In 1923 the National All India Congress had rushed a three-member fact-finding team to Punjab when hundreds of Sikhs protesting against the illegal takeover of the Nabha State by the British administration were sent to jail without any warrant and tortured inside the Nabha prison. Jawahar Lal Nehru, who had headed the team and his two colleagues were also jailed after their arrival in Nabha; all the facts they had gone to find they found inside the jail itself. After India attained independence, however, the All India Congress lost this admirable zeal for probe for verification of truth; and with the passing of time fact-finding teams were considered by it as irrelevant, since the Congress party was in power and ‘the Congress Government could do no wrong ; thus even after the massacre of the Muslims in Moradabad, blinding of prisoners in Bihar, killing of political activists in Kerala, dishonor of a woman in the open market place of Bagphat by the police in broad day light and now after the incredible violence in Gujarat, the Congress party has not thought it necessary to send a team to any of these places.
The onerous duty of reaching the oppressed people at their hour of trial, and equally important, to present after meticulous investigation a correct picture to the public of hundreds of men, women and children living under duress; has fallen on those who staunchly believe that no violation of civil liberty and human rights can be tolerated and democratic principles India swears by must be observed in action and not merely remain on paper. They do not share the comfortable action that because a prestigious party is in power things cannot go wrong.
Now in 1984 after the Operation Blue Star suddenly the Government clamped down on Punjab an undeclared emergency. Punjab was cut off from the rest of the country for days, censorship was declared, all Pre s-men—both foreign and Indian—were expelled. There was total black-out of news excepting what was told by the Government-run All India Radio and Doordarshan, again bringing back the unpleasant memories of Emergency days. One heard that “there was unprovoked firing from inside the Golden Temple on June | and the Security Forces showed extreme restraint and did not fire a single shot, a variety of Government sponsored news items informed us how the Army took the Golden Temple complex with the utmost care bordering on reverence (they even took their boots off while entering the Temple), how the city remained untouched and undamaged. Without a scrap of evidence we were expected to believe that it was Pakistan which was responsible for the growth of terrorism in Punjab and there was a seizure of highly sophisticated weapons. In July 1984 the White Paper carried the story of a modern Arms Factory located inside the Complex. Days after when we were assured of calm and normalcy in the Temple, the expulsion order regarding the foreign press was not withdrawn and even the Indian Press was not allowed to move about freely, a guided tour was arranged for them as if Amritsar had been an enemy territory recently captured. It is only on July 26 this year that there has been a temporary and partial relaxation of the ban on some foreign correspondents to enter Punjab for the specific purpose of covering the Akali Dal meeting after the announcement of the award of Chandigarh to Punjab. Obviously the Government has a lot to hide still.
That the ruling party was anxious to hide something earlier also was amply clear from the Government vendetta which the foreign correspondent of the Associated Press Mr. Brahma Chellany had to face. He was under intensive interrogation by the Police and the Army Intelligence Bureau and was charged with sedition, because he was the first pressman of standing who exploded the myth of Army’s ‘human behavior’ towards the ‘militant’ Sikhs who were arrested, unturned, hands tied behind their backs and then at least 13 of them shot in cold blood; and it was again he who gave some tentative figure of the dead—both the Sikhs and the Army—since the number of the Sikhs killed “was not of much concern to the authorities and the number of the army-men killed was, Chellany’s 200 soldiers dead had to be whittled down to 96, but Shri Rajiv Gandhi while addressing the Nagpur session of the National Students Union in September 1984 raised the figure to 700; so far it has not been contradicted; it could be like his other famous utterance that S ant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale was a religious teacher.
Under these circumstances rumors held sway—so much so that thousands of Sikh soldiers far away from home imagined the worst and became emotionally overwhelmed and today are undergoing painful punishment for no fault of theirs excepting that they had placed their faith above everything else in the world.
