On a surface view at least, the number of prominent Sikhs who have been willing to place the nation above the panth during the on-going trouble in Punjab can be counted, though mercifully not on one’s fingers.
Implicit in it is the proposition that the deeper reality may well be different. But if there exists among the top Sikhs a silent majority ready to subordinate the panth to the nation, it has not been visible. So we cannot either affirm or deny its existence.
The “optimists” would, of course, insist that such a majority does exist among successful Sikhs, indeed that there is no basic conflict of interests between the panth and the nation and that the apparent clash is essentially the result of Mrs Gandhi’s short-sighted policy of not concluding an agreement with the Akali leaders when it was still possible to do so,
Pessimists’ View
And the “pessimists” would, on the other hand, argue with equal vehemence that a significant section, if not a majority, of the Sikh intelligentsia is communal with little regard for the larger national interest. A substantial body of educated and articulate Hindus fall in this category of “pessimists”. They are not necessarily supporters of Mrs Gandhi. In fact, more often than not the articulate among them are otherwise critical of her.
They, however, share her view that the Akalis made unreasonable demands, that it was just not possible to reach an agreement with them, that whatever possibility might have existed of an accord with them, it disappeared with the emergence of extremism and terrorism under Bhindranwale’s leadership, that the government was left with no option but to order the army to flush out the terrorists from the Golden Temple, and that the threat to the country’s unity and integrity has not disappeared with the death of Bhindranwale and the return of the Golden Temple to the five Sikh head priests.
In a sense the distinction between the “optimists”, who are also mostly educated Hindus, and the “pessimists” is not all that sharp. For, the former too believe that extremism is growing in the Sikh community. Only they blame Mrs Gandhi for the tragedy and not the Akalis, or the extremists, or the expatriate Sikh advocates of Khalistan, or their foreign patrons.
In such a situation it is tempting to take a so-called middle position and blame both the Akalis and Mrs Gandhi for the tragic developments in Punjab. Such a posture of being above the battle would conform to our psychological make-up and would therefore be satisfying. But we cannot afford this kind of soft headed indulgence in a matter of such critical importance for the future of our country.
If one wishes to take a “middle” position, it would be more appropriate to see the Akalis and Mrs Gandhi as prisoners of their ideologies. Indeed, such a stance would help illuminate an otherwise wholly murky scene.
Since its very birth six decades ago, the Akali Dal has been inspired by the twin objectives of sharpening the religious-cultural-linguistic identity of the Sikh community to a point where its members do not see themselves as a branch of the larger Hindu community and of preserving that identity with the help of an appropriate political strategy. The strategy has varied from time to time. It involved both cooperation and conflict with the British before independence and even merger with the Congress for some time after independence. But the objectives have remained the same. The Anandpur Sahib resolution with its extremist overtones fits in well with the Akali psyche and approach.
Mrs Gandhi, on the other hand, is a nationalist in a way different from Gandhiji and perhaps from even Jawaharlal Nehru. She is a nationalist in the way the absolute kings of France were nationalists; that is, in the deepest recesses of her being she is committed to the subordination in some way of all forms of authority in the land to the centre. Thus instinctively she regards any challenge to the authority of the centre under her as a threat to the country’s unity and integrity. As Prime Minister she has had to make compromises with opponents, Sheikh Abdullah being the best known example. But she became restive as soon as he was installed in the office of chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir. Such a person would find the Anandpur Sahib resolution frighteningly anti-national.
This is not to say that a headlong clash between the Akalis and Mrs Gandhi’s government was unavoidable in view of their ideological commitments. But these ideological predispositions did incline them towards a clash. Otherwise, either Bhindranwale could not have emerged on the scene, or he could not have played the havoc he did.
Critics’ Comment
The government’s critics have contended and that Bhindranwale was the creation of certain Congress leaders, including, according to them, Giani Zail Singh whom Mrs Gandhi elevated to the office of President amidst the Akali agitation in 1982. But in order to put the issue in its proper perspective they must also take note of the fact that Bhindranwale could not become the menace he did if the climate of opinion among the Sikhs, especially the Sikh intelligentsia, was not favourable for him. And, of course, essentially the Akalis created that climate of opinion.
Similarly, while the critics have made a great deal of the age-old rivalry between Giani Zail Singh and Mr Darbara Singh, of the incompetence of the Punjab administration under the latter, frequent interference by the Giani first as home minister and then as President of the republic in the affairs of the state, and the Union government’s incapacity to enforce law on the one hand and refusal to reach an agreement with the Akalis on the other, they have as a rule refused to take note of the growth of self-consciousness among the Sikh intelligentsia without which these factors could not have produced the disastrous results they have in Punjab.
But however we apportion blame between the actors, we cannot evade the central fact that the sense of distinct and separate identity among the Sikhs in general and the Sikh intelligentsia in particular has become considerably sharper as a result of developments in recent years. Some of the actions of President Zail Singh and the utterances of distinguished retired generals such as Mr Harbaksh Singh and Mr Jagjit Singh Aurora can leave no scope for doubt on this score.
It goes without saying that as they see things, there is no basic conflict between the nation and the panth. Giani Zail Singh certainly sees himself as President of all Indians and the two generals and other like-minded Sikh retired officers would doubtless be willing to do all in their power to ensure India’s victory in a war with a foreign power. But it speaks for the hold of the panth on them that the Giani should have been as desperate as he in fact was to get the head priests to withdraw the “hukumnama” declaring him a “tankhaiya” and that General Harbaksh Singh, known to have advocated the severest penalty for Indian army men who had joined Netaji Subhash Bose’s INA during the last war, should now urge that Sikh deserters should be allowed to rejoin their units.
Common Cause
A number of retired Sikh generals, brigadiers and colonels made common cause with the Akalis and even with Bhindranwale. Clearly they placed the interests of the panth, as they mistakenly interpreted them, above those of the Indian state which they had served as members of the country’s defence services. This could never have happened unless the feeling of a separate and distinct identity had become extremely strong among the Sikh community.
All this can lend itself to the inference that, in my perception, the Sikhs are a monolith and that their self-awareness cannot even in the long run be accommodated within the parameters of the Indian nation and the state. But that is not my view. The Sikhs are not a monolith. The differences between the now dominant Jats and the Mazhabi Sikhs are well known and so are those between the Jats and the urban trading classes. And I am only too well aware that minorities tend to hold together much more tightly than majority communities in periods of stress and strain. As such I cannot rule out the possibility that in course of time the conflict between the interests of the nation and the panth will once again become manageable.
Democracy provides us safety valves and gives the Indian state considerable resilience and capacity to absorb shocks. But powerful adverse factors, both internal and external, are at work and these might converge, if they have not already converged. Pakistan has certainly a stake in keeping the Akali-extremist pot boiling even if its rulers have not yet found it discreet to get too deeply involved. The foreign devil is not a figment of Mrs Gandhi’s fevered imagination, though she perhaps blows it out of proportion in order to cover up her government’s and party’s failures. Similarly her detractors too take a partisan view of developments. They concentrate on her government’s failures and ignore the danger inherent in the Akali kind of politics and foreign machinations. This, too, ill-serves the Indian nation and the Indian state.
The Times of India, 10 October 1984