Reformistan | 2010

May 31, 2010

Indian Perception: Pakistan aggressor in 1948

Indians exclusively blame Pakistan for all evil in the world based on the invasion of tribals in 1948.

Although the partition formula was implemented in letter and spirit in Junagarh, Hyderabad Deccan where Hindus were in majority yet ruled by Muslims king and nawab. It is in this background that the newly formed Pakistan preparing to celebrate freedom were shaken and shocked with the news aired on Radio India on 13 August1947, is the pain staking story of Gurdaspur Punjab that were to be part of Pakistan where Muslims were in majority. (Nehru and Mountbatten had become very good “friends”. Nehru was romantically involved with Mountbatten wife while the latter was romancing Nehru’s sister.) Together they violated the partition theory and Gurdaspur was delivered to India. Gurdaspur was illegally annexed to India because it was ONLY ACCESSIBLE ROUTE which will connect India to Kashmir. Upon this provocation, Tribal people or Qaballis of NWFP raised a militia and voluntarily attacked Kashmir to secure this last Muslim inhabited place. Junagarh was annexed by Indian against the wishes of the pro-pakistan nawab on the basis of Hindu majority. Hyderabad attacked/invaded by India against the wishes of the pro-independence nizam on the basis of hindu majority. In contrast, Kashmir was swallowed by Indian on the basis of the Hindu Maharaja’s instrument of ascension (now lost). The fact that Kashmiris do not want to be part of India is quite clear. India has more than a million soldiers in Kashmiri cities to placate the local populace. Kashmiris call Pakistani ‘administered’ Kashmir “Azad Kashmir”.

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May 31, 2010

Indian Perception: Pakistani – the regional aggressor

The pain of losing a nation.

This article was published in Nepalnews.com. It is very relevent in our situation now. The question is who is lendup? — Girija Prasad, Gyanendra, Pranchanda, Madhav Kumar Nepal or Baburam???

(The last Prime Minister of the Himalayan kingdom of Sikkim , Kazi Lhendup Dorji, met an ignominious death.)
By Sudheer Sharma

