10) "KHALISTAN MOVEMENT" - THE BRITISH HAND
By B. Prasant, PV correspondent in India
The lanes and by‑lanes of the town of Amritsar in the Punjab were not quite deserted that fateful evening in 1981. I crept along hugging the dilapidated brick‑made boundary wall of a large single‑storey house, my trusty Minolta 101 at the end of my upthrust left arm, clicking away blindly.
I was shooting at a large column of oddly jungle‑camouflaged Indian army troops who crept along the far side path of the curving street, nervous fingers shivering along the trigger‑guards of the British‑made sten guns crooked in their arms. There was a sudden burst of gun fire from some roof top. The army column halted and the officers went into a huddle.
The smell of gunpowder hung acrid in the summer evening air. The Khalistan movement was raging across north India, with hundreds killed almost every week. What could have enraged the very stable and courageous community of the Sikhs, dubbed as one of the martial races over the centuries?
My mind went back to my childhood days when I lived in a large middle bourgeois household in north‑central Calcutta. Our large and strapping chauffeur, the young Gurudev Singh, was the only man other than my father and uncles who was allowed into the andar-mahal (inner sanctorum) of the household, talking to the women and asking for the inevitable shopping lists of daily necessities.
I recalled the brave role of kirpan‑brandishing groups of Sikhs on powerful motorbikes, saving men and women of both the majoritarian communities in Calcutta during the successive riots we had in the sixties, seventies, and eighties.
What had made the Sikhs go violent? The answer lies with the negotiated settlement called independence, which was handed over to India on a platter of platitudes by the Sandhurst man, Lord Mountbatten, to the Oxford‑educated Nehru.
Linguistic states were set up across India. Only the Sikhs were asked to be satisfied with what at least one right‑wing Congress party leader called the truncated and moth‑eaten remnants of Sikhdom. The Sikhs began by politely petitioning the Nehru government to expand into the Punjab, where Punjabi was spoken and where the Punjabis had migrated after being driven out in a bloodbath from Pakistan.
When this was not properly done, the Sikhs started to agitate under the Akali Dal, which however had its allied loyalties to Congress and the centre‑right groups in Delhi. The failure of the Akali Dal led other frustrated Sikh groups to the point of demanding semi‑autonomy for the expanded Punjab.
This was the start of the movement for a separate, semi-independent state called Khalistan, by the Sikhs in particular and Punjabis in general. Khalistan means "land of the chaste." In an unfortunate turn, extremists among the Sikh leadership wanted Khalistan to be a theocratic entity, clashing with the existing religious groups as well as the state.
Terrorist elements soon took over. The killings of non‑Sikhs started, as did those of Sikhs by "low‑caste" communities of the majoritarian groups. There was indescribable violence on every side. The federal government, now under Indira Gandhi, deployed the Army and gave it a free hand. A hellish "Lebanese" situation developed in the entire sweep of north and central India.
Then an unfortunate event occurred in 1984. Under circumstances yet to unravel fully, Indira Gandhi was found dead, ridden with bullets inside her residential complex. One of her two bodyguards killed the other. The Indo‑Tibetan border police officer guarding the complex killed the first bodyguard. All three were Sikhs with a high sense of loyalty to the prime minister, to the extent they were distrusted by the Sikhdom in general.
A fourth Sikh Army man was found on the spot, quickly brought to justice, and later hanged. Waves of killers spread out, under the overt and covert encouragement of the then majority political party, and in the space of two weeks 84,000 Sikhs were dead.
These events came just months after the Army, determined to deal a final blow to the theocratic centre of the Sikhs, attacked the Golden Temple of Amritsar and destroyed the Akal Takht, one of the seats of temporal‑physical authority of the Sikhs. Close to four thousand Sikhs and a few Armymen died in this "Operation Blue Star".
There was a sharp repercussion in the Hindi heartland. Burst after burst of killings on all sides took place ‑ women and children as soft targets suffered most. The riots continued well into the 1990s. The Sikhs then gradually withdrew from all parts of India and considered it safe only in the Punjab, a sad story.
Recently, documents have been leaked that Margaret Thatcher's government facilitated and aided the Congress government to plan and execute Blue Star. The documents show that India sought the help of British intelligence, especially the SAS, to chalk out a plan to "oust the Sikhs" from the Golden Temple.
Accordingly, an SAS operative, maybe a team of officers, visited India and drew up a plan that the Indian Army subsequently put into operation. There is a possibility that a team of SAS officers took part in the op itself. According to Army veterans we spoke to, the SAS in camouflage and visors carried dozens of RPGs and gas explosives which they used with deadly effect. Two letters that have appeared have put paid to all chances of the Congress getting into a denial mode about the role of the SAS.
The first letter from Thatcher's P.A. to the Indian Prime Minister talks about sending advisers to aid the government in occupying the Golden Temple. The second letter talks glibly about the possible role of the SAS in the op that was to be unleashed 'shortly' on the unsuspecting Sikh religious men and women and on others who reside in the Golden Temple. The officer then requests the Indian PM that the role of the SAS, if known to the public, would enrage the Indian community in the UK and elsewhere with "possible domestic implications."
Sikh communities in the sub‑continent and those forming the diaspora in Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the US have registered their strong protest over the dastardly events that have now come to light. Prime Minister Cameron's "inquiry" will do little assuage the hurt feelings of the Sikh community, and of all the right‑thinking people of the sub‑continent and beyond.
(The above article is from the February 1-14, 2014, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading socialist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)