Chapter 18

CIA MASTERMINDS, ISI EXECUTES

Notwithstanding Bhindranwale’s claims – before he moved to the Akal Takht in December 1983 – that he was neither in favour of nor against Khalistan, he and some other extremist Sikh organizations had started campaigning for such a cause, though without any meaningful positive response from the Sikh masses.

The Khalistan movement had international ramifications. The movement had the backing of both Pakistan and the USA. Here, a brief historical background would be in order. Pakistan wanted to avenge India’s support in 1971 to the revolt led by Mukti Bahini (in what was then East Pakistan) against first the atrocities against, and then the genocide of, the Bengali population by the Pakistan Army and the Razakars (paramilitary forces organized by the Pakistani Army). As mentioned in Chapter 6, the developments in East Pakistan led to an armed conflict, in December 1971 between India and Pakistan, which however, was not a prolonged one. The Pakistani forces in Dacca surrendered and India emerged victorious, leading to the formation of Bangladesh, which meant the dismemberment of the composite Pakistan.

Let us now move onto 1979-80. The USA, which had converted Pakistan into its front-line base against the Soviet forces (which had invaded Afghanistan in late December 1979), favoured the creation of a buffer independent Sikh state – Khalistan – on India’s north-western borders. The US viewed India as pro-Soviet Union, a stand that did not suit Washington’s strategic interests in this part of the world. The USA also was keen to ensure that Indira Gandhi was ousted from power. She had become the prime minister once again after the Congress had won the January 1980 Lok Sabha elections.

In essence, the US continued with the ‘hate-India, hate-Indira’ policy that President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had followed during the early 1970s. Adopting an unabashed pro-Pakistan tilt, the duo had supported the Yahya Khan-led government whose army was committing atrocities on the people of East Pakistan, who were fighting for their independence from the West Pakistani rulers. In December 1971, the Nixon Administration even sent the warship Enterprise to the Bay of Bengal to overawe India to stop it from supporting the Mukti Bahini, which was fighting the ‘independence war’ against the West Pakistani Army.

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Punjab’s senior intelligence officers, who had gained experience while dealing with separatist movements in the north-east region of India, had no doubt that the Khalistan movement was masterminded by the USA’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and executed by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) with the former’s active support. This conclusion was later confirmed by the revelations made by several Pakistani leaders in the decades that followed about the objective of their government as also that of the CIA (working in close collaboration with the ISI) to help pro-Khalistani campaigners. The German philosopher Freidrich Nietzsche was not wrong in observing that ‘the best weapon against an enemy is another enemy’.

That the CIA wanted to destabilize the Indira Gandhi Government and, in the process, also help Pakistan in its efforts to divide India to avenge its role in splitting that country was also evident from the US establishment’s use of the country’s media to create an environment conducive for promoting America’s geo-political objectives. It was ironical that a large section of the American media was, advertently or inadvertently, succumbing to the establishment’s skilful game plan.

In the early 1980s, besides lambasting separatist terrorists in my Currents and Undercurrents column in the Indian Express, I used to also highlight Indira Gandhi’s wrong handling of the Punjab problem. Never in my journalistic career (of about three decades by then) had any American journalist ever contacted me to talk about agriculture-related issues (including the Green Revolution of the 1960s) that I had extensively written about. Also, no American media person had ever discussed with me the political developments in Punjab. But when, during the terrorism years, my critical pieces against Indira Gandhi appeared in the Indian Express, a number of US journalists from leading American newspapers started contacting me to elicit my views about the Punjab situation and also about her! Initially, I thought they were performing their normal duties of investigative reporting. But when some of them started asking me pointed questions about the way Indira Gandhi was handling the Punjab problem and about my reaction to her methods of dealing with the problem, I started suspecting ulterior motives behind such pointed queries.

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The June 1984 Indian Army action in the Golden Temple Complex, resulting in the killing of Bhindranwale and leading members of his group, led to a slow revival of political activity in Punjab. Moves were initiated for normalizing Punjab’s political and civil life. The beginning was made by the moves to settle the contentious issues that had created tensions between Punjab and Haryana. Some of these issues – particularly the sharing of river waters and the construction of the Satluj—Yamuna link (SYL) canal designed to carry Haryana’s share of water of rivers passing through Punjab – had been used by the militants to fan their separatist movement.

An uneasy calm returned to Punjab. The detained Akali leaders were released (in batches) in March and April 1985, after 14 months of detention. During their detention, they were, however, in regular touch with each other. For instance, Balwant Singh, who became finance minister in the Surjit Singh Barnala (Akali Dal) Government formed in September 1985, had received a letter in Janaury 1985 from Parkash Singh Badal who was detained in a special jail at Panchmarhi (in Madhya Pradesh). The letter dealt with mundane topics: Badal had written that he had received the badminton rackets sent by him (Balwant Singh). Badal, however, bemoaned that they did not get makki (maize or corn) at Panchmarhi but he had access to newspapers and was reading about the happenings in Punjab and other parts of the country and the world.

