Economic Clichés And The Reality

Punjab has always been described by the Indian rulers as the most prosperous State in India with the highest per capita income and a high growth rate. Its prosperity was recognised as an indivisible aspect of the spectacular progress in agriculture, known as the Green Revolution which attained its peak in the early 70s. Punjab became an economic cliché and a showpiece. The negative fallouts of this period of progress went by and large unrecognized. Transformation of agriculture from being labour intensive to capital intensive drove many small farmers off the land. The number of landless peasants increased without a commensurable expansion of industry to absorb them. In fact, the percentage of wage earners in the industrial sector declined from 15.60 to 11.30 percent in the period of 1961-71. A retarded public sector in the state employed only 10.9 percent of the total industrial work force. The initial progress in agriculture, whose pace began to peter out, combined with the stagnation of industrial development, gave rise to two different categories of discontented people in rural Punjab.

The most important and seemingly most influencal of these groups is the one of farmers who had prospered during the Green Revolution. They are politically ambitious, proud of their martial tradition organised on religious forums, hard working and familiar with the materialistic culture of the west. Prosperity in agriculture did not make them complacent but more competitive. They wanted remunerative prices for agricultural produce, restrictions on interstate traffic of food grains to end, cheaper power and water, reduction in the prices of farm machinery and other inputs like fertilizers and pesticides, parity of prices between agricultural and industrial products, liberal finances from credit institutions and investment opportunities in agro-industries. The Akali Dal in the government had closely identified itself with the interests of this class of farmers. On three occasions when it was in the government, the party had taken bold measures to help them.

The Congress party succeeding the Akali Dal in the State government had annulled these measures. Prakash Singh Badal, who himself is a big land owner, had, as the Chief Minister of the State in 1970-71, abolished land revenue. The Congress government after his fall reimposed the levy. When the Akali Dal came to power following the end of the Emergency, it once again took several measures to promote the ambitions of this class. It announced an aid of Rs. 500 per acre to those farmers whose crops were damaged in natural calamities. It reduced the costs of electricity for tube wells, fertilizers and pesticides. All these measures were immediately cancelled by the successive Congress governments. Naturally the farmers accused the Congress of an anti-rural predisposition. Their numbers are large enough to be politically significant: 40% of that rural population which has land holdings exceeding 20 acres. They viewed the urban population of Hindus, who monopolized trade and its marginal industry, with suspicion and the natural antipathy of the farmer for the middleman from the city. Their relationship became both inimical and essential following commercialization and the consequent dependence of agricultures on urban markets. The monopoly of Hindus on the trade and industry held back the capital generated in agriculture from entering into productive avenues. A part of the money was diverted to finance political activities of the Akali Dal. Stagnant money, with a dynamic people, became the leaven of political militancy. Economic antagonism of the two communities in Punjab intensified their feelings of communal hostility.

The second category of discontented people who burgeoned out of the rural Punjab were those twenty to thirty percent of the marginal farmers who had been driven out of the land in the last two decades by the competitive process of a capital intensive agriculture. Another fifteen to twenty percent of the rural population with land holdings of less than five acres were their close allies. The Green Revolution in Punjab attracted a heavy migration of agricultural labourers, more than two hundred thousand a year, from backward regions of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. Even when paid less than the local rates of minimum wages, they got considerably more than the maximum wages in their own states. The leaders of the Green Revolution benefited by employing them in their farms. The local pressures for increase of wages were cancelled by the availability of cheap labour with no local roots. The outsiders did hard farm work for negligible returns during harvest seasons. When there was no work in the farms they pulled rickshaws or did other casual work in cities. These outsiders, many of whom became Rsettlers, contributed to the aggravation of local tensions. They were Hindu, abjectly meek, had no empathy with the traditions and language of the State, pandered to the landlords greed by sacrificing their rights, undermined the prospects of the local population to find employment on equitable terms. A developed industry could have channelized the energies of these dislocated groups of the local population into productive avenues. But Punjab remained industrially backward in spite of the fact that its phenomenal progress on agriculture had generated suitable material conditions for a rapid industrialization. In 1980 there were only 19 industrial projects in which the Central government had invested, compared to 197 in Maharashtra. Punjab's share of Central investment in industries worked out to be 0.9 percent of the total financial outlay. Andhra Pradesh's share in comparison, stood at 14 percent of the plan. The feeling that the Central government was keeping the State industrially backward out of a conscious policy gained ground.

