Lessons from Punjab: The perils of fanaticism

Turmoil in Punjab: Before and After Blue Star

Author: Ramesh Inder Singh

Publisher: Harper Collins

Pages: 572

Price: Rs 799

In 1979, IAS officer Ramesh Inder Singh was posted as additional district magistrate (ADM) at Faridkot in Punjab. One morning, he was invited to the house of the senior superintendent of police (SSP) — right next door — for a casual meeting with Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, where he urged the ADM to be liberal in granting arms licences to his men. The SSP who invited the ADM to this meeting later faced a departmental inquiry for his role in granting arms licences (but escaped action). Last week, the same SSP, Simranjit Singh Mann, won the by-election to the Sangrur Lok Sabha constituency and later thanked Bhindranwale for his win.

This is just one anecdote from the many that Mr Singh has written about in his book Turmoil in Punjab: Before and After Blue Star.

The writer served Punjab in various capacities, rising to chief secretary. His career as an administrator through the 1970s to the 1990s helps him share a well-informed account of the period. He was the district magistrate sent to Amritsar just two days before the army launched Operation Blue Star on June 5, 1984.

The book provides a comprehensive account of Punjab’s social, religious and political flux during the period, along with the administrative and political failings. There are no clear heroes and plenty of villains in this account. The radical, militant wing of the Sikh clergy is shown for what it is, but the moderates within the community, the national political leadership, bureaucracy, army, and media do not emerge smelling of roses either.

While the book does a remarkable job of giving the reader rich information about the period between the late 1970s to the end of militancy in Punjab in the mid-90s, its biggest contribution could be to warn the reader about the perils of fanaticism taking hold of a society.

It tells us about the battle between the leader of the radical wing, Bhindranwale, and the moderate Akali Dal leader Harchand Singh Longowal. Longowal’s politics had been that of civil disobedience, while Bhindranwale’s was of the gun. Extremists eventually killed Longowal in August 1985 because he had signed the Rajiv-Longowal accord, which broadly agreed to a raft of demands from the Akalis, a month before. The book does an excellent job of explaining the political battle between the various avatars of Shiromani Akali Dal and the Sikh clergy.

The book would be especially useful for younger readers who haven’t seen Punjab dominating daily news like it did in those two decades. Some events would shock those who haven’t read about them earlier, such as what happened with ex-chief minister Surjit Singh Barnala in December 1988. Barnala’s candidate for Shiromani Gurudwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) chairman had lost to a different faction. The SGPC appointed Darshan Singh as Akal Takht Jathedar. As Punjab chief minister, Barnala ignored a diktat of the Jathedar and was ex-communicated from the faith in 1987. He appeared before the Akal Takht in December 1988. Then in a scene straight out of Game of Thrones, the former chief minister was “fastened to a pillar with a placard around his neck, wherein Barnala declared himself a sinner and the Akal Takht, the pardoner.” And “to teach him humility, he was asked to scrub langar utensils, clean shoes of devotees and mop the gurdwara floor for seven days”.

In a chapter titled “The Fourth Estate”, the writer tells us about the pressure the media faced when militancy ran rife in the state. Terrorists were eulogised in obit advertisements with appeals to the public to attend their last rites. Refusal to publish such eulogies could also land editors in trouble, as the editor-in-chief of The Tribune learned when two armed militants walked into his office and threatened him. Their wishes were complied with. The other side was news agencies, as noted by the Press Council, that competed to report the number of people killed by terrorists to get space in newspapers.

Besides giving us a detailed account of the events in Punjab over a nearly two-decade period, the writer also tries to provide a historical background of the divide in the state and its society. He also shares a glimpse of the international element of the Khalistan issue.

The book teaches us how a hegemonic state, unchecked religious fanaticism, political arrogance and incompetence, can create a perfect storm. These are lessons all of us would do well to remember even today.