VP Singh and his colleagues have thrown away a great opportunity that the Kashmiri terrorists and their Pakistani mentors presented them within days of the formation of the new Janata Dal government. A pro-Janata Dal wave would have swept the country if they had refused to bargain with the terrorists for the release of the Union Home Minister’s daughter, Dr. Rubaiya, and created an atmosphere in which it would have been possible for the government to take the toughest possible measures against the terrorists in the valley and Punjab.
In the event, the government made an ignominious surrender and released five terrorists, including a Pakistani national. This understandably encouraged anti-Indian elements in the valley to celebrate the occasion and engage in anti-state activities, obliging the authorities to impose curfew in all important towns there.
The price of a refusal to bargain would, in my assessment, have been relatively small in comparison with the possible gains for the Janata Dal as well as the country. I do not believe for a moment that the terrorists would have killed the girl, or even molested her; indeed, in my view, their patrons in Pakistan could not have afforded to let them do so; for, the former could not have risked losing face in the international community, especially in Washington, and they in their turn would have seen to it that their henchmen in the valley behaved.
It is, of course, possible, that the terrorists would not have released Dr. Rubaiya soon. But this would have left the government two significant options. It could have continued to mobilize opinion both at home and abroad and to put pressure on Benazir Bhutto, who as a woman could not have been wholly insensitive to the plight of the young woman in captivity, and it could have used force to rescue Rubaiya. And if no one can guarantee that either course would have produced results, no one can possibly argue with confidence that both would have failed, especially if it is true, as reported, that Dr. Rubaiya was held in a mosque in Srinagar itself and the authorities were in the know of it. In any case, the worst that could have happened was that Rubaiya would have continued to be held by her tormentors.
I am not being insensitive to the suffering of Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and his family members. I am also not unaware that even if the Mufti was willing to accept the ordeal as the price of his politics, he would have been under great pressure from his relations, especially female relations. And so would have been his colleagues, particularly the Prime Minister. But there are moments in the life of an individual in high office when he cannot and must not regard any sacrifice too great in order to honour the trust the people have placed in him. Those who are not so inclined or made should stay away from high public office.
I have little doubt that the decision to kidnap Rubaiya was taken in Islamabad and that those who are in charge of terrorist activities in India wanted to test the nerves of the new Prime Minister and his colleagues. Even if this was not the case, the Pakistani policy makers would be justified in drawing the conclusion that they can continue to turn the dagger into India’s ‘soft belly’. It would be naive to cite the 1965 example when too the Pakistani leaders had concluded that India had in Lal Bahadur Shastri a weak Prime Minister whom they could push without fear of retaliation. Islamabad then provoked a war with India and paid for it. It has learnt its lesson and devised the low cost ‘war by proxy’ strategy we call terrorism as an appropriate response to India’s superior military strength. On this reckoning, India will continue to be bled the halal way.
I also find it shocking that VP Singh, the Mufti and other Union Ministers should have sought to blame the state government for the surrender to the terrorists. Whatever Farooq Abdullah’s other crimes, he has not been guilty of this one. The Union Government was involved in the negotiations with the terrorists. Two Union Ministers, Inder Gujral and Arif Mohammad Khan, were in Srinagar to make sure that Farooq Abdullah carried out New Delhi’s instructions. Indeed, the threat of dismissal was kept hanging over his head. The new government must have an extremely poor opinion of the Indian people for it to try to sell the proposition that the state government has brought this shame upon them.
I do not wish to suggest by any means that Rajiv Gandhi, if in office, would necessarily have shown greater sagacity and daring in a similar situation. His record also cannot inspire much confidence. He had only to sit back when our mobilization to counter a possible Pakistani military move across the frontier in 1987 had sent shivers down the spines of Pakistani rulers to compel them to end their support to the terrorists in Punjab and Kashmir. Instead, he offered talks and withdrawal of our troops from forward positions, with results that are there for anyone to see.
