JALANDHAR: Punjab’s C.P.I. leadership is sharply divided along communal lines While Satya Paul Dang represents the Hindu fundamentalist lobby the other group is led by Avtar Singh Malhotra.
The Malhotra group has been issuing Statements from time to time highlighting police excesses against the “common people”. The group leaders recently gave a memorandum to the Punjab Governor listing a few excesses on the part of the police.
On the other hand Satya Paul Dang who is under heavy police protection gives up NO opportunity to praise the police. He repeatedly pleads for giving to the police freer hand to deal firmly with Sikh militants. This group does not mind if a few Sikh militants are arrested and shot dead even in fake encounters.
The Dang group has the support of Nawn Zamana chief editor Jagjit Singh Anand who too does not miss an opportunity to be seen as a close ally of the Hindu fundamentalist lobby around the Hind Samachar group. Anand is widely known as a lobbyist for Soviet secret service K.G.B.
Traditionally both Dang and Anand had been associated with the group known to be “rightist” in the C.P.I. They had a history of condemning Stalinist excesses in the Soviet Union. But their political views stop there Although they have all along been known to be associated with liberal regimes in Moscow but on Indian developments they make no bones about their support to the Congress (I)’s defence of “unity and integrity” of India. In other words they are weakening Delhi’s hold on the country. They are not ready to extend the logic of Soviet developments to India.
The Punjab administration is said to be perplexed at the contradictory stand of C.P.I”s important leaders. The government authorities do not know whether to listen to Dang or Malhowa. Dang suits the police administration far more than the other group. That is why it is said that the authorities do not pay such attention to the memoranda submitted by the other group against the police excesses.
Article extracted from this publication >> September 13, 1991
