Government of India has again marshalled its guns to launch another attack on the Golden Temple and repeat the gory performance of 1984. Once again lies are being fabricated and widely publicized through the State controlled media to create the impression that the freedom fighters had constructed fortification and piled up sophisticated weapons in the Golden Temple. Indira Gandhi played this gigantic hoax to hoodwink the Hindu voters but had to pay for it with her life. Now Ribeiro, the so called “super cop” of Rajiv who has been invested with dictatorial powers as Advisor to the Governor, is anxious to ensure another electoral triumph for his master. He has drawn an elaborate plan to improve upon the 1984 butchery.
The intermittent killing of Sikh young men in fake police encounters was not enough to whet Ribeiro’s appetite for blood! He, therefore, recruited hardened criminals, popularly called Ribeiro’s “Mafia” and assigned to them the task of eliminating Sikh families including women and children. A large number of Sikh families have been wiped out in cold blood and the blame is being shifted to the freedom fighters to discredit and isolate them.
Ribeiro has assigned yet another duty to his Mafia men. Some of them have been deployed in the strategic Brahmbuta Akhara adjoining the Golden Temple Complex with a specific task of sniping at the Sikhs inside the Temple to provoke an armed confrontation. Last week the Golden Temple volunteers were forced to return the fire. There were no Causalities on either side but Ribeiro announced that police would enter the Golden Temple to recover the bodies of the freedom fighters killed in the clash. It is a clever ploy to cover up the projected killing of the Sikhs by the police.
The game plan is that the police would enter the Golden Temple and kill whom so ever it pleases and, then, give out that it had recovered the bodies of the freedom fighters killed in clashes. The captive media, as usual, would play up the story to mislead the world that the Sikhs were engaged in internecine warfare inside the Golden Temple and killing one another. The S.G.P.C. and the Akal Takht Chief would be blamed for their ineffective control and toady Sikhs like Khushwant Singh would condemn the sacrilegious use of the Golden Temple and demand for a military solution.
Once again the Indian army would enact the well-rehearsed farce with “prayer on their lips and reverence in their hearts” and indiscriminately mow down innocent pilgrims.
A perfect scenario to make Hindus hail Rajiv as a hero “divinely ordained” to establish a Hindu theocratic state and rid India of every other religious minority that refuses to submerge its identity into the multitudinous assortment called Hinduism. A part of the master plan was exposed when one of the crates containing Soviet made rocket launchers and other ammunition was accidentally ripped open and bullets rolled across the tarmac at the Delhi Airport. The 22 crates marked “telecom equipment” shipped from Kabul were duly received by an official of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), an Indian version of C.LA. Shortly after, Punjab police recovered with tremendous fanfare a big haul of similar weapons from a Punjab village and’ the Indian government immediately blamed Pakistan for supplying sophisticated weapons to the Sikh freedom fighters.
Whether Hindus will again demonstrate the mob madness of 1984 elections or they will contemptuously dismiss the deceptive cry of wolf, is not difficult to anticipate. Given the myopic vision and the essentially communal mental makeup of the Hindu intellectuals and political commentators, it is clear that they would play the government tune and persuade the man in the street to believe that Sikhs are collaborating with Pakistan to destabilize India. The cry of danger to India will be made to ring from every corner and played up in every journal and newspaper. The Hindus would be worked up to such a satanic fury as would make them forget all about the Bofors and the grinding poverty. They would seek only the Sikh blood and ‘Rajiv Gandhi would spill it with a vengeance to secure the second term in office. To defeat this game, Sikhs need to carefully watch their every step and must match the enemy’s move with finesse and artfulness.
Article extracted from this publication >> May 13, 1988