Extremely harsh laws have been promulgated covering the whole country but ever since the President’s rule in Punjab and particularly after the Army Action, some of these laws have been devised specially for Punjab—to teach the Sikhs a lesson: Punjab Disturbed Areas Act, Chandigarh Disturbed Areas Act, Armed Forces (Punjab & Chandigarh) Act, Terrorist Affected Areas (Special Courts) Act, 1984. The Code of Criminal Procedure (Punjab Amendment) Act. All these have given enormous power to the police and the Army. How vindictive the Government meant to be towards the Sikhs would be clear the way Punjab Government violated the National Security Act (NSA) provisions. In a number of cases the serving of revocation order recommended by the Advisory Board was held up for over 2 months. According to a report the Home Department in a letter marked ‘secret’ to the I1.G.P (Intelligence) stated that while forwarding orders of revocation of some detenus, to the District Magistrates, the S.D.M. should be asked to consider re-detention if necessary and “serve revocation and fresh detention orders simultaneously”. The Home Department of the police was keen on over-ruling the opinion of the Advisory Board recommendation releasing an Akali leader. The Home Department also issued instructions to the District Magistrates to keep a ‘close watch’ on all those who had been detained under NSA but released and “apprehend such people without any loss of time” if they were found indulging in prejudicial activities, a list of such released persons was sent to the District Magistrates. Even the Supreme Court’s order to Punjab Government for the immediate release of 22 minor children and 4 women held in Ludhiana jail since Army Action in 1984 was not given effect to. The minors continued to remain in jail and later when released again under orders of the Supreme Court two were rearrested and sent to Nabha jail. It was obvious that in Punjab violation of the rule of law had become the nom. The District & Sessions Judge, Patiala, Mr. Cheema’s report on torture of detenues in Ladha Kothi in Sangrur District was too shocking for words. (Annexure No. 5).
The Government propaganda was perfect. The Punjab had become a dangerous place because of extremists roaming around with rifles and pistols and hand-grenades ready to kill had been fairly accepted by the people; reports on encounter deaths were fairly frequent—the dead were always the Sikh terrorists, though no particular communal incident could be reported, the media never tired of communalism in Punjab. One heard how thousands of Sikhs were demanding Khalistan but for some reason the Khalistan flag was never described though it had been hoisted by those who are out to destroy the country! Even the national dailies had succumbed to the propaganda. Though they had no means of verifying the truth—the Temple being out of bound, one of them wrote in an impressive editorial about “the very magnitude and caliber of the weapons found in the Temple complex, some of foreign origin, the elaborate fortifications discovered within the holy temple.”’ Terms like ‘Command Headquarter’, ‘‘trained guerillas’? Used in real wars were just dropped casually like small pebbles in reams of learned articles.
One had a tremendous urge to rush to Punjab, to Amritsar’s Golden Temple, to other Gurdwaras where army action had taken place, to various towns and villages in Punjab and using one’s eyes and ears try to reach the truth. The team was expected to find out if there had been any erosion of civil liberty after the promulgation of the oppressive laws and the Operation Blue Star, if the Army’s mopping up operation which was extended to the villages—known by the pretty name ‘““Wood-rose” Operation, which had begun simultaneously with the Amy Action in Golden Temple, had affected the lives of the rural people adversely; how far the communal virus had spread and if the Hindus were really migrating from Punjab out of fear of the Sikhs; how deep was the alienation of the Sikhs from the Hindus, and if Khalistan was just a vague concept or if people were preparing for a new State called Khalistan—for that would obviously means a bloody civil war.
The report has attempted to cover mostly these points. It is based on entirely on interviews, which were held mostly on village common, sometimes under a tree or in a school compound—but always in the open. It was only after talking to these people we realize with a shock that most of the facts on which we had been fed for the last one year through articles and the media were highly exaggerated or mostly false; many vital facts touching the common man’s daily life had been totally suppressed. Truth, it is well known, is the biggest casualty in war and few may be aware or though aware would not like to admit that a war is on—an undeclared, unilateral ruthless war— against hundreds of innocent defence-less men and women in far-away tiny villages of Punjab from where their voices do not reach the rest of India.
Though many of these villagers were on bail and some had come out of jail only a couple of days before they met us, they showed amazing self-control and fearlessness and without any hesitation told us their story mentioning the names of police officers who had tortured them and had demanded and in several instances accepted huge bribes, if they wanted their women not to be molested or their sons and brothers not to be killed in ‘encounters’,
The Report has gathered that in the name of curbing terrorism unabashed State terrorism has been unreleased on the Sikhs branding them as criminals, arbitrary arrests and McCarthy style witch-hunt, sadistic torture of Amritdhari* Sikhs and cold-blooded shooting down of young-men in false encounters, are common occurrences; even village women are not spared, they are being harassed and beaten up, dishonored and taken away to Police Stations or to unknown destinations and kept there, sometime for more than a month. It is all male-police—there was no sign of woman-police in the villages. The demand is that the women must produce their missing or absconding husbands and sons; women after women came to meet us from different villages to tell us what they had been facing for the last one and half year; fields are not cultivated, the police whisk away the servants, cattle is not fed, crops cannot be harvested; a woman saddled with children with no man in the house to help and all the time the police-fear haunting her is a common story in the villages.