Indeed, even Pakistan’s continued interference in Punjab and Kashmir, a euphemism for training, arming, financing and harbouring the terrorists, did not persuade him to recognise the grim reality that friendly relations with Pakistan were just not possible. So he expected a new dawn in Indo-Pakistan relations on Benazir Bhutto’s arrival in office. As it happened, it was well known that power in Pakistan continued to flow out of the barrel of the gun and that Benazir’s own survival was by no means assured.
But under discussion is VP Singh’s performance and not Rajiv Gandhi’s. Even otherwise, it would be legitimate to make the point that VP Singh should have learnt from the mistakes and weaknesses of Rajiv Gandhi which he does not appear to have done. On the contrary, VP Singh seems determined to compound Rajiv Gandhi’s initial mistakes in Punjab.
In 1985, Rajiv Gandhi behaved as if he had only to distance himself from Indira Gandhi to be able to win over the Sikh extremists and terrorists. Since he took office VP Singh has behaved as if he is convinced that he has only to repudiate Rajiv Gandhi to bring about peace in Punjab. Rajiv Gandhi came a cropper and it is a safe bet that VP Singh will come a cropper.
I was a consistent critic of Rajiv Gandhi’s ‘accord’ with Sant Longowal and I have not had second thoughts since. But one point must be conceded in Rajiv Gandhi’s favour. He was under pressure to respond to the widespread feeling that Indira Gandhi had willfully thrown away opportunities for a deal with the Akalis out of electoral considerations; and this pressure was not easy to resist in the context of the anti-Sikh riots in the wake of her assassination in 1984. He was also new to politics; as such it is possible that he was blissfully ignorant of the twists and turns in Akali politics over decades. Above all, there was a possibility, though in my assessment rather small, that Sant Longowal might have managed to keep the Akalis together and to isolate the hard-core terrorists. No such plea can be advanced in favour of VP Singh.
Outside the small group of highly articulate men, especially influential in the press, who, for reasons best known to them, want New Delhi to yield to every pressure from wherever, it is difficult to find many Indians today who believe that terrorism can be ended in Punjab by any concession short of a virtual Khalistan. And there is just no Sikh leader with whom the government can even engage in a meaningful dialogue, not to speak of making a deal with him. Let us look at the prominent Sikh leaders.
Surjeet Singh Barnala is clearly the most honourable of them all. But he himself will not claim that he commands any support among the terrorists and that he can persuade them to lay down arms in return for concessions by the government. Prakash Singh Badal no longer possesses the credentials among the Hindus in Punjab he once did in view of his record of tacit, if not explicit, support to the secessionists when he was previously out of jail.
Indeed, his release then was largely responsible for demoralizing the police and encouraging the terrorists to return to the Golden Temple and other gurdwaras which, as we know, led to operation “Black Thunder”. The Deputy Prime Minister, Devi Lal’s friendship with him cannot persuade anyone that Badal can be either willing or courageous enough to stand up to the terrorists.
Then we have Gurcharan Singh Tohra who is back as President of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, this time ‘reluctantly’ we are told. The best that be can be said about him is that he has remained ‘ambivalent’ since the rise of Bhindranwale in 1982 and that he is not likely to shed this ‘ambivalence’. For all we know, he may well be waiting for a ‘suitable’ opportunity to lend his support to the Khalistan cause. But we shall let that pass.
This leaves mainly Simranjeet Singh Mann. This new ‘star’ on the Sikh firmament looks like being a prisoner of the terrorists, if not quite their creature; on the face of it, at least, he does not command the kind of room for manoeuvre Sant Longowal commanded. My own assessment is that he is likely to play ‘safe’ and not incur the wrath of the Khalistanis even if he was so inclined which is open to question. His own demand for enlarging the boundaries of Punjab and a ‘self-determined’ status for it does not fall too short of Khalistan as originally conceived.
