Arbitrary exercise of power, as currently witnessed in Punjab under Central rule is politically destabilizing. Nothing, however, is more unethical in the long run than the exercise of power for regimentation of human thought and suppression of sentiment. But in a well-rehearsed annual exercise last June, security forces in Punjab lay siege around Darbar Sahib in Amritsar, imposed an undeclared curfew in order to prevent the public expression of sorrowful homage to thousands of pilgrims who had been massacred in the infamous military operation of 1984, Uniformed and undercover police personnel thronged the shrine to curb any demonstration. There was nothing new in the “World’s largest democracy” trying to cover its tracks. At a time when totalitarian regimes are being transformed into democracies ushering in remarkably humane societies, the self pro -claimed largest democracy in the world is developing claws of a savage man-eater. In faraway Beijing, at about the same time, Chinas militarist regime similarly foiled commemoration of the 1989 dead of Tiananmen Square. There was never the Jess one marked difference. After the assault on Golden Temple, the Indian republic had, in a glittering presidential ceremony (on March 25, 1985 conferred “gallantry wards upon scores of soldiers in cynical disregard of the Geneva Convention that prohibits use of combat troops against unarmed civilians. The media maintained deafening silence over this insensate act of rubbing salt into the bruised Sikh psyche.
Expression of grief for the dead is an {intensely personal emotion. What, then, makes the Sikh populace, collectively and compulsively, relive such traumas? It is doubtless the moral and spiritual power of sacrifice inherent in the death of every innocent person that drives people of faith to return to the holy shrine time and again. What they remember in the daily areas prayer each day is not just the military or the political aspect of the assault but to agonize over the martyrdom of worshippers, some known, most others unknown, and the sense of alienation that have forever scarred a people’s collective psychology.
The tiresome litany of the official media counseling Punjab and the Sikhs to return to the “National mainstream” assumes a bizarre aspect in this background, for, it is scarcely possible for anyone who has not experienced the sense of alienation comprehend why generations of Sikhs continue to commemorate the martyrdoms and holocausts since the turn of sixteen century. That the modem state exercising draconian power would lose all sense of moral compunction and unleash genocidal repression upon those very people who constituted the sword-arm of India is an unmitigated tragedy.
Haunted by paranoia, a nervous administration earlier this year clamped press Censorship on Punjabi newspapers to pre vent publication of obituary notices that sought to invite family and friends to Bhog ceremonies Congregational prayers for peace of the departed soul. There must be something morbid about a dispensation that fears memorial services for the dead! Is the paramilitary regime in Punjab afraid of its own crooked shadow?
Meanwhile, people in the rest of India have, by and large, remained indifferent f not hostile to the Sikh sense of outrage. The media, fuelled by ingeniously contrived and tendentious disinformation, have created demonological image of the Sikh militancy. They are willing to believe, and propagate, gruesome and fanciful stories of terrorist damage. They are not only averse to investigate reporting but even brush aside authentic accounts of state terrorism, of faked encounters and tortures such as those of Pilibhit in Uttar Pradesh on July 12/13, 1991.
The crisis in Punjab is not just a question of onetime Operation Bluestar or the denial of democratic rights, but of perpetuating repression and brutalizing the administration to crush one class of citizens for all time to come. A stage has been reached when, amid seasonal changes of governors, the police are accountable to none, the Judiciary sidelined, the civil services emasculated, and every avenue of red- –easel slammed shut Is there any wonder the Sikh militant shave ceased to exercise any sense of discrimination and want stubbornly to fight fire with fire? They too have thrown all scruples and restraint to the winds. Their ranks riven and divided, they are dying by the score in an unequal war of attrition. Spiraling violence has hardened attitudes and dehumanized the warring sides. Decency or morality lie trampled upon. It is at this point that all sanctimonious arguments imparting secessionism to Sikhs collapse. If it is evil you are looking for, the Central rule in Punjab fills the Bill. The violence resorted to by the Sikh militants may not be strictly in accordance with the Sikh moral tradition. But do the imperatives of defeating a genocidal apparatus eave any alternative? Sikhs had launched an eminently successful if no less harrowing nonviolent struggle for the freedom of Gurdwaras in 1920s, the loss of life was colossal but the moral war was won.
So what is the argument about? Not about the ethics of the goal itself but the critical issue of a peoples survival. Is the cause worth the cost? History of the past five centuries points to an affirmative answer Even those who believe against all evidence that the Sikh struggle is directed against the unity of India as a country, or against Hindus as a nation, cannot pretend that the Sikh aspirations for the “glow of freedom” are not justified, or that the ultimate vision of the subcontinent as a federation of autonomous (even sovereign?) states is inconsistent with the geopolitical realities of the world today. Indian policy makers must realize, in the face of the ongoing ferment in Europe, that repression in Punjab is immoral and will, in the long, run, harm India more than Sikhs, for the Union Government is adopting the wrong reasons to achieve wrong ends.
(Sikh Review)
Article extracted from this publication >> October 11, 1991
