Six years after Operation Blue star, it is only natural to look back and ask what the Khalistan movement has accomplished if anything at all. What is quite clear is that the first phase of the Punjab militancy is over. It was a spontaneous outburst an emotional outpouring on a colossal scale which set the stage for an armed struggle, while the Indian government gloated over the war it had won ‘in 1984. It took them a little time to realize that they had set on fire the collective consciousness of an entire people. A conflagration which ‘was bent upon the destruction of the existing order and committed to establish in its place, a new nation.
It was the Czech novelist Milan Kundera who more than anyone else, expressed the political despair of a subjugated people writing about the anguish of the damned and the downtrodden. Extremism, he maintained, was a euphemism for the love of death and despair. Such fatalistic love found its expression galore in the Punjab over the last six years. Martyrdom had ended up becoming an endearing term.
It was a phase during which emotions were allowed to run riot and when political rage had gone berserk, indoctrination without which it is impossible to wage a disciplined armed struggle was mostly absent and ideology had taken back a seat. With the onset of the 90’s the stage is set for a clear cut blueprint for Khalistan to emerge for a manifesto of a new nation to come forth and finally for an abundance of emotions to yield to hardheaded political calculations.
There are journalists, commentators, bureaucrats and politicians in the sub-continent who go out of their way to claim that the Khalistan movement has proved a non-Starter that it never took off the ground and that at best it could be described as a cry in the wilderness; a disgruntled one at that.
That the few Khalistan there were have either been mowed down by the “heroic” Indian security forces or that they have ended up shooting each other down. To bolster their argument such commentators seldom fail to point out one thing: the Sikh masses either chooses to keep quiet or most of them speak out against Khalistan.
Observers of this sort conveniently overlook whether they choose to do so is irrelevant not one but several factors. Firstly the Sikh masses at least in the border districts are quiet but they make no bones about the facts that they are sullen about the silence they are forced to observe under the constant shadow of a gun. Political experts who indulge in such polemics on behalf of the Indian establishment should instead analyzed what went wrong: Why thousands of people brave the extremely intimidating tactics of the Indian security forces and attend the “bhog” ceremonies of those done to death in fake encounters?
Secondly, it is well known dictum that only a handful of committed political activists more often than not, decide the fate of nations struggling to be born. In the Punjab of today, the worst detractors of the separatist struggle whether it is Rajiy Gandhi Buta Singh combine or their followers in the VP Singh led government would admit that they are much more than a handful.
The militants in Punjab and the movement they run have shown an amazing instinct for survival. Forced to confront one of the most repressive regimes anywhere in the world, they have waged a heroic struggle.
That it is not merely a cry in the wilderness and that it has shaken the Indian union to its very foundation is clear beyond a shadow of doubt. Leaders like L.K Advani and a A.B. Vajpayee have pointed out time and again that about the most serious challenge to Indian integrity has a risen from Punjab. Even veteran communist analysts like Harkishen Singh Surjet, CPM politburo member, proclaimed in the wake of Operation Blue star that the mass base of the separatists has increased manifold. For Rep Stephen Solarz, chairman of the US house subcommittee on Asia and Pacific Affairs, to go all the way to Delhi and then onto Amritsar to meet SGPC general secretary Manjit Singh Calcutta and proclaim the conclusion he had reached that the Sikhs did not want Khalistan reflected two possibilities. It was either a blatant misrepresentation or amounted to sheer ignorance. If it is a policy decision, it does not come as a surprise because US decision makers have usually backed the status quo, as they have done in the Baltic republics recently, and even, to an extent, in Afghanistan, where they have carefully opposed the emergence of a fundamentalist regime which could like it has in Iran, prove dangerously independent the other hand, Stephen. Solarz has done what he has out of sheer ignorance, it is worse because it reflects a tragic lack of communication.
