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BETWEEN THE LINES

A Balm to Healing Wounds

Kuldip Nayar writes from New Delhi
***The wound of the Sikh community is still raw. One has only to talh&iheml&realieilfffl^^ they stil^.‘
feel The Rtyiv Gandhi-Longowal accord is still on paper and sefi^wdy s^pipld be fiHidmmi^e amends for desecration of the Golden Temple during Operation Blue Star.***
DR Ganga Singh Dhillon was a familiar name some years ago. He had revived the demand for Khalistan from the US after Operation Blue Star in the Golden Temple at Amritsar 13 years ago. He has resurfaced through an article in The Nation. an English daily from Lahore.
Surprisingly, he does not talk about nis pet subject. Khalistan. His anger is against "an evil-lntentioned Hindu strategy which engineered the fictional Muslim-Sikh conflict centuries ago." He wants Pakistan or, for that matter, Muslims to forget the past and. as a goodwill gesture, allow Sikhs "to maintain and manage the holy shrines" in that country.
This is a welcome suggestion. which everyone in India will support. But Dhillon does not have to pour venom over Hindus to justify it. Like any communalist, he. too. harbours the belief that the hate-Hindu language goes down well in Pakistan. This is not entirely true. The post-partition generation knows very little about India, still less about Hindus and Sikhs. It looks for information which has got submerged beneath the pile of spiteful political propaganda and false history books.
History books have been distorted to serve parochial ends. Wars between kings and over-lords have been understood as wars between Hindus and Muslims. Muslims recall the days when they ruled India and Hindus see themselves as the rightful owners of Aryavarta (the land of the Aryas), treating others as Intruders or plunderers. Both communities miss the
dominating and determining force of economic factors in all history.
The late Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh president, once explained to me how all along Pakistan had preached four things: "One. Islam is in danger, two. the Hindu is a kq/ir, three. India is the enemy; and. four. Kashmir must be conquered. Pakistanis have been fed on this propaganda for the last many years. The hate campaign unleashed in that country is even against the tenets of Islam. Unless there is a change in the mentality of the people of Pakistan they cannot get out of their make-believe world."
Dhillon distorts facts when he says that, religiously, Sikhs are nearer to Muslims than Hindus. No two other communities are closer to each other than Hindus and Sikhs. They worship same gods and goddesses. follow same customs and celebrate same festivals. They are warp and woof of the same culture. The name of god Ram figures several thousand times in the Sikhs' holy book. Guru Granth Sahib. Together they left Pakistan and migrated to India and together they have fought wars to defend India. And there is still practice among many Punjabi Hindu families to bring up their eldest son as Sikh.
Unfortunately, a chasm developed between the "two communities when Hindus in Punjab returned Hindi as their mother tongue in the 1950 Gen-
sus. The Sikhs were hurt and felt that it showed bias against them. But all that is history. Punjabi is now the official language of the state and taught compulsorily in schools In Punjab.
There is some truth in Dhillon's statement that Quaid-e-Azam Mohammed All Jinnah offered the Sikhs "an autonomous status" within Pakistan. What broke the negotiations was not the fear that "the arrangements would not have worked long." as Dhillon puts it. but the Sikhs' realisation that they were the target in the communal riots which began at that time. They had no alternative except to leave Pakistan.
On the other hand, the Sikhs have come to get a state in India where they constitute more than 60 per cent. Had certain elements in Delhi their way after partition, they would have dispersed the Sikhs all over the country, not allowing them to concentrate anywhere. But Jawaharlal Nehru saw to It they would stay in Punjab because he wanted them to enjoy "a glow of freedom" in the state. The cooperative federalism that India is acquiring since the assumption of power by the United Front gives Punjab authority in its
own affairs, like any other state in the country. It will have more and more say as the process of decentralisation advances in the future. This is the real autonomy.
The Sikhs on their part have served India well. The SGPC (Shiromani Gurudwara Pra-bandhak Committee) president. Gurcharan Singh Tohra, has listed the number of sacrifices that the Sikhs have made in the freedom struggle. He has said that 93 out ofl21 Indians sent to the gallows by the British were Sikhs and 2.147 out of 2,694 imprisoned for life were Sikhs. The bravery of Sikh troops in defence of the country is exemplary.
Not long ago, chief minister Prakash Singh Badal made a fervent appeal to the Sikhs at a college in Amritsar to rise above parochialism to serve Bharat Mata. It was the same Badal who had under political compulsions burnt the Indian Constitution once. This was his way of bringing back the estranged Sikh community to the mainstream. It goes to his credit that he is making relentless efforts towards it. The Centre has responded by writing off the loan of Rs 8.000 crore which Punjab had accumulated as an
expense on the security forces to fight militancy.
It is, however, inexcusable that the community became the target after two Sikh security guards killed Indira Gandhi. The fact that 3,000 Sikhs were butchered in Delhi in day light is a blot which cannot be rubbed off. That none has been punished even after 13 years of the crime is something that the nation cannot explain without feeling ashamed. And one should not dismiss Dhillon as a maverick when he talks of sufferings of the Sikhs "at the hands of Hindu rulers since 1984." This means that the Sikhs' exasperation began after 1984 when Operation Blue Star took place and the Sikhs were killed In Delhi and Jamshedpur. not before. Then how does Dhillon talk about centuries old Sikh complaints against Hindus?
Operation Blue Star was at the behest of a particular government belonging to a particular party. It considered the step essential. It was not India's doing but that of the government. The rioting In Delhi and Jamshedpur was the result of police failure. It was also politically instigated and that may be the reason why the culprits have not been brought to book so far. It is futile to blame the Hindu community for it.
Reprehensible as they may seem, one should not gloss over what led to the 1984 incidents. It cannot be denied that the temple had begun to be used as a
by'ipHUaiits and by
blood murders. Why were arms allowed to be accumulated at the Akai Takht In the first instance? Harchand Singh Lon-gowal. who was in charge of the Akali agitation at the time, told me that he was helpless. Now that Central Human Rights Commission has ordered probe into militancy in Punjab, the country may come to know why militancy took birth and who were responsible for It.
Former Director General of Police KPS Gill is unnecessarily arousing hackles by stating that terrorism will reappear in Punjab in two years' time. It was the Sikh community which ultimately defeated militancy and it will see to it that the nightmare through which the people of Punjab have gone does not haunt them once again. It is unfortunate that some prominent Sikh leaders take pride in attending Bhog' ceremonies of slain militants. They are the ones who are sending wrong signals, not Dhillon, who has ceased to count, whatever his diatribe.
Nonetheless, the wound of the Sikh community is still raw. One has only to talk to them to realise how aggrieved they still feel. The Rajiv Gandhi-Longowal accord is still on paper and some way should be found to make amends for desecration of the Golden Temple during Operation Blue Star. There should be some other way to flush out militants from the places of worship. The Sikhs concede that militants did wrong to the community as well as the country. But they want a balm to heal their wounds.