Thus, it is rather difficult to appreciate either the compulsions or the calculations which have persuaded VP Singh to launch the search for ‘peace’ in Punjab. The story regarding his visit to the Golden Temple, as told by the editor of the Current, Bombay, is too bizarre to bear repetition. If, indeed, it is accurate, we have reason to be concerned and perhaps even to be alarmed.
VP Singh, the story has it, decided to go to Amritsar not in pursuit of a carefully worked out plan but because his deputy, Devi Lal, was going there any way; and once there he was so delighted by the reception that he felt he had won over Punjab. That might explain the ‘decision’ to convene an all-party conference last Sunday and present us with the so-called ‘national consensus’ document. This, of course, does not reflect too creditably on him and his advisers. But it is difficult to think of another. At best the document is an exercise in escapism. More realistically, it is an invitation to disaster in Punjab.
The Congress representatives provided a way out. Their formal protest over lack of consultations with them apart, they demanded a reference to the Anandpur Sahib resolution and the renewed demand for Khalistan by the leaders of the All India Sikh Students’ Federation who have clearly been calling the shots. VP Singh, if he was smart, could have seized this opportunity to withdraw the document on the plea that there was need for further consultations.
But what is even more amazing is that the CPI, CPI-M and BJP leaders, who are aware of the resurgence of terrorist activities and morale in the state and re-introduction of weapons in the gurdwaras in the wake of the recent elections, should have gone along. They may now use newspaper columns to give expression to their fears and reservations about VP Singh’s stance. But considerable damage has already been done.
There were, however, two possible explanations for what is happening, one psychological and the other ideological, which deserve to be explored.
The psychological explanation can be that we are a peace-loving people; naturally we produce peaceable leaders who are anxious to wish away unpleasant realities like terrorism and to appease those who are unreasonable and aggressive.
Indira Gandhi, to the extent I knew her, was different. She could be unpleasant at the slightest provocation and surrender was not in her nature. Incidentally, that could explain partly her unpopularity among the intelligentsia. She was too tough-minded for too many ‘gentle’ souls suitably encouraged by the Americans and their protégés.
Sardar Patel suffered calumny at the hands of the same intelligentsia for the same reason. I wonder how many Indians are aware that a visit by him to Amritsar and a frank talk with Master Tara Singh sufficed to subdue the enthusiasm of the Master for a separate autonomous state, or that if he had not had his way in respect of the merger of the states, we would have many more Kashmirs, or that he was opposed to the reference of the Kashmir issue to the United Nations, or that he would never have agreed to Article 370, or a separate constitution for Kashmir.
Neither Indira Gandhi nor Sardar Patel figures among VP Singh’s heroes. Indeed, going by his first address to the nation as Prime Minister, the Mahatma too is not in his list which gives the pride of place to Jayaprakash Narayan and the ideologue of casteism in Indian politics, Rammanohar Lohia.
The possible ideological explanation can be that the very concept of ‘secular’ nationalism, involving as it must a grave misrepresentation of Indian history and emasculation of Indian personality, cannot but sire the kind of leadership we have had, with some exceptions.
These, however, are different issues which need to be investigated independently. To return to Punjab, I can spot no evidence to suggest that a possible interlocutor with whom the government can negotiate exists, or is likely to arise. Akali politics has effectively been undermined by the terrorists and it cannot be revived so long as the terrorists have not been defeated to their own conviction. This in turn is just not conceivable so long as Pakistan continues to support them. Such a restraint on the part of Pakistan does not appear likely at present. Indeed, it is not conceivable that Pakistan may step up its support to the terrorists in both Punjab and Kashmir in order to cover up its failure in Afghanistan, though I for one doubt that it will divert Afghan Mujahideen in our direction. For, that must mean war which Islamabad would not wish to provoke. But a turn for the better in Pakistan’s attitude should also not be ruled out. The scene can be transformed if a hurricane similar to the one sweeping through Eastern and Central Europe hits China, as it well may, in none too distant a future. Time, after all, may be on our side.
The Pioneer, 24 December 1989