June 2 must go down as one of the saddest days in the history of independent India. For what can be more saddening than having to call in the army to assist the civil authority to restore law and order in a state which has been known as the country’s sword arm? On a surface view, this is not an extraordinary development. Troops have been called to help the civil authority quite frequently in one state after another, most recently to quell riots in Maharashtra. But Punjab is not any other state. It is central to the defence of the land and it provides a disproportionately large number of troops. And the army has been called in not just to deal with a temporary fit of madness on a mass scale which is what a riot is, but to cope with the activities of cold-blooded murderers out to destroy the country’s integrity.
Mrs. Gandhi did not exaggerate one bit when in her broadcast to the nation on Saturday she said that the leadership of the Akali agitation “appears to have been seized by a group of fanatics and terrorists whose instruments for achieving whatever they have in view are murder, arson, and looting” and “who have scant regard for the unity and integrity of our country, or concern for communal peace and harmony”. Indeed, for all we know, she might have understated, for understandable reasons, the threat posed by the dangerous men abroad in Punjab. We all know that they have terrorized the Akali leaders to a point where they not only dare not engage in meaningful negotiations with the Union government but feel obliged to step up their demands; they have been wilfully killing innocent Hindus in order to inflame communal passions and stir up a communal holocaust in the state; and they have been equally deliberately murdering Nirankaris and other dissident Sikhs in order to ensure that no Sikh, however tall, raises his voice against their criminal acts. But it is possible that we have not been aware of the true intentions and plans of the desperadoes.
The situation in Punjab has been grim enough for several months to warrant the demand for the induction of the army. But by its very nature, the army is not trained to deal with individual acts of terrorism. The police are best qualified to cope with that kind of menace. That is precisely why only recently we opposed the demand by the National Democratic Alliance, comprising the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Lok Dal, for calling in the army. We were aware that the police in Punjab were inadequate for the task even in terms of numbers, not to speak of other problems such as morale and the inadequacy of the intelligence back-up. But we felt that the paramilitary forces such as the CRPF and the BSF could provide the necessary support. Apparently, Mrs. Gandhi and her aides must be in possession of information which would have convinced them that the magnitude of the danger ahead was too great to be handled by these forces and that it had become necessary to bring in the army. It can be taken for granted that they would have taken the present decision with the greatest reluctance.
The Prime Minister has been facing two sets of contradictory charges. While one group of critics has been accusing her of not negotiating seriously enough with the Akalis in order to create a situation in which the Hindus in Punjab and other parts of the country come to regard her as their only saviour, the other as has been charging her with the crime of not taking the necessary steps to protect the lives and properties of the Hindus in Punjab. Both sets of charges are unjustified. In her broadcast on Saturday, she has sought to meet the first; she has detailed the Akali demands which she has conceded and which had been negotiated. She has not dealt with the second charge. On the contrary, she has used the occasion to warn those “misguided Hindus” who believe that counter-violence “is the heroic way to meet terrorism”. But it is only appropriate to take note of the fact that the Hindus in Punjab have had good reason to feel insecure and to draw the inference that the Union government has decided to bring in the army primarily in order to give them not only a sense of security but also an adequate measure of security.
It is commonsense that in the final analysis a political solution alone can restore peace in Punjab. But it is also commonsense that such a solution is inconceivable so long as the terrorists are able to kill, loot and burn with impunity in the state. They must be disposed of before it is possible to resume a meaningful dialogue with the Akalis. So it no longer makes much sense for even the Prime Minister’s detractors to go on arguing that she could have clinched a deal with the Akalis at some stage. On her part she would also be unrealistic if she believes that the Akalis can heed her appeal and call off the agitation. They would do nothing of the kind. Or else we would be wrong in arguing that they are too terrorized to be able to negotiate with the Union government. For they would need even greater courage to call off the agitation. The authorities have, therefore, no choice but to deal with the twin problems of the Akali agitation and the extremist crimes simultaneously. This places an obligation on all Indians to appreciate the seriousness of the situation and act accordingly.
It is in a sense a sheer accident that the current head of the Indian state is a respected Sikh who has few peers in interpreting the Sikh scriptures. A member of another community could well have been the head of state. But Giani Zail Singh’s presence in Rashtrapati Bhavan is an eloquent testimony to what the Indian state stands for. This should serve to reassure the Sikhs, if they need an assurance at all, that India belongs to them as much as to any other community and that they have as big a stake in the elimination of the latest danger to the country’s unity as anyone else. It is also an accident that the general who has been appointed security adviser to the governor of Punjab by virtue of his being the chief of staff in the western command happens to be a Sikh. But this too is a testimony to the secular and non-discriminatory nature of the Indian state and should serve as an assurance that New Delhi is not about to unleash a reign of terror in Punjab. But it is perhaps still necessary to make the point that the Union government can now dither only at grave peril to the future of the Indian state and that it must do all that needs to be done to dispose of the spectre that haunts Punjab and the rest of the country. Not to mince words, the war on the terrorists cannot be won so long as their leaders can continue to function from within the sanctuaries of various gurdwaras, especially the Golden Temple in Amritsar. And the war has to be won if India has to live.
This means that it is not desirable to delay for long an operation to flush out the criminals. The cost can be high. Hundreds of men in the Golden Temple are armed with modern weapons possibly supplied by a helpful foreign government with an enormous stake in India’s dismemberment. And the refusal of the authorities to order the police and the paramilitary forces into the temple has lent it a kind of inviolability it has never possessed before. The police did enter the temple in the fifties when Pratap Singh Kairon was Punjab’s chief minister. But we have to be prepared to pay the cost. A show of infirmity will vastly raise the cost.