Akali dissidents, who have been carrying on a campaign of vilification against the Punjab chief minister, Mr. Barnala, on the issue of the police entry into the Golden Temple complex on April 30, should now hang their heads in shame, that is, of course, if they have any sense of shame. The police have had to go into the complex once again, this time not to clear the holy shrine and adjoining buildings of extremists, terrorists and other anti-social elements but to protect from slaughter the security force which the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee itself has set up to look after the complex. A large number of militants armed with swords and possibly other weapons swooped on the shrine on the evening of June 4 and started attacking members of the SGPC’s security force, killing one person and injuring many others. There cannot be the slightest doubt that the killers would have engaged in a massacre if the police had not intervened. We want to know from Mr. Tohra, Mr. Badal and Capt. Amrinder Singh (who claims to have known Mr. Rajiv Gandhi for 32 years) whether, in their view, the police should have gone in or not.
If the answer is in the negative, the inference would be obvious; the Akali dissidents regard the Golden Temple complex at the very least as their version of the Vatican, at the very least because it is utterly inconceivable that criminals can ever seize the Vatican and that in such an utterly unlikely eventuality the Pope would not seek the help of the Italian state. If the answer is in the affirmative, then too, the inference would be obvious; the Akali dissidents do not mind if the Golden Temple complex is used by secessionists, terrorists and extremists for promoting their anti-national activities. For there can be no other explanation for their accepting police intervention in one case (protecting the SGPC’s security force) and opposing it in the other case (removal of anti-national and criminal elements). Indeed, we do not have to wait for their answer. Their silence over the police entry on June 4 makes it clear that they make such a distinction. We would also wish to know, from the proponents of the Akali cause whether or not the Sikh psyche has, in their view, been hurt by the latest police action. If not, why not? If yes, who should “atone” for it? Perhaps not Mr. Barnala because it does not look as if the Amritsar police had time to get in touch with him and get his clearance. Who else then? It is extremely painful to have to raise these issues. In no society possessed of the elementary instinct of survival would it be necessary to do so.
It should also not be necessary to affirm again and again the sanctity of all places of worship and their inviolability by the state so long as they serve only that purpose. For more than four years that has not been the issue in regard to the Golden Temple complex. The issue has been whether or not the Indian state should sit idly by when the shrine is converted into a headquarters of a secessionist movement. The answer of not only the secessionists but also of a large number of Akalis, at one stage of a vast majority of them, has been obvious. They have proclaimed that the shrine could be so used. The tragedy is that many others have also spoken and acted as if they agreed. So long as Mrs. Indira Gandhi was alive, one could perhaps convince oneself that this was an expression of hostility towards her and her kind of politics. Now it looks as if those of us who so convinced ourselves had deluded ourselves. For as far as these supporters of the Akali claims and demands are concerned, they remain as opposed to the Indian state exercising its authority now as they were when Mrs. Gandhi was prime minister. It is not for us to say whether or not they are aware that the fight for the control of the Golden Temple complex and other gurdwaras by the terrorists, secessionists and their allies is not an aberration and that it is part of a carefully worked out war of attrition on the Indian state. One does not need great perspicacity to recognise this reality. Indeed, the reverse is true. Only the naive can fail to appreciate the implication of developments centring on the Golden Temple complex and other historic gurdwaras.