Communal brinkmanship in Punjab
From the veneration of Bhindranwale to the denial of divorce, Sikhs are being led by men who have no right to speak on their behalf: Hartosh Singh Bal
The problem with religious orthodoxy in our times is that it is mainly manned (and the emphasis on gender is deliberate) by those most opposed to modernity. Men who believe that the truth has already been revealed in a manner that allows for no argument also tend to believe that history can be read only in one way. It almost goes without saying that they believe they have the exclusive right to decide what the proper reading of history is.
The problem with religious orthodoxy in our times is that it is mainly manned (and the emphasis on gender is deliberate) by those most opposed to modernity. Men who believe that the truth has already been revealed in a manner that allows for no argument also tend to believe that history can be read only in one way. It almost goes without saying that they believe they have the exclusive right to decide what the proper reading of history is.
On 20 May, karseva (voluntary work) for the construction of a memorial to the victims of Operation Bluestar began at the Harmandir Sahib (Golden Temple) Complex in Amritsar. The memorial is overdue—many of the victims were ordinary people, caught in the wrong place in an ill-timed and ill-thought-out operation. But not all those who died fall in the same category, and it is for this reason that the karsevaand memorial is problematic.
The karseva was started by Akal Takht Jathedar Gurbachan Singh and the head of the Damdami Taksal, Baba Harnam Singh Khalsa. For those who have forgotten Punjab’s recent history, the Damdami Taksal is the seminary once headed by Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. For good measure, Ishar Singh, Bhindranwale’s son, also spoke on the occasion. No one will say this upfront but by its very nature, the memorial, whether we like it or not, will also be a tribute to Bhindranwale.
Our memory is short and events less than 30 years old seem as if they belong to the distant past. Many Indians outside Punjab need to be reminded that Bhindranwale was the man who necessitated Operation Bluestar in the first place. He was not alone to blame, this turn of events would not have been possible without considerable help from Indira Gandhi, who, irked by the Akali resistance to the Emergency, had propped him up to challenge the Akali hold over the Sikh orthodoxy. As she discovered, he was not a man so easily controlled and was soon enough acting on his own.
Bhindranwale was no thinker. He had no coherent position on any complex issue, but was willing to mouth the rhetoric that ensured the Akalis were afraid of losing their own constituency, and he was willing to do something the Akalis had never done, use violence to achieve political ends. His hitmen, such as Surinder Singh Sodhi, assassinated a number of people who earned his wrath. He had also dabbled in politics, openly supporting Congress candidates against the Akalis at one point and then trying to put up his own candidates for elections to the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), the Sikh body that controls all gurdwaras in Punjab, with little success.
This man, a terrorist who thought nothing of using violence to terrorise and kill his opponents, whether Sikhs or Hindus, a man who never enjoyed popular support within the Sikh community (despite the impression being sought to be conveyed today), was truly converted into a sant (holy man) by the stupidity of the Indian State. Whatever the facts and events that led to Bluestar, the lasting image the operation created was of a man who died defending the Harmandir Sahib against an attack by the Indian Army, in the company of hundreds of innocents. The truth about the man has since faded in the face of this last image, and it is this image that remains dangerous, it is this image that the memorial will seek to propagate.
It builds on something already visible in the Sikh community that outsiders find difficult to understand. In Punjab, Bhindranwale has re-emerged in the imagination of some young Sikhs as their counterpart to Che Guevara...