The Punjab struggle for independence from the Indian tyranny has scored significant points. It has forced the Indian state to resort to desperate measures eroding, in the process, the acceptable and often ethical relationship between the rulers and the ruled. To root out the separatist sentiment in Punjab the Indian establishment has legalized murder on a large scale. Such an approach cannot but prove self-defeating. It will ultimately usher in bankruptcy of the Indian state and undermine seriously the capability of their political system to deal fairly with the other people and nationalities.
Injustice against Punjab was not red in a vacuum and it reflects the collective will of the Indian political elite to mete out brutal punishment to those who advocate separatism. Several leading politicians have gone out of their way to. Justify murder by the state in one form or the other. For over five years, the mainstream Indian press remained by and large a silent spectator to the perpetuation of torture and summary death practiced by the Punjab administration at the behest of Delhi. It was only last year that a handful of younger reporters posted in Amritsar highlighted some of the repression let loose by the security forces. Within a matter of days however they were made to carry planted stories about the rape of certain women
Allegedly by a gang of separatists. That repression in Punjab is not an isolated instance but a systematic attempt is obvious. Veteran communist Satpal Dang justified such state oppression in the Times of India dated March2 6, 1990; “however the people like Mr Mann have been giving open calls for killing congressmen, have been justifying killings of Indira Gandhi and General Vaidya and have been offering alibis for killings of innocent men, women and children by militants. They carry no conviction with those who believe that some false encounters are necessary in the type of situation that prevails in Punjab.” Two conclusions can be drawn immediately from this article which carried an ambiguous heading, “False encounters pose a difficult issue,” firstly that Dang, and he is not alone, is proponent of the false encounters are necessary theory. Secondly that such a call for murder without trial was carried in a leading Indian newspaper which made it obvious where the latter’s sympathies lay. It is scarcely surprising that there is a total similarity of views between the communists and the right wing BJP as far as Punjab problem is concerned, Apart from justifying some false encounters, Satpal Dang also hoIds guilty those who justify the killings of Indira Gandhi and general AS. Vaidya from the point of view of armed struggle being waged in Punjab, such killings were symbolic acts which highlighted the political contradiction which had developed in India. It must be mentioned here that to the Indians, by and large, Indira Gandhi had emerged as brave daughter of Hinduism who became a martyr for the cause of the country’s unity. On the other hand, to those who suffered at her hands in Punjab she _ had been reduced to a malevolent spread terror in its wake, The contradiction in Punjab, without like Satpal Dang realizing it is coming deeper and more clearly defined Of heroes and martyrs who appear as terrorists to the opposing side, of nations confronting each other of a society divided down the line between those who refuse to suffer subjugation and those who do not allow the expression of political dissent. The struggle in Punjab has survived and it continues to flourish. To say this, however is not to justify everything about the way the movement in Punjab is being run. To sustain an armed struggle on a long time basis a disciplined programme suited to the 90’s would have to be chalked out by the various militant bodies. Indiscriminate killings which the armed separatists have time and again claimed have been committed at the instance of the state to give the Khalistan a bad name, should be denounced whenever possible by the militant organizations. The concept of Khalistan is based on an economic and political blueprint rather than a communal or emotional platform as the rabid Indian critics of the separatist movement would like to dub it. It has to be stressed that what the Khalistanis have in mind without upholding ideologies which have already crumbled or others which are in the process of doing so is a society which is non-exploitative, forming a democratic nation which is modern and forward looking, which does not discriminate on the basis of caste, creed or religion, which benefits the poor of Punjab and favours the down trodden.
In this regard, fundamentalism and obscurantism should be altogether avoided to earn the appreciation of the masses, it is alright to carry on campaigns against social evils like alcoholism in the countryside and dowry but it is obnoxious to advise parents not to send their girls to school and to exhort the students to wear particular clothes; laying down the length of a dupattas or the colour of turbans to be worn by students is nothing but a positive disservice to the cause of Khalistan. Sikhs in particular, and Punjabis in general are a dynamic people, extremely forward looking in outlook and highly individualistic in approach. What has been accomplished in Iran cannot be brought about in Punjab, especially if the Khalistani cadres have to retain the overwhelming support of the masses in the rural hinterland.
Article extracted from this publication >> June 22, 1990