Until some years ago large numbers of unemployed youth from Punjab have been migrating to the eldorado of Western countries. Those countries did not want them and took steps to keep them out. Traditionally soldiery has been the main avenue of employment for the Sikh youth which, in addition, gave him the opportunity to uphold the martial reputation of his race. The British, who had experienced the fighting prowesses of Sikh soldiers during the Anglo-Sikh wars, raised them into an irregular force soon after the liquidation of the Sikh empire in 1839. The Sikh irregulars proved that they were loyal to British India during the Burma war in 1852. Their recruitment increased. Following their role in crushing the mutiny of 1857, they were recognized as a martial race and their proportion of recruitment was again increased. By 1911 their numbers in the Imperial Army was 15,000 out of the total recruitment of roughly 40,000 soldiers from Punjab. By the end of the first world war they were 100,000 in the army and had won 11 medals for gallantry out of 22 awarded to Indians as a whole. During the second world war when the Congress Party gave a call to boycott the British war effort, Sikhs chose to ignore it. On the eve of Indian independence Sikhs represented 33% of the Indian army. Their numbers started to come down thereafter. In 1974, three years after the last war with Pakistan, the Union government took a policy decision whereby not the martial reputation of races but the principle of proportional representation was to become the basis of recruitment for the army. Punjab was to provide no more than 2.5 % of the army. Sikhs share worked out to be just about 1.3%. The policy was seen as a deliberate attempt by the Central government to weed out Sikhs from India's fighting force. More significantly the policy closed the main avenue of employment to the Sikh rural youth. Many scholars of Punjab think that the magnitude of unemployment among the educated and uneducated youth in Punjab has not only helped to sustain the political turmoil in the State over a long period of time, but has also given it the militant direction it has taken since the days of Bhindaranwale.

The agitation of the Akali Dal beginning from August 1982 was based on a charter of demands which included the transfer of Chandigarh and other punjabi speaking areas in Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan to Punjab; the reallocation of river waters; the implementation of the Anandpur Sahib Resolution for State autonomy and special rights to Sikhs as a nation. After a futile round of discussions with Mrs. Gandhi which she treated more like courtesy calls, making humorous little quipps in Punjabi, offering them lassi, the Akali Dal embarked on a programme of agitation in August 1982. For the next two years the agitation raged with intermittent relaxations following the sham of a new round of RdialoguesS with the government. In June 1984 Mrs. Gandhi ordered the army action in Punjab. The assault against Golden Temple was launched on 5 June 1984, the martyrdom day of Guru Arjun, who had got the foundation of the Temple laid by a Muslim divine four hundred years ago and who was the first of the Sikh Gurus to die in defiance of the Mughal Empire. The timing of the assault was calculated to scathe the Sikh psyche. The operation which was supposed to establish the StateUs might over the Sikh militancy only surpassed the latter in its toll of blood. For little over two hundred people killed by the Sikh militants since 1980, the army had taken more than four thousand lives, the majority of whom were innocent pilgrims or employees of the SGPC. The assassination of Mrs. Gandhi was a riposte to the army assault on the Golden Temple of Amritsar, the Sikh Vatican. The Sikh massacres following the assassination were not spontaneous but systematically orchestrated, claiming 3,000 innocent Sikh lives. Eyewitness accounts testify how the rioters in gangs of 200 to 300 led by Congress leaders and with policemen looking on had swarmed into Sikh houses hacking the occupants to pieces, chopping off the heads of children, tying Sikh men to tyres sprayed with kerosene and setting them aflame, burning down the houses after sacking them.

