It is a crying shame for the Indian state that one of its former army chiefs of staff should have been gunned down by terrorists. It would have been a different matter if General Vaidya was not on the hit list and/or if he had not received threatening letters recently. But the General was on the hit list; he had to be; he was the army chief at the time of “Operation Bluestar” in June 1984; and only a couple of days ago the press carried reports that he was receiving threatening letters. In view of all this, his assassination (his wife has been seriously injured) is a terrible indictment of our entire intelligence and security system, not just of the Pune police or the Maharashtra police. As is only to be expected in such a case, the murder has sent shock waves throughout the land. It is bound to strengthen the view that the terrorists have long enough arms to reach anyone and anywhere they wish, that they are sufficiently resourceful to be able to operate so far from Punjab as Pune and indeed that, official claims notwithstanding, the battle against them is not being won. But it will be a pity if such a pessimistic impression acquires a grip on the public mind.
It is beyond question that the hardcore terrorists are a determined group who stop at nothing in the pursuit of their objective, that many of them are still at large, and that they take pride in the fact that a fellow Sikh killed General Dyer, architect of the great Jallianwalla Bagh massacre, many years later. They are capable of hitting at pre-selected targets as they did recently at Muktsar when they gunned down 15 bus passengers or as they have done now. Muktsar gave them tremendous publicity and made the Indian state look a pitiful giant. The assassination of General Vaidya will give them great publicity and show the security agencies in an extremely poor light. It will also boost their morale as must have Muktsar. These two ugly incidents apart, even otherwise there is no room for euphoria. Too many hardcore terrorists and their secondliners remain free for comfort and external and internal support to them conÂtinues. But in the long-term sense it does now look as if the battle against these enemies of both India and of the Sikh community can be won. The community by and large remains paralyzed for want of an effective non-Akali leadership. This is as true in Punjab as in the rest of the Union. This is a pity. But the talk of an embittered and alienated Sikh community sympathetic to the cause of the terrorist is also beginning to become outdated. The police in Punjab are beginning to receive accurate information which alone could enable them to get at the top terrorists. The murder of General Vaidya, in itself profoundly tragic, should not be allowed to obscure the hard fought gains on the ground.