The signal from Bidar
Through this booklet the Punjab Human Rights Organization presents its first-hand account of the September 1988 incidents in Bidar, Karnataka, India. The P. H. R. Chairman, Justice A. S. Bains, himself visited the place, spent a week in the area to collect vital information soon after the incidents. The booklet provides a new insight into the incidents despite several limiting factors. There is no doubt that much more about these shocking incidents would become known as time passes. The police and Shiv Sena insiders have yet to come out with their parts of the Bidar story.
Nevertheless, Bidar sends important new signals again, The November 1984 incidents did convey a message but probably their significance was not fully comprehended by the world at large. The Bidar message is a little more mature and clear in its tone. India is not what many would wishfully call it a nation. There are numerous nations within India thinking and working at cross purposes against each other. The country has not moved an inch towards one-nation State. On the other hand, contra- dictions between different nations in India are getting sharper and sharper. If Hindu-Muslim contradiction has been a matter of fact in India for centuries, the Hindu-Sikh cleavage is now a new reality.
With Sikhs and Punjab placed at a pivotal place in India’s and South-East Asia’s, geography, the cleavage has a unique potential for the good as well as for the not-so-good for the region.
If the cleavage is allowed to grow, as is likely, it will have fat reaching consequences for India and for the South-East Asian security. The misdeeds of India’s chauvinistic ultras are a God-send opportunity to those who would like the region to be balkanised.
That is how the P.H.R.O. intercepts and interprets the signal from Bidar. The Bidar tragedy is certainly a nail in the coffia of Indian unity.
- S. Gill, Advocate,
General Secretary, P. H. R. O.