On the northern corner of West Bengal state of India , there is a hill station– Kalimpong, which once hosted celebrities from all over the world. The hill town, where most of the settlers are of Nepali origin, no longer retains its old charm. But until a few weeks ago the last prime minister of a country—that has lost its independence—used to live here. Kazi Lhendup Dorji, who died on 28 July this year at the ripe old age of 103, had played a pivotal role in the merger of Sikkim into India .
Dorji is seen as a ‘traitor’ in the contemporary history. He lived, and died, with the same ignominy. “Everybody accuses me of selling the country. Even if it is true, should I alone be blamed?” he asked me, when I met him in Kalimpong in November 1996. But the allegation of ‘betrayal’ towards one’s own motherland was so powerful that Dorji could no more lead an active political life. He spent his solitary life at the ‘Chakung House’ in Kalimpong for several decades. Few people chose to remember Kazi when he passed away nor took pain to recall his life and times.
So much so that the Kazi was ignored even by Delhi . “I went out of my way to ensure the merger of Sikkim into India but after the work was done, the Indians just ignored me,” Kazi told me during an interview for Jana Astha weekly, nearly 11 years ago. “Earlier, I used to be given a ‘Red Carpet’ welcome. Now I have to wait for weeks even to meet second grade leaders.”
When I visited Kalimpong for the second time in 2000, Lhendup’s anger towards Delhi had reached new heights. At one time, he was received warmly by Indian leaders including Jawaharlal Nehru and Mrs Indira Gandhi. But later he became a political actor whose utility had been finished and thrown away into the dustbin.
The origin of crisis
After India got independence in 1947, the Sikkim State Congress, which was established as per the advice of Nehru, launched anti-King movement. Sikkim managed to overcome the crisis then but after Indira Gandhi became Prime Minister of India, the tiny Himalayan kingdom found itself in a crisis from which it could never escape. The anti-King movement, launched by the Sikkim National Congress (SNC) under the leadership of Lhendup Dorji in 1973, led to the demise of a sovereign nation.
India openly supported the movement against King (Chogyal) Palden Thondup Namgyal. The then ADC to the King, Captain Sonam Yongda, claimed that soldiers of Indian Army in civil dress used to take part in the protests. Some of the protesters were brought from Darjeeling and the surrounding areas. The number of Sikkimese who took part in the protest was quite small. But that was enough.
Lhendup’s protest movement depended mainly on Indian financial assistance. The money was made available through Intelligence Bureau (IB). “The people from IB used to visit me twice or thrice a year. An IB agent, Tejpal Sen, used to handover money to me personally,” Dorji had told me in a recorded interview.
In fact, the main actor behind the “ Mission Sikkim ” was India ’s external intelligence agency, RAW (Research and Analysis Wing). Set up in 1968, RAW was able to disintegrate Pakistan (and form Bangladesh ) within three years. The annexation of Sikkim was their other ‘historic’ success. The strategists of RAW didn’t want to repeat a Bhutan in Sikkim . Bhutan managed to acquire the membership of the United Nations in 1968. So, they launched a movement under the leadership of Lhendup, which is described at great length by Ashok Raina in his book Inside RAW: The Story of India’s Secret Service.
Raina writes that New Delhi had taken the decision to annex Sikkim in 1971, and that the RAW used the next two years to create the right conditions within Sikkim to make that happen. The key here was to use the predominantly-Hindu Sikkimese of Nepali origin who complained of discrimination from the Buddhist king and the elite to rise up. “What we felt then was that the Chogyal was unjust to us,” said CD Rai, editor of Gangtok Times and ex-minister. “We thought it may be better to be Indian than to be oppressed by the king.”
Lhendup—who belonged to the Kazi family—had a historic enmity with Sikkim ’s ruling Chogyals. He said he wanted to pressurise the King through public protests but lamented that the King never came forward for reconciliation.
Under pressure from Delhi , the Sikkimese King was forced to hold tripartite talks with SNC and India . The talks not only curtailed royal powers, it also turned Sikkim into an Indian ‘protectorate.’ In the elections held in 1974, Lhendup’s SNC got overwhelming majority in the parliament. The government and the king saw each other as enemies. Ultimately, the cabinet meeting, on 27th March 1975 , decided to abolish monarchy. The Sikkimese parliament endorsed it and decided to hold a referendum on the future of monarchy. Four days later, the outcome of the poll in 57 stations across the country was: ‘Abolition of the monarchy.’
In an interview, then Agriculture Minister of Sikkim KC Pradhan recalled that the referendum was nothing but a charade. “Indian soldiers rigged the polls by pointing rifles at the hapless voters,” he said. Immediately after the referendum, Kazi Lhendup moved a motion in the parliament proposing that Sikkim be annexed to India . The 32-member parliament, which had 31 members from Lhendup’s SNC—passed the motion without a blink. Needless to say that the entire episode was being orchestrated by India . The then Indian envoy to Sikkim (known as ‘political officer’) BS Das wrote in his book The Sikkim Saga, Sikkim ’s merger was necessary for Indian national interest. And we worked to that end. Maybe if the Chogyal had been smarter, and played his cards better, it wouldn’t have turned out the way it did.”
But Chogyal didn’t play his cards well. When Sikkim was undergoing turmoil, the Chogyal visited Kathmandu in 1974 to attend the coronation ceremony of King Birendra. According to insiders, King Birendra, Chinese deputy premier Chen Li Yan and Pakistan ’s envoy advised Chogyal not to return to Sikkim . “They narrated a ‘master plan’ to save Sikkim from Indian hands but the King didn’t accept,” said Captain Yongda. “It was because the King couldn’t think even in his dreams that India could use force to annex Sikkim .”
