication is that marriage is a voluntary act. “If you accept that you are a Muslim, then alone you become a Muslim.” This is how the Guru comforted the man.’

  As much as any story of martyrdom, this story from the final years of the last Guru speaks of the persecution and anguish and violation out of which the Sikh military brotherhood was born. Though that wasn’t the point Gurtej made: Sikhism, in his interpretation, was a religion of prophecy and revelation.

  When I asked him what had supported him during his time underground, he said, ‘I was thinking I was suffering with my people. There was another consolation: this was the period I turned most to my scriptures. The main theme of the scriptures is that one lives in the world in such a fashion that one becomes acceptable to God. And I thought I was doing that. I did a lot of reading and writing. So my time underground was instructive. One could contemplate the nature of things.’

  That was what you said about your Roman Catholic boarding school, your schooldays away from home. So your time underground was like a repeat of your childhood?’

  Gurtej said, ‘I don’t know whether character is destiny or destiny is something in its own right. But things do develop which put you in situations that develop you in a definite direction.’

  One cause of grief during this time underground was the death of Kapur Singh, at the age of seventy-five. Gurtej had known and loved Kapur Singh for 20 years. The cantankerousness which had irritated Gurtej at their very first meeting was something he now smiled at, as he smiled at other quirks of the man: his liking for his food, his love of ice cream. He could eat a pound at a time. He used to say to Gurtej, ‘You must eat ice cream. It’s good for your liver.’

  Gurtej said, ‘He was a rather stout man, not very tall, with thick-rimmed glasses. Always a pen or two with him, looking every bit a scholar, with a book or magazine tucked under his arm, always.’

  Kapur Singh had carried his grievance about his dismissal from the ICS for embezzlement for nearly 40 years; he had kept it fresh. The grievance hadn’t fatigued Gurtej or raised any doubts in him. He said, ‘The idea of injustice is there in every Sikh.’ And he was still ready to fight that particular side of Kapur Singh’s case. Gurtej had become like a member of Kapur Singh’s family; it distressed him that he couldn’t be with the old man at the end.

  ‘Finally I was able to get some sort of protection from the High Court. I had applied to the High Court saying that the sedition case against me was false, and the intention of the government was to harass me and harm me physically. The court granted me seven days’ time to appear in the lower court and sign my petition and ask for bail. And I did that. I am still technically on that bail.’

  This was why, a few months before, Gurtej had been able to visit Kapur Singh’s brother, when that brother was dying. The family, Gurtej said, belonged to a sect of Sikhs who, since the days of the first Guru, traditionally became mendicants and teachers – and this was perhaps one factor in Gurtej’s admiration of Kapur Singh.

  ‘His father was a small landowner – about 20 acres or so. The other son was totally uneducated. He remained a farmer all his life – while Kapur Singh was educated at Cambridge University. In lieu of this, the younger son got 10 more acres of land. The younger brother was on his death-bed when I met him last year, and he complained that Kapur Singh’s relatives were trying to snatch those
extra 10 acres from him.’

  Gurtej, Kapur Singh, Bhindranwale: they were all men of farming families. Great events had claimed them; but below all the passions – about faith and purity – there were elemental things that could take men further back: to a deathbed anxiety about 10 acres of land.

  Sanjeev Gaur, the Amritsar correspondent for the Indian Express, was attacked and stabbed one day in Febuary 1984 just outside the Golden Temple.

  There was an old pickpocket of Amritsar who had become a political activist, first for the Indira Congress, and then as a member of the All-India Sikh Students Federation. I wrote a story about this pickpocket for the Express. The day the story was published I went to the Golden Temple, and he gave me a very dirty look. My source told me I should be careful.

  ‘A fortnight later I was stabbed by two young boys, one wearing a saffron turban. They asked my name first, and then they started hitting me. Five times they stabbed me in the thigh. And I heard another voice saying, “Drag him inside.” I thought that was the moment of death, because I had been reporting for the last month or so about the discovery of five bodies in gunny sacks in the gutters of the Golden Temple – people killed by the terrorists inside the Temple. The people killed were mostly Sikhs – suspected by the terrorists to be police informers.