The Delhi violence has been documented by the Peoples' Union for Civil Liberties and the Peoples Union for Democratic Rights in their joint report - Who are the Guilty? - which mentions by name 16 Congress politicians, 13 police officers and 198 others, accused by survivors and eyewitnesses of responsibility for the carnage. Early in January 1985, journalist Rahul Bedi of the Indian Express and Smitoo Kothari of the PUCL moved the High Court of Delhi demanding a judicial inquiry into the violence on the strength of this documentation. Justice Yogeshwar Dayal kept the petition dangling for a few weeks and finally dismissed it, passing abusing comments about "Those busybodies out for publicity, who poke their noses into all matters and waste the valuable time of judiciary".

Three thousand innocent Sikhs - men, women and children - had been brutally killed and many times as many made orphans and homeless. Yet the supposedly independent institution of judiciary not only considered the pogrom unworthy of investigation, thereby acquiescing in it, but also thought it necessary to abuse those who beseeched it to inquire. Earlier, when in the parliamentary elections held towards the end of 1984, the Congress Party, riding on the wave of Hindu sentiments against Sikhs, secured an unprecedented popular mandate, the Sikhs had understood that the Hindu democratic sanction to the genocide would ensure that not one of those who had instigated the holocaust, not one who directly participated in it, would be called to account for the crimes. As if to confirm the point, Rajiv Gandhi, the dynastic successor to the government as the new Prime Minister, inducted into his Cabinet several main suspects of the organization of the slaughter as important ministers. Judiciary too succumbed to the Hindu democratic mandate. Neither was the role of the mainstream press beyond reproach.

Police officials in Punjab, whose anti-militant campaigns received imprimature as cover stories, were being quoted: "For one innocent person killed by militants, the police would kill ten of them." For the first time in India institutions of the State as well as those which called themselves independent were being cavalier in upholding an extra-judicial approach to tackle a discontented people. The striking aspect of the declared policy of repression was the qualification: "Ten for one". No one asked who would be these ten? How would the officials ensure that the "ten" were militants and not just innocent Sikhs? When in July 1985 Rajiv Gandhi after less than eight months of victory at the hustings announced his resolve to heal the wounds of Punjab by restoring to the State a democratic regime, it was hailed as a bold and statesmanly step. On 24 July 1985 Rajiv Gandhi signed an accord with the President of the Akali Dal, Harcharan Singh Longowal, promising (a) transfer of Chandigarh to Punjab by 26 January 1986 (b) to set up tribunals presided over by Supreme Court judges to adjudicate the river water and territorial disputes and (c) to refer the Anandpur Sahib Resolution to a Commission appointed to recommend changes in the "Centre States relationship". The Accord also promised inquiry into the Delhi killings of November 1984 following Mrs. Gandhi's assassination and withdrawal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act in force in Punjab. The Accord delineated eleven points of common consent.

Other leaders of the Akali Dal, even the moderates like Prakash Singh Badal, were not convinced about the honesty of the government in signing the Accord. Yet they fell in line to give peace a chance. Although they doubted that the Prime Minister was motivated by a genuine urge to establish peace in signing the Accord, they did not suspect the Accord to be a Machiavellian move made to break the ranks of the Sikhs, as it soon became obvious.

Longowal was assassinated on 20 August 1985, twenty six days after signing the Accord. In the elections to the State Assembly that were held soon thereafter, the Akali Dal won 72 seats in the house of 117 and formed a government with Surjit Singh Barnala, a protege of Rajiv Gandhi, as the Chief Minister. The Central government flouted the Accord of July 1985 in toto. Chandigarh was not transferred to Punjab as promised. Those who had organized the November 84 massacre remained unpunished. The basic issues were balked at. Even the detainees arrested after the operation Blue Star were not released. The army deserters were court-martialled and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment, some to life terms. Police atrocities including faked encounters of Sikh youths continued unabated. Even this government of Surjit Singh Barnala and his coterie, the stooges of Rajiv Gandhi who had become immune to all the issues and were only acting as the Centre's instrument of repression, was dismissed on the eve of the Assembly elections in neighbouring Haryana to woo Hindu votes.