A ‘double game’
In fact, India was playing a ‘double game.’ On one hand, it was supporting Lhendup in whatever way possible against the King. On the other hand, it was assuring the king that monarchy would survive in Sikkim . The Chogyal was also an honorary Major General of the Indian Army. He never thought that his ‘own army’ would act against him. It was only an illusion.
The Chogyal of Sikkim was in his palace on the morning of 6 April 1975 when the roar of army trucks climbing the steep streets of Gangtok brought him running to the window. There were Indian soldiers everywhere, they had surrounded the palace, and short rapid bursts of machine gun fire could be heard. Basanta Kumar Chhetri, a 19-year-old guard at the palace’s main gate, was struck by a bullet and killed—the first casualty of the takeover. The 5,000-strong Indian force didn’t take more than 30 minutes to subdue the palace guards who numbered only 243. By 12:45 pm it was all over, Sikkim ceased to exist as an independent kingdom.
The Chogyal also lost the second opportunity. The Sikkim Guards had the capacity to stop the Indian Army for two hours. If the Chogyal had informed Beijing and Islamabad about the Indian invasion from the transmitter set up at his palace, both the countries had assured him—during the Kathmandu meeting—that they would instruct their security forces to open fire along the borders with India . Chinese army could even travel to Gangtok to rescue the Chogyal.
Captured palace guards, hands raised high, were packed into trucks and taken away, singing: “Dela sil, li gi, gang changka chibso” (May my country keep blooming like a flower). But by then, the Indian tri-colour had replaced the Sikkimese flag at the palace where the 12th king of the Namgyal dynasty was held prisoner. “The Chogyal was a great believer in India . He had huge respect for Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. Not in his wildest dreams did he think India would ever gobble up his kingdom,” recalls Captain Sonam Yongda, the Chogyal’s aide-de-camp. Nehru himself had told journalist Kuldip Nayar in 1960: “Taking a small country like Sikkim by force would be like shooting a fly with a rifle.” Ironically it was Nehru’s daughter Indira Gandhi who cited “national interest” to make Sikkim the 22nd state of the Indian union.
During a meeting, former Chief Minister of Sikkim BB Gurung told me that the King and Lhendup were just fighting a proxy war. “The real battle was between an American and a Belgian lady.” If that was true, the real victor was the third lady—Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
Two Foreign Ladies
Chogyal Palden met the 24-year-old New Yorker, Hope Cook, in Darjeeling in 1963 and married her. For Cook, this was a dream come true: to become the queen of an independent kingdom in Shangri-la. She started taking the message of Sikkimese independence to the youth, and the allegations started flying thick and fast that she was a CIA agent. These were the coldest years of the Cold War, and there was a tendency in India to see a “foreign hand” behind everything so it was not unusual for the American queen to be labelled a CIA agent. However, as Hope Cook’s relations with Delhi deteriorated, so did her marriage with the Chogyal. In 1973, she took her two children and went back to New York . She hasn’t returned to Sikkim since.
Then there was Elisa-Maria, daughter of a Belgian father and German mother who left her Scottish husband in Burma and married Kazi Lhendup Dorji in Delhi in 1957. The two couldn’t have been more different. Elisa-Maria wanted to be Sikkim ’s First Lady, but Hope Cook stood in the way. “She didn’t just want to be the wife of an Indian chief minister; she wanted to be the wife of the prime minister of an independent Sikkim .” With that kind of an ambition, it was not surprising that with annexation, neither Hope Cook nor Elisa-Maria got what they wanted.
Meanwhile, in New Delhi Indira Gandhi was going from strength to strength, and India was flexing its muscles. The 1971 Bangladesh war and the atomic test in 1974 gave Delhi the confidence to take care of Sikkim once and for all. Indira Gandhi was concerned that Sikkim may show independent tendencies and become a UN member like Bhutan did in 1971, and she also didn’t take kindly to the three Himalayan kingdoms, Bhutan, Sikkim and Nepal, getting too cosy with each other.
When the Indian troops moved in there was general jubilation on the streets of Gangtok. It was in fact in faraway Kathmandu that there were reverberations. Beijing expressed grave concern. But in the absence of popular protests against the Indian move, there was only muted reaction at the United Nations in New York . It was only later that there were contrary opinions within India —(Former Indian Prime Minister) Morarji Desai said in 1978 that the merger was a mistake. Even Sikkimese political leaders who fought for the merger said it was a blunder and worked to roll it back. But by then, it was already too late.
Lhendup Dorji became the first chief minister of the Indian state of Sikkim and retained the post until 1979. The Indian government conferred on him ‘Padma Bhusan’ in 2002 and he was also awarded the ‘Sikkim Ratna’ by the state government in 2004.
Despite such “rewards,” Lhendup and his wife Elisa spent their last years in Kalimpong repenting their past deeds. After the death of his wife in 1990, Lhendup was forced to lead a solitary life. He neither had any children nor relatives to take care of him. He cut himself off from his own people to avoid their wrath and hatred.
In the elections held in 1979, Lhendup’s SNC failed to bag even a single seat in the Sikkim ’s legislature. This effectively brought to an end to his political career. At one time, when he had gone to file his nomination, his name was missing from the electoral roll. In his resolve to dethrone the Chogyal dynasty that had 400-year-old history in Sikkim , Lhendup ended up delivering his motherland into the lap of India . In return, all he got was a life haunted from the shadow of the past and an ignominious death.

