December 12, 2004

Tavleen Singh writes about the rise of the Sikh extremist leader, Bhindranwale

It was a week after Operation Bluestar and the Golden Temple still smelled faintly of death. The bodies that had been laid out in rows in white marble corridors had been removed but the temple had the atmosphere of a mortuary. Everything was cold, white, empty. Even the soldiers, who wandered around barefoot, heads covered with handkerchiefs, went about their work with a chilling silence as if talking was somehow forbidden.

We had come to Amritsar by road and in the villages and towns we passed through the Bhindranwale myth had assumed alarming proportions. His ‘martyrdom’ had made him a saint to many and superhuman to many others. There were those who believed that he had not died and that he had escaped to Pakistan dressed as a soldier. Those who believed that he had died spoke of his Shaheedi in hushed tones and said it had taken over 70 bullets to kill him. Outside, in the Punjab countryside, his presence had loomed over everything more ominously than ever before, but inside the temple it was his absence that was everywhere as if an era had ended. A chapter of history closed.

In the days when he was alive it was not possible to enter the Golden Temple without becoming instantly aware of the existence of Bhindranwale. He had stamped everything with his own slightly warped brand of Sikhism and because he always thought of himself as an undeclared heir to Guru Gobind Singh. He created inside the temple the mediaeval world that must have existed in the days of the 10th guru.

The youths in his entourage dressed almost invariably in traditional loose kurtas, caught at the waist by a sash, and the long shorts associated with the Khalsa uniform. Their turbans tended to be blue, black or saffron and along with their stenguns and carbines most of them carried traditional weapons like kirpans, swords or spears.

It was like entering a portion of mediaeval India caught in a time warp and a little as if Khalistan had already come into being and this was its capital.

It was the day after DIG, Avtar Singh Atwal, was shot dead outside the Golden Temple on April 25, 1983 that I met Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale for the first time. He lived at the time in room 47 of the Guru Nanak Niwas and the entire building had been taken over by his entourage. Armed youths had been positioned at strategic points but these were early days and the atmosphere of violence, that later hung over the gurdwara like a pall, was not yet perceptible.

Bhindranwale was busy so I was ushered into a sort of anteroom, adjoining his in which a couple of young, rather pretty women, wearing kirpans and their hair knotted on top of their heads under their duppattas attended to various domestic chores. One stirred boiling hot milk in a stainless steel cauldron of enormous proportions and another was involved in bathing a small boy. The room had the congenial atmosphere of a village home. Hot milk was served to everyone with a herb called banuksha in it. Bhindranwale was rabidly against intoxicants so even tea was forbidden.

After about 15 minutes Rachhpal Singh, Bhindranwale’s bespectacled, scholarly-looking secretary, arrived and indicated that I should follow him into the next room. Bhindranwale, reclining on a bed, appeared to be giving a discourse on religion to a rather large group of elderly Sikh men. After a cursory greeting he ignored me and continued with his lecture. The room had two or three beds in it, a large picture of Guru Gobind Singh and a couple of tape recorders.

Finally he turned to me and said that I could now ask him what I wanted to. What did he have to say about the murder of DIG Atwal? “The Sikh does not believe in violence especially not in front of the Harmandir Sahib; no Sikh can ever believe in this. This has been done deliberately to make the dharamyudh morcha unsuccessful. It is a conspiracy to lay the grounds for the police to enter the Darbar Sahib. This could only be the work of the government.”

Did he not think Punjab was well set on a road to destruction? “It is up to the government to decide what it wants to do, it is in their hands to bring peace or destruction. It is the government’s job not mine. I am for peace; I believe there should be peace in the country.”

There were a few more terse answers to questions about the morcha, the Anandpur Sahib Resolution and the Akalis. He liked to answer questions as briefly as possible till he was brought on to his favourite subject, the oppression of the Sikhs. It was not difficult to get him onto the subject anyway since he seemed to wait for any question that would give him a chance to get started on it.

This time it was because I asked him whether he really believed that the Sikhs had been treated unjustly. Within seconds the calm manner had disappeared and his tone changed from a disinterested drawl to something resembling the rattle of machine-gun fire. “Do you need proof of this?” he shouted, “Write, I’ll tell you. A Sikh girl was stripped naked and paraded around Dao village by policemen. They caught a Sikh granthi, and a policeman sat on him and smoked bidis and spat in his mouth and put tobacco in it. The name of the Sikh was Jasbir Singh, village Chupkiti, tehsil Moga. They caught another Sikh and when they did not find anything on him, they cut his thigh, tore the flesh out and poured salt into the cut. Name: Jagir Singh, village: Ittanwali, he lives in Moga. Is this not wrong? During the Asian Games they drew a line and said that anyone with Singh attached to his name couldn’t go to Delhi at all. Did they stop anyone else? Is this not injustice to the Sikhs? Has anyone ever said that a jenoi cannot be more than a particular length. Then why is there a restriction on our religious symbol? Is this not discrimination?”

Once he got started there was no stopping him. Within seconds he had managed to whip up a frenzy. “Call Leher Singh,” he shouted, “You want to know what they do to the Sikhs, let me show you.” A few minutes later, a rather large man of about 30 was brought in. He was dressed in traditional Sikh clothes but his beard had been hacked off, as if with a knife. He said that he was from Jatwali village in Fazilka and that Thunder Bicchu Ram of Sadar Police Station had held him down and chopped his beard off and told him to go and tell Bhindranwale. Six months later Bicchu Ram was shot dead by terrorists and it was then that I realized that I had witnessed the signing of the death warrant. After several visits to the Golden Temple it slowly became clear that this was how the hit list was prepared. Bhindranwale dispensed his own version of justice. People would come from all over Punjab with complaints against policemen, officials, judges or just other people. Their complaints would be carefully noted down by Racchpal Singh and action taken of one kind or another. If the complaints were against Hindus the punishment was generally death; Sikhs could sometimes be let off if they came and begged forgiveness. If someone received a favour from Bhindranwale then it was understood that in future he would consider himself one of his men to be called on if the need arose. By the end he managed to establish a network of spies in the villages through whom he silenced those who did not believe in him.

By the time I first met Bhindranwale he had been living inside the Golden Temple for almost a year. He moved in on July 19, 1982 after his two lieutenants Amreek Singh and Thara Singh were arrested. He seemed to have learned very quickly the art of getting headlines and by 1983 he had become a big media star. He had come a long way from those early days in 1978 when he was first discovered by an important Congress(l) member and his school friends.

Bhindranwale was born in Rode Village near Moga in 1947. His father Jathedar Joginder Singh married twice and he was the second son of the second wife. According to his family he was interested in religion from a very early age and dropped out of school after class five to concentrate on learning the Sikh scriptures Bhindranwale took over as head of the Damdami Taxal in 1977.