A police officer replaces a military officer as governor of Punjab. This should be sufficient to indicate the content of New Delhi’s Punjab policy. Force is viewed as the only answer to the ills of this Sikh dominated state. This basic promise remains unaltered despite the fact that almost every major Indian party has tasted power during the past few years almost every day dozens of Sikh youths are picked up mostly from their houses or from places of their hiding. They are tortured for days incapacitated and bumped off. This in essence is the story of daily police-militant encounters in Punjab.
What is it that Delhi precisely wants to achieve in Punjab: It is the same as Mrs Gandhi had said soon after the operation “Bluestar” in 1984. She had stated in justification of the operation that “those Sikhs were not talking to me”. Delhi is on the killing spree only to make Sikhs bend and to talk to it and accept its terms. The outgoing Punjab Governor General Malhotra speaking at a Kapurthala gathering early this week “hoped” that militants would come forward for talks with the Govt if pressure by the security forces on them continued.
Talks for what? The Indian State has no agenda before it. Its various wings Parliament political parties judiciary Press executive and the urban-oriented public opinion are all perched on the high horse. None of the political parties in its election manifestos went beyond empty rhetoric on Punjab. Democratization decentralization the Sarkaria report and the like were mentioned in passing as possible inputs for a Punjab solution. It is evident beyond doubt that India has cut itself off the world mainstream now roaring in favor of freedom self-determination and sovereignty. This country and its elite are living in a world of make-believe hoping to turn the course of history. They are dreaming of the return of Indian imperial presence in south-east Asia when erstwhile imperial regimes are tottering.
The Indian State is likely to continue with its bankrupt policy not only towards Punjab but also to other minority regions such as Assam Kashmir Tamil Nadu etc. until it reaches the brink of its own destruction. That is the message from the attitudes of successive Indian government’s towards the crisis regions. This approach necessarily requires a strong military machine. There it is. Despite the fact that India faces the deepest economic crisis since its freedom in 1947 it provided for stepped up allocations for the military the air force the naval force the C.R.P.F. and other central paramilitary forces in the current year’s budget proposals.
The western democratic Govt’s as well as popular institutions in these countries must clearly understand Indian Hindu imperial psyche. They should think twice before hailing India as “the largest democracy” in the world. They must stop extending loans and grants to this worse-than-racial regime of South Africa. Instead there should be economic sanctions applied against Delhi to force it to respect human rights of its Sikh Muslim and Christian minorities.
But before we ask the western countries to take economic measures against Delhi we would like to appeal to Punjab militant leadership to devise ways to extend the scope of their movement. It must include positive steps immediately to stop or severely curtail area under wheat and rice crops. Punjab should also assert its rights to the entire water wealth of the State and cut off supplies illegally made available to neighboring Hindu States. These two steps will bring the Indian ruling elite to its senses more than isolated acts of violence.
Article extracted from this publication >> August 9, 1991
