Even while the clean-up operation by the security forces was on in the Golden Temple complex, it had become obvious that the terrorists would strike with even greater ferocity wherever they can at vulnerable sections of society. No group in Punjab is more vulnerable than the poor immigrant workers from eastern UP, Bihar and Orissa. So these have become the special targets of the murder squads who continue to roam the state. On the face of it, these would appear to be random killings. On the face of it, it would appear that the terrorists are concentrating their attention on the immigrant workers just because they are the easiest to kill. The first proposition is wholly wrong and the second only partially true. There is a pattern in the killings and these have a well-defined purpose. The terrorists want to drive out the immigrants as part of the larger plan to change the population composition of the state. Already the Hindus have virtually been driven out of the border villages in Amritsar and Gurdaspur districts and the effort is being stepped up in the countryside in other districts.
It also seems that as the security forces have increased their vigilance in the border districts and managed to clear the Golden Temple complex of the terrorists, the latter have spread out in the rest of the state. The terrorists come mostly from rural areas; they move freely there because villages in Punjab, as elsewhere in the country, are hardly policed. It follows that the killings in the countryside will continue on a substantial scale till the authorities can provide anything like adequate police protection. The task is not beyond the resources of the Indian state. It is still not necessary to bring in the army; the paramilitary forces, if adequately strengthened, can do the job. Clearly there is no time to lose. The Union government must act quickly. Instead of visiting the Golden Temple complex to find out the damage caused to it, the home minister, Mr Buta Singh, and his minister of state, Mr Chidambaram, should be attending to this task of protecting the people in the rural areas. Incidentally, the behaviour of the two ministers in air dashing to Amritsar runs true to form; the government remains determined to send wrong messages; its defensiveness can only encourage those who claim that the terrorists are entitled to use the gurdwaras as sanctuaries.
If the significance of the victory of the security forces in the Golden Temple complex should not be minimized, it should not be exaggerated either. While the terrorists have been denied the status that accrued to them by their very control of the holiest of the Sikh shrines and large number of their leading cadres have been put out of action, the top leadership represented by the Panthic committee remains intact in Pakistan and so do the main terrorist outfits. And no one in the government who has anything to do with the situation on the ground in Punjab believes that the flow of arms and ammunition to the terrorists from Pakistan is likely to be affected as a result of the agreement on joint patrolling. This raises the question why the government has gone in for the agreement and in the process helped Islamabad to claim that it is fully cooperating with New Delhi in checking the smuggling of arms and narcotics across the border. This issue has a direct bearing on the terrorist activities in Punjab. We cannot just bring terrorism in the state under control so long as we are not able to check the flow of men and arms across the border. The government will have to bring pressure to bear on Islamabad if it is to cope with the problem in Punjab. Right now it has, in its wisdom or lack of it, decided to try the softer diplomatic approach. It cannot be long before it is forced to face the futility of this approach. Meanwhile it will have lost valuable time. Also the odds against this country can increase if the situation in Afghanistan begins to move in a direction Islamabad favours. The time to put the pressure on Pakistan is now. At long last New Delhi has collected evidence which can leave no room for doubt regarding Islamabad’s deep involvement with the terrorists. The surrender of a number of the hard-core terrorists in the Golden Temple should enable it to put on record more of such evidence and confront Pakistan with it. But essentially it is test of the Indian leadership’s will which it cannot claim to have passed. And as it continues to dither, Punjab will continue to hum. Pakistan could not have had it so good so cheap.