Then in March 1988 the Indian State went out to the extent of constitutionally suspending their right to life, selectively through 59th Amendment of the Constitution. When this Amendment Bill was introduced, the then opposition now saddled in the government said that the government had sinister design to use the situation in Punjab as an excuse to acquire powers to promulgate emergency in the country. But when the Home Minister assured them that the Bill was meant only for Punjab, they acquiesced. During the period of Emergency in India between June 1975 and March 1977, the Akali Dal was the only political party in India to effectively protest against the measure. Although Punjab had hardly ever involved in the agitation under JP, the Sikhs decided to oppose the totalitarian measure by organizing open defiance. The first public protest in the country against the Emergency was staged by the Akali Dal on 9 July 1975 in Amritsar. Several leaders of the Akali Dal had been arrested. Every day thereafter until the end of the Emergency, which lasted twenty one months, volunteers of the Akali Dal got arrested by defying the ban on protest activities. Nearly 45,000 Sikhs were under preventive detention during the period. The movement against the Emergency, like all other successful campaigns launched by the Akali Dal in the past, was organized from within the precincts of Golden Temple. All opposition parties which had joined the campaign under Jayaprakash Narayana to compel Mrs. Gandhi to quit, had hailed the Akali Dal as the last bastion of democracy. And the same opposition parties in March 1988 acquiesced in the Emergency because it was going to be applied only to Punjab.

This selective denial of right to life to the Sikhs was enacted into a constitutional principle although there were already many black laws in force which gave extraordinary powers to the State to meet the challenge of Sikh militancy.

The National Security Act, amended by the Act No.24 of 1984 and No.60 of 1984 enabled the government to detain any person suspected of involvement in activities prejudicial to the defence of security of India for a maximum of two years without trial and extension of the period of detection by another term of two years. The Terrorists Affected Areas (Special Courts) Act of August 1984 makes it mandatory for the Special Courts, established to try persons involved in making imputations or assertions prejudicial to national integration or in waging war against the State, to conduct the trials in camera. Those who are tried by the special courts are under the Act presumed to be guilty until they can prove the contrary. The Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act provides for death sentence for militant crimes involving murder. It also gives powers to superintendents of police to use confessions made by suspected militants in the course of their interrogation as evidence against them. Yet the government was able to contrive the opinion that these measures were not draconian enough and that it was necessary to absolutely deny the right to life of the people of Punjab.

Is it not then ironical that those who sought abrogation of civil rights exclusively for the Sikhs of Punjab should simultaneously coax them to affirm allegiance to the Constitutional framework which enables the abrogation?

The sovereignty of the Indian State in Punjab, as the following case studies of State atrocities would establish, is not limited by the rule of law. In transgressing the basic principles of governance it has ceased to represent the sovereignty derived from people's consent, and has become a self-contradiction.