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The mid-1980s marked a turning point in Akali and Punjab politics. The state had been under president’s rule since 6 October 1983.

The parameters under which talks were to be held with the Akali leaders were announced by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi (who had succeeded his mother Indira Gandhi) when he visited the Martyr’s Memorial at Hussainiwala (Punjab) on 23 March 1985.1 He declared: ‘We are prepared to do anything within the ambit of the Constitution.’ Behind-the-scenes negotiations had been on even when they were under detention.

The Akali leaders too were in a reconciliatory mood. Balwant Singh, considered an Akali moderate, told me that he had gone to Amritsar on 3 November 1984 and talked to the high priests and other leaders. He had asked them why Kirpal Singh (a priest in the Golden Temple) had withdrawn the statement expressing grief over Indira Gandhi’s killing (on 31 October 1984). Sahib Singh, head priest, Golden Temple, replied that Kirpal Singh had done so without consulting him and also because he was under pressure from other priests. Balwant Singh then pointed out to them that when foes of Indira Gandhi like Zia-ul Haq (president of Pakistan) and Chinese representatives could offer their condolences, what the priests had done was not only wrong but also against social norms. And again by objecting to the installation of Rajiv Gandhi as prime minister (to succeed his mother), they had tended to annoy him unnecessarily by stating that they would oust him from power.

Keen to ascertain the views of all shades of Sikh opinion, the Centre initiated the process of holding talks by sounding out the extremist elements, which formed a nine-member committee headed by Joginder Singh, father of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, for this purpose.

The Akali leadership, however, was a divided house. The top leaders, due to internal bickerings, had lost confidence in each other. Badal stated that he did not know who was behind the formation of the aforementioned committee. When I met him on 6 May 1985 at Chandigarh, he informed me that a week earlier he had suspected that ‘[Gurcharan Singh] Tohra [president of the SGPC] and Jagdev Singh Talwandi [yet another top Akali leader] have a secret understanding with the Centre. I got this impression in my talk with Tohra after my release from jail. The Sikhs have lost confidence in the [Central] Government due to anti-Sikh riots. Their confidence is needed to be won back. The government has also lost confidence in Sikhs and may take retaliatory steps on a full scale’.

Badal also felt that ‘the Akalis face the biggest crisis as a result of the formation of the nine-member committee. The committee will not be acceptable to the Akali leadership because of its domination by the extremists. But it [the Akali leadership] cannot have a confrontation with the committee as in the event of a confrontation at least 25 per cent of Akali activists would then quit the party and there would be a sort of civil war among the Sikhs. The best way is that the committee is reconstituted with only one representative each of the AISSF [All India Sikh Students’ Federation] and of the Bhindranwale group and should also include top Akali leaders. If its organizers had done something similar, while at the same time maintaining their control over the committee, nobody could have dared to oppose the committee.’

Badal wanted secret negotiations to be held by the government (with the Akali leaders and other Sikh bodies) to solve the Punjab imbroglio since he was convinced that ‘nothing can be achieved through open negotiations in Punjab’s prevailing situation’. He had visited Bhindranwale’s native village, Rhode, in the hope of meeting Joginder Singh, but he was not there. Hence, he met his son Jagjit Singh. Badal did not think that the family had been receiving money from any source as their living standard was very bad.

Badal was convinced that Jagdev Singh Talwandi would never accept Sant Harchand Singh Longowal as his leader. On the other hand, as Gurcharan Singh Tohra had no popular base, his prestige had gone down.

When I again met Badal on 16 May 1985, he said that Tohra, Longowal and he had held a meeting where they had taken a vow to sink or swim together and that he had asked them ‘to have mutual confidence and that if any of them wanted to betray [the others] later he should not hesitate to make it clear now.’ All of them decided to stay united. Badal also noted that Sant Longowal was so demoralized that he had even brought his resignation letter from the party presidentship to that meeting. He was convinced that unless all Akali factions (including that of Joginder Singh) sincerely forged unity, the prevailing crisis in the Akali leadership would not be sorted out. As he remarked: ‘Sikhs are in great danger of being wiped out. If something happens to any national leader [evidently referring to Indira Gandhi’s assassination and the anti-Sikh riots], Sikhs outside Punjab will be eliminated and in Punjab they will face a catastrophic situation.’

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1 On 23 March 1931, during the British rule, Bhagat Singh (a fearless freedom fighter) and his companions, Shivram Rajguru and Sukhdev Thapar, had been sent to the gallows in the Lahore jail (now in Pakistan). The place of their cremation was Hussainiwala, in the Ferozepur district of Punjab (just across the border on the Indian side) where a befitting memorial was erected for the freedom fighters.