The Army never made a list of the dead after the Operation Blue
* Amritdhari. This tradition of Amritdhari was started by Guru Gobind Singh when he initiated “Panch Pyaras” (Five Beloved ones) as true Khalsas. Water and ‘Batashas’ (Sugar tablets) were put in a steel pot and it was mixed with a Khanda (two edged ‘Kirpan’). Gurbanis were recited and this mixture was called Amrit (nectar). “Panch Pyaras’ stood in one line and drank the said ‘Amrit’ one by one from the same pot. This tradition is followed and all those Sikhs who are baptised in the above manner are called*Amritdharis. They have to follow strict rules of discipline and a rigorous life. They have to keep always five things on their body i.e. ‘Kachha’, ‘Kada’, ‘Kesh’ and “Kangha’ (Underwear, steel ring on hand, sword, hair and comb.) They are required not to take any wine or any other intoxicant, never to look at other’s women with bad intentions, never to eat ‘Halal Meat’, never to tell lies, never to attack first. They are also required to defend the oppressed and the exploited, and never to tolerate injustice.
Star nor returned the bodies—so none knows whether these men who had gone to the Guru Parb on June 3 either as pilgrims or with gifts of corn for the ‘langar’-—are dead or have absconded for fear of being arrested and tortured. Swinging between hope and hopelessness, afraid of the police, in many villages women have locked up their houses and have disappeared; in Verka village, for instance, houses were not even locked—they were lying empty, deserted. The situation is really desperate and it will be surprising if the brutal torture by the police does not encourage retaliation and fresh violence and create fresh terrorists. People who had undergone terrible torture came to see us and described these to us in detail. With these gruesome details reminding one of the medieval days we are marching towards the 21st century. Who can tell what is in store? We have included some of these descriptions in our appendix for better comprehension of what the army and the police have been doing to our people. There is a distinct pattern in the atrocities committed by the police; repeated raids in a particular house, repeated arrests of a particular person, removal of his agricultural implements, carrying away of the women to some unknown destination, threats to set on fire the house and the crops, harassment of relations, and finally extortion of money. Amritdhari Sikhs are not “dangerous criminals’’ as the obsessed Army has declared, but the Amritdhari Sikhs are in danger—their fate is uncertain.
We have pointed out, perhaps for the first time and with proper evidence, that the story about the so called “highly sophisticated arms”’ which were used to fight back the Army is totally baseless. A number of responsible men and women who were inside the Golden Temple throughout the Army action, described to us how innocent people were slaughtered like rats—first letting them enter the Complex and then declaring the curfew which prevented them from going out—thousands were thus caught unawares; finally when the survivors were asked to surrender they were shot in cold blood; our photograph would show how the hands of men were tied at their back with their own turbans, some of whom were shot. The post mortem reports show how the bullets had pierced their bodies. The eye witnesses witnessed the use of gas by the Army, the pile of dead bodies on the ‘parikarma’, the arrival of tanks which some of them thought were the ambulance, the hovering of helicopter at night, throwing their search-light on targets which were bombed, the wanton destruction of the Akal Takht, the Research Library and the Museum, and finally the killing of the 4 Sikhs of the Bunga Jassa Singh Ramgarhia in the basement of the Akal Takht— Bhindranwale was not definitely one of them. Of these eyewitnesses some were arrested and one is still inside jail, one was on the point of being shot but was saved almost miraculously. The facts have exposed the Army’s ‘restraint’ we heard so much of and have proved conclusively that the White-paper is after all not so white. We learnt for the first time with amazement that the Red Cross was not allowed even to enter the Complex to attend to the wounded, many not allowed any water to drink died of thirst; on June 7,28 people were pushed inside a strong room without any ventilation and locked up, and when the room was opened, 14 of them were dead.
Bodies were left to rot, inside the room and then burnt. This was free India’s Jallianwala Bagh—leaving the old Jallianwala Bagh of the British days far behind in the number of killed and in the manner of killing.
We interviewed the sorrowing parents of some youngmen who are now in Jodhpur Jail as ‘dangerous terrorists’. They showed us the photographs of these ‘guerillas’ gentle, innocent faces—all between 20 and 23, looked at us through the framed photos. One was a good musician, fond of books, a serious student in college—completely apolitical; another an excellent chess player, well qualified, looking for job in the State Bank of India, yet another a designer of steel furniture— there is not even a shred of evidence against most of these boys. Some were arrested because they happened to live in the Golden Temple Complex and were young.
We visited some special courts from outside and met a few who were being tried under the Arms Act. We were told that there were about 5,000 such cases—contemptuously called pen-knife cases. To make the cases look more prestigious revolvers and pistols are sometimes planted on the boys; even one cartridge would do the job; One of these extremists we met in the court holding up his tattered ‘banyan’ asked us ‘where could I have hidden a revolver?” Under the Terrorists Affected Areas (Special Courts) Act, the accused had to prove his innocence and virtually there was no appeal since the appeal was only to the Supreme Court, as far off as the moon in the heaven for the rural poor; so he had to rot in jail—much longer than the punishment called for. But the Government was happy with performance of the police—it is the number that counted—being utterly oblivious of the hardship the families had to face during absence of the men. Thus circumstances have forced many of these innocent people to stand before the Court and “confess their guilt’, only to have the period of their detention reduced and then released. The Black Laws have virtually nullified the functioning of ordinary criminal laws ensuring fair trial and some kind of level justice.
For months the civil authorities had almost ceased to function. It is only under a military dictatorship, army officers could drag a Sarpanch to the Army Camp—and order him to produce some weapons which he was suspected to possess and when he could not, made to stand in a deep pit and earth piled inside till it reached his neck. We found that the Army was hated not only by the common villager but by their own retired Havaldars and Captains, for in several cases they were the targets being Amritdharis. Today the image of the Army is of a communal, corrupt, cruel and a grossly insensitive force. Its drunken revelry did not amuse the villager either. We have included some interviews in the Appendix on the behavior of the Army—they are revealing and ask for no further comment. Regarding communalism in Punjab we had interviewed several people both Hindus and Sikhs— excepting a few Hindus who appeared to be communal and made some unsavory remarks about the Sikhs, we never came across any positive evidence of communal feeling and there certainly was no migration of the Hindus from Punjab; but what we did find was alienation—that old trust, that spontaneous affection is gone, just now there is distrust and bitterness: unfortunately some Congress (I) when are fomenting this distrust. In the villages, on the other hand, there is harmony and friendship—as a villager remarked “bad things always come from cities”. The interviews held in different villages gave us ample proof that the villages have still remained unspoilt.
As regards Khalistan it is on record that even Bhindranwale did not have a clear conception of Khalistan. According to a recent report, Harminder Singh Sandbu—a close associate of Bhindranwale has stuck to his statement that Bhindranwale never wanted a separate state called Khalistan. Those who are asking for a Separate state they do not live in Punjab; and one must not take their words as the words of those who are here and all that they mean by Khalistan is to be able to live with dignity and honour, inside India. We have recorded some interviews on this subject—which has been falsely projected to lower down the Sikhs—who are no less patriotic than any other Indian.
In our Report we have not made any comment on the Anandpur Sahib Resolution; since reporting truthfully is our primary function, we have to say that those days when we were in Punjab, nobody talked about the Resolution. It could be because the people were much too harassed by the police and the army to think about the Anandpur Sahib Resolution.
But now that Sant Longowal and the Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi have signed an agreement which includes transfer of Chandigarh to Punjab and also a reference of the Anandpur Sahib Resolution to the Sarkaria Commission, it is necessary perhaps to write a few words.
The ‘historical accord’ as it has been hailed could have been reached 4 years ago without much trouble at all—without destroying the holy shrine Akal Takht causing so much pain and anguish to those who hold their faith above everything else in life. One could have reached Chandigarh without having to wade through blood of thousands of men, women and children since 1982.
But all this did not happen. What has happened one might perhaps examine with some care. While efforts to achieve the accord should be appreciated, it cannot be disputed that no accord can bring lasting peace in Punjab which ignores the burning issues over which the Sikhs feel deeply agitated. The Rajiv-Longowal accord has seemingly forgotten.
(1) The thousands of so-called Army deserters,
(2) and thousands of Sikh youth languishing in different jails of the country,
(3) and also the families of those— again running into thousands—who have allegedly gone to Pakistan but actually have been killed by the police and the Army,
(4) The problem of absconders who are underground, and who have fled under duress;
(5) Rajiv-Longowal accord has not said one word about the Police Lawlessness or the repeal of most of the Black Laws, nor has it dealt with the withdrawal of the Army from Punjab.
(6) The accord is silent about adequate compensation for the November ’84 riot victims.
Will the accord bring solace to those hundreds of men and women who have lost their peace of mind because of the constant terror of police they have been living in? As a poor village woman told us in Dera Baba Nanak—it is the poor who suffer when big people fight for their ‘Kursi’.
We place our report before the Government and the people and demand that to bring back normalcy in Punjab, a General Amnesty must be declared without much delay, police repression should be stopped and all the black laws should be repealed forthwith.