(Sudheer Sharma is the editor of Nepal weekly magazine and can be reached at sudheer@kantipur.com.np. This article was published in Nepal magazine. But it is reproduced here for the people to find the similarity in the situation then in Sikkim and now in Nepal.)

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May 30, 2010

Mr. Taliban

You blew up my school, you displaced my family, you have taken my father’s livelihood. I now go to a makeshift tent school in Islamabad. My friend doesn’t have lunch. I do. I am going to share my lunch with my classmates. Because Mr. Taliban, you have taken everything but thank Allah you haven’t taken my humanity.

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May 30, 2010

Indian Perception: Pakistan home of communal fighting

The northern Indian states of Kashmir and Punjab have been among the most conflictive regions of the world in recent decades. The killings and “disappearances” have evinced a strong gendercidal component, with younger men overwhelmingly targeted. The violence has spilled over into the rest of India, most notably with the Delhi Massacre of 1984 — one of the worst gendercidal slaughters of modern times.

Kashmir Map Kashmir

The state terror in Kashmir, like the genocide in Bangladesh, has its roots in the partition of the Indian subcontinent after the end of British colonial rule in 1947. The partition created two independent nations, India and Pakistan (the latter divided into West Pakistan and East Pakistan, now Bangladesh). Kashmir emerged as one of the flashpoints between the two countries when its “then ruler, Maharaja Hari Singh, refused to accede to either nation, apparently in a bid to preserve Kashmir’s independence. However, an invasion by Pakistani tribesmen in August and September 1947, and an uprising among Kashmiri Muslims in the state’s western regions, ultimately compelled the maharaja to seek the assistance of Prime Minister Nehru of India. Nehru agreed to send troops only if Kashmir formally acceded to India. On October 27, 1947, the maharaja agreed to Kashmir’s accession to India on the condition that Kashmir be permitted to retain its own constitution. Indian troops succeeded in halting the Pakistani forces, driving them back to the western third of the state, which then came under Pakistan’s control as ‘Azad’ (free) Kashmir.” (Human Rights Watch, “India’s Secret Army in Kashmir”, May 1996. For another good overview of the conflict, see Michael Kolodner, “Chapter One: The Indian Occupation of Kashmir”, in Kolodner, “Violence as Policy in the Occupations of Palestine, Kashmir, and Northern Ireland” [Master's thesis, Amherst College, 1996].) The Indian-held portion became known as the state of Jammu and Kashmir, with the population of the outlying Jammu region being mainly Hindu and Sikh. Another corner of Kashmir (Aksai Chin) is claimed and occupied by China; the border dispute contributed to a brief but bloody war between India and China in 1962. Although a ceasefire between India and Pakistan was achieved under United Nations supervision in January 1949, the dispute subsequently gave rise or contributed to three wars between the two countries (1947, 1965, and 1971). Heavy fighting broke out again in early 1999. India is a nuclear-armed state, while Pakistan is widely thought to be “nuclear-capable,” and many observers believe that Kashmir is the likeliest flashpoint for the outbreak of nuclear war in the Third World.

The recent state of near-civil war in Kashmir is the outgrowth of increasing discontent in the region, reflecting opposition to Indian attempts to interfere in Kashmir’s politics and reduce its autonomy. In 1964, a militant organization, the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), was created to lead the struggle for independence. Widespread electoral fraud increased popular support for the JKLF and other, newer militant groups. In 1990, emergency rule was instituted, and the Indian government launched a campaign of systematic murders and disappearances of suspected militants. According to Kolodner, “The Indian army has engaged in repeated atrocities on a massive scale in the process of its crackdown. The level of military misdeeds is so high that we can only conclude that it is government policy to terrorize the Kashmiris into accepting Indian rule.” (Kolodner, “Chapter One: The Indian Occupation of Kashmir”.)

Indian strategy has relied extensively on extrajudicial murders, which usually “occur after ‘crackdowns’ … during which all the men of a neighborhood or village are called to assemble for an identification parade in front of hooded informers. Those whom the informers point out are taken away for torture and interrogation, and some are simply taken away and shot.” (Human Rights Watch, “India’s Secret Army in Kashmir”.) In 1999, Human Rights Watch reported that “custodial killings — the summary execution of detainees — remain a central component of the Indian government’s counterinsurgency strategy. While the difficulties associated with documentation make it impossible to state accurately the number of such killings, human rights groups in the state and elsewhere in India estimate that such summary executions number in the thousands.” (“India: Behind the Kashmir Conflict”, July 1999.) In Kashmir and Punjab combined, “the actual number of executed and ‘disappeared’ … [is] probably in the tens of thousands,” according to Cynthia Keppley Mahmood. (Mahmood, “Trials by Fire: Dynamics of Terror in Punjab and Kashmir,” in Jeffrey A. Sluka, ed., Death Squad: The Anthropology of State Terror [University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000], p. 70.)

“Disappearances” have become a byword of life in Kashmir. “Since 1990,” notes Amnesty International, “some 700 to 800 people have ‘disappeared’ after being arrested by police or armed or paramilitary forces. The victims have included men of all ages, including juveniles and the very old, and all professions, including businessmen, lawyers, labourers and many teachers. Almost all of them appear to be ordinary citizens picked up at random, without any connection to the armed struggle.” (‘If they are dead, tell us’ – ‘Disappearances’ in Jammu and Kashmir” [summary], March 1999.) According to Human Rights Watch, “Human rights groups in Kashmir have documented more than three hundred cases of ‘disappearances’ since 1990. Lawyers believe the number to be far higher, however, as many relatives do not contact a lawyer out of fear of reprisal. Neither the Indian government nor any of the security agencies operating in the state has provided any information to clarify the whereabouts of the victim in any of these cases. It is likely that in virtually all of the cases of ‘disappearances’ in Kashmir, the victim was executed and the body disposed of in secret.” (“India: Behind the Kashmir Conflict”.)

As in Colombia and many other countries around the world, the Indian state has sought to dissociate itself to some extent from rampant murders, “disappearances,” and torture by sub-contracting them to death squads sponsored, armed, and assisted by the security forces. This trend began in 1995, and involved arming and training “local auxiliary forces made up of surrendered or captured militants … These forces, who wear no uniforms and operate outside of the normal command structure of the Indian army and other security forces, nevertheless are considered state agents under international law. These groups participate in joint patrols, receive and carry out orders given by security officers, and operate in full view of army and security force bunkers and camps. Some members … are even housed in military compounds.” (Human Rights Watch, “India’s Secret Army in Kashmir”.)

Systematic torture, including sexual torture, has been another standard strategy, “used routinely by all the security forces operating in Kashmir. Although the problem is widely known to the authorities in Srinagar and New Delhi, neither has ever made any serious effort to curb it.” The “severe beatings” that generally feature in such torture may “induce kidney failure, as can electric shocks, because the contractions caused by the shocks as well as the trauma … [lead] the muscles to release toxins that the kidneys cannot handle in large quantities. … Since the conflict began in 1990, doctors in Kashmir have documented hundreds of cases of torture-induced renal failure,” which is often fatal. “Those who have received treatment for torture-induced renal problems have been mostly young males but have included some older men,” the organization notes. “… Human Rights Watch is not aware of a single prosecution in a case of the torture or summary execution of a detainee in the ten years since the conflict began.” (Human Rights Watch, “India: Behind the Kashmir Conflict”.)

Rape, especially of women relatives of suspected militants or dissidents, has also been commonly employed by both security forces and their paramilitary allies. “In the past, the Indian government has made public a number of prosecutions of members of security forces for rape. However, even these cases amount to no more than a handful; many other incidents of rape have never been prosecuted, and reports of rape and other sexual assaults in Kashmir persist.” One resident of the village of Marmal told Human Rights Watch that in October 1998, the army conducted a sweep of nearly two dozen villages in the area, abducting many local women. “They are looking for the