Even a cursory examination of the Sikh history should establish that it is neither in the Sikhs to acquiesce in this kind of savage degeneration of the State nor to give into repression. It is common knowledge that the militant transformation of the Sikh mind in its formative period was the consequence of Guru Arjun's martyrdom under Jahangir who was annoyed by the Guru's popularity and by the fact that he had blessed Khusru, Jahangir 's son, when he raised a banner of revolt against the emperor. It was in response to Guru Arjun's martyrdom that his son, Hargovind, the sixth Guru, girded around his waist two swords to symbolize spiritual and secular authority, and built the Akal Takht, the "Seat of the Timeless One" as a counterpoint to the imperial Delhi Takht. The ninth Guru, Tegh Bahadur gave up his life to defend the freedom of conscience of all people. Gobind Singh had created the Khalsa in 1699 with the common surname Singh and five mandatory Ks to bind Sikhs to the pledge to defend their identity and faith as an armigerous body. Guru Gobind Singh and all his sons were martyred in the course of their relentless battle against Mughal oppression. When Banda Bahadur, after leading the first organized insurrection of the havenots in this part of the world for seven years against the Mughal authority, was captured in December 1715, he chose to die rather than to apostatize. Eye witnesses to the execution of Banda Bahadur's followers have recorded how they embraced martyrdom without flinching from their faith. Persecution of Sikhs following Banda's execution, under Zakharya Khan, Mir Mannu and Yahya Khan, during Nadir Shah's invasion of India and the Afghan invader Ahamad Shah Abdali's attacks on the Golden Temple, for a period of five decades, is legendary. Under Zakharya Khan the State offered ten rupees for information where Sikhs hid; fifty rupees for a Sikh scalp with the long hair being the proof; capital punishment for giving shelter to them. Yet Sikhs overcame the oppression and founded the Sikh empire in 1799 under Ranjit Singh. He left an empire almost ten times the size of present day Indian Punjab that spread from the north-western frontiers of Afghanistan to the Sutlej and from Kashmir to the deserts of Sind.

Sikh religion from the beginning has been a vision of society, a part of temporal history, sacralizing secular existence with its stress on honest work and sharing. It is not a 'other worldly' religion which leaves its faithful abandoned to the vagaries of life merely with a transcendental consolation. Their conception of divinity is the amalgamated God of Timeless Order (Akal Purukh) and the God of Action (Karta Purukh). The faithful are accordingly both divine instruments and divine vessels, actualizing its will as well as participating in Its essence. Dualism of a God in heaven and man on earth has no meaning for them and therefore they see no separation of sinful and painful existence as an independent realm outside the sphere of holy. Pursuit of wealth and politics are religious callings limited by the imperatives to share and to be just.

The synthesis is made possible because cooperation in Sikhism is not only an aspect of personal morality but is the basis of an individual's communion with the Divine. Individualism which goes against the collective weal is the cardinal sin without expiation. Violation of obligations towards the community means not just alienation from the Holy but also social excommunication. Within this framework of religious ethics, Sikhs even though belonging to competing spheres of socioeconomic dynamism within their own community, tend to unite into a single opposition to those forces which seek to frustrate their collective aspirations.

Sikhs have for more than three decades in independent India been struggling through non-violent and democratic means for realization of their ideals and aspirations. Every time they raised their voice, they were defamed as being parochial. Whenever they mobilized people for mass movements they were accused of mobilizing them from the religious pulpits. For Sikhs the distinction between religion and society does not exist. Their is a social religion. Their religious institutions exist to provide not only solace against worldly want, misery and injustice but also to fight against them. The teachings of their Gurus is not the opium of the masses, a heading under which perhaps some other religions may come; it supplies the dose to wake up people from social apathy. By provoking communal reactions against them in other sections of the people, the Central government and its protagonists build up a popular mandate for their policy of repression. When Sikhs don't give in to this repression and fight back, they are called terrorists and anti-nationals. Isolated thus in their struggle for a just society, they have begun to feel the same as the Muslims had started feeling after 1937. The Sikh struggle against the Indian State is, as should be clear from the summary historical documentation, motivated by a vision of society which has become unattainable within the framework of the Indian Constitution. The question whether the objectives of the struggle are attainable within the scope of Indian unity becomes irrelevant in this context. We must, however, add that the Sikh struggle welcomes and attempts to forge unity of all Indian peoples of diverse identities who consider the Indian Center the enemy which having dissipated the ideals that had inspired them to become integrated to a common vision of federal democratic polity, perpetuates itself as the instrument of a self serving elite. The Sikh struggle itself is irrevocably wedded to the exigencies of that secession from the institutional structure of the Indian State as the sine qua non of true democracy in the Indian subcontinent and a precondition for the beginning of a meaningful political future to all its peoples which has been alluding them over the last forty three years.