Golden Temple lynching: Dark days could revisit Punjab

Political parties should not forget events of 1978 and demand a thorough but expeditious probe

That sacrilege inside the sanctum sanctorum of the Golden Temple could snowball into an election issue seems a foregone conclusion. Sample the narrative of the Congress in the run-up to the 2017 Assembly elections in Punjab. "We will bring the guilty to book and punish those who are shielding the accused," Amarinder Singh, then the Congress party's chief campaigner, had promised. The latter was an obvious reference to the Badals of the Shiromani Akali Dal.

The learning from the 2017 elections campaign is simple. For the sake of peace in Punjab, the issue should not turn into a political game to garner votes in the forthcoming polls. And that it should not disturb the communal harmony that exists in this state where Sikhs and Hindus live cheek by jowl and have lived through the most tumultuous period of history between 1980 and 1993 when the separatist movement was at its peak.

However, it's essential to be mindful of the recent history of Punjab. In 1978, when sacrilege took place, it led to clashes between traditional Sikhs and Nirankaris. The incident gave birth to the separatist movement in Punjab and marked the emergence of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. The Nirankaris are a movement within Sikhism that believes in a living guru and not the scriptural guru, the Sikh holy book of Guru Granth Sahib.

In 1978, Sikhs led by Bhindranwale were agitated with Nirankari chief Gurbachan Singh for holding a convention in Amritsar. Sikhs had been at loggerheads with Nirankaris on several issues, most notably the sect's belief of considering its chief as 'satguru'. Sikhs, on the other hand, consider Guru Granth Sahib as their living guru after the tenth Sikh guru Guru Gobind Singh.

Also Read | Man beaten to death over 'sacrilege' bid at Golden Temple

There were other issues also like the Nirankari sect had seven 'sitare', a kind of parallel to the tenet of 'panj pyaras' of the Sikh religion. Sikhs considered it blasphemous, and all of it came to a boil on April 13, 1978, when 13 Sikhs were killed in a clash between Sikhs and Nirankaris. The trial of the case was shifted to Haryana, where a court acquitted the Nirankari men on the ground that they acted in "self-defence", which had Bhindranwale announce that there would be a fight for justice. On April 24, 1980, the Nirankari sect head Gurbachan Singh was assassinated.

To put it plainly, that sacrilege incident, though contested by Nirankaris, ignited a fire that led to 13 years of a separatist movement in Punjab, which witnessed unprecedented bloodshed for the first time after the 1947 partition. Making political gains of issues about blasphemy, something Indira Gandhi and her Congress were accused of in 1980, could prove to be counterproductive and push Punjab, once the most prosperous state of India, back into the dark days.

Not that the Congress has faulted only once and learnt its lessons. It seems incorrigible at repeatedly wanting to play with fire. In 2017, Amarinder Singh initially blamed the Badals for shielding those accused of beadbi (religious sacrilege). In the run-up to the polls, he promised he would bring those who protected the guilty to the book, which meant the Badals. Five years later, in an interview with a news channel, he said, "How can you take action without evidence?" Subsequently, Navjot Singh Sidhu accused Amarinder Singh of being in cahoots with the Badals.

We are now likely to see candidates trying to milk the issue of sacrilege for votes in their poll campaigning by promising they will bring the guilty to book even though the power to investigate lies with law enforcement agencies. The law enforcement agencies, who report to the government, find themselves in a catch-22 situation while drawing the chain backwards to the conspirators or those shielding the accused. Since those in the government have made public claims about who the guilty are at the time of campaigning.

As for the latest sacrilege case, the man who committed blasphemy was killed, which could prove to be the biggest hiccup to understand further who the conspirators were. It does not look like a one-person job. There have been a series of such sacrilege incidents taking place since June 2015, and all seem deliberate well-planned acts. All political parties should commit that whoever comes to power will bring the guilty to book without hunting for credit. Consider this as service to God.

(The writer is a journalist based in Chandigarh)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.

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