Looking back on Khalistan Movement

The recent visit of  Canadian Premier Justin Trudeau to India revived the nation’s memory of gory days Punjab had seen for years during the tumultuous heyday of the Khalistan movement. The Government of India  rightly asked Trudeau to stop having a soft approach towards the Khalistani elements which are supposedly using Canada as the violent movement’s last bastion when it is supposed to have died down elsewhere.

I was then in college when the communal keg was ignited in the land the people of which form the backbone of the defence forces and provide nearly half the food for the country. It resulted in a macabre series of massacres the magnitude of which propelled the nation to think whether India would maintain her pluralistic glory. I remember being euphoric over the ruthlessness of ‘Operation Bluestar’ which triggered a mood of triumphalism among the Hindus at large who hailed it as a manifestation of Hindu India’s might to crush out a secessionist movement from its roots. I thought that the strong Centre under redoubtable Indira Gandhi had brought the nation back from the abyss of imminent disintegration. But as my knowledge of the history of the movement deepened-I read a lot of books on the subject in the aftermath of Indira Gandhi’s assassination-my view of things changed.

The question that cropped up in my mind is-why things came to such a grim pass when 99 percent of the Sikhs had nothing to do with the demand for a homeland for the community through dismemberment of India.

It was, however, clear to the discernible from the very beginning that the supposed Hindu-Sikh animosity- hyped to a feverish pitch by a section of a media in an artful innocence- boiled down to a power struggle between Congress and Akali Dal, the two contenders of power in the state. Congress was building up the cult of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale to drive wedges within Akali Dal as part of its Machiavellian strategy of weakening its principal rival in the state while Akali Dal was shedding its moderation and baring fangs while increasingly adopting extremist postures to outmanoeuvre the extremists, grouped under Bhindranwale, to survive in the volatile theatre of the state’s politics.

Many commentators wrote that while nursing wounds following the party’s crushing defeat in 1977 election, Punjab Congress leaders of the ilk of Giani Zail Singh and Darbara Singh, egged on by Sanjay Gandhi, had hit upon the strategy of building up a Sant Sikh to weaken Akali Dal politically. And Bhindranwale, the charismatic rabble rouser, fitted the bill perfectly. He was said to be seen sharing the dais with Indira Gandhi at Gurudaspur in 1980 during the days of high-pitched electioneering. Again, as Indira Gandhi’s friend/biographer Pupul Jayakar writes, Bhindranwale who had been arrested in 1981 for the murder of a senior editor of a vernacular daily was released shortly thereafter under the direct instructions of then PM Indira Gandhi. “No reasons for this release are available. At this time, Bhindranwale surrounded by gun-toting stalwarts stalked freely through the streets of Delhi and was also seen in Bombay,” she writes.

There is thus little doubt that the cult of Bhindranwale was a Congress build-up. It was also clear that things were being directed at the time right from Delhi-the nerve centre of Congress politics. But the question is- why the party’s high command went for such a potentially dangerous gamble when it knew well that things would spiral out of the confines of the sensitive border state and the fire of communal frenzy would engulf the whole country in no time if Bhindranwale and his band of extremists were allowed to play riot with the gore of the Hindus? Pupul Jayakar says that Bhindranwale broke free of the ruling Congress in 1982. But the question is-why the government took no action when then DIG Police A S Atwal was gunned down on the threshold of the Golden Temple on April 25 1983 by the band of the Bhindranwale loyalists? The dastardly murder was defined as the crucial watershed of the Khalistani politics after which violence gained tremendous momentum, plunging Punjab in selective massacres, clearly meant to acerbate the Hindu-Sikh animosity.

Many believed that Indira Gandhi was bent on politically finishing off Akali Dal as she had not forgiven its leaders who under the leadership of Harchand Singh Longwal presented the only organised resistance to the Emergency. Over 40,000 Akali activists were jailed under MISA during that turbulent time.

There was, however, another thing much more serious and sinister. It was, as some veteran Punjab watchers said, an electoral strategy of the Congress based on a new electoral arithmetic, firmed up assiduously with eyes fixed on the upcoming Lok Sabha election. It was a drastic rupture from the traditional electoral strategy of the Congress, post-independence, nurtured by Pandit Nehru and other stalwarts-a consolidation of the religious minorities, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes  and Other Backward Classes. Severely jolted as it was to its very foundation by the unprecedented 1977 poll debacle, the party leadership is supposed to have churned up a new strategy following its agonising reappraisal of the near total rout in the Hindi heartland, known as the cow belt. It was meant to ensure consolidation of the majority Hindu votes behind it. With Punjab remaining ablaze, Congress sought to win over the huge Hindu electorate by presenting itself as the saviour of the community and by logical extension, the country.

There was no going back after the party swept the elections in Hindu majority Jammu region and Delhi on the crest of the ‘Hindu in danger’ paranoia. The ‘Operation Bluestar’, launched a few months before the crucial Lok Sabha election, is supposed to be the culmination of the meticulously orchestrated electoral strategy of building up an invincible Hindu vote bank, inclusive of all castes and sections, through instilling a collective insecurity and herding them into opting for a ‘strong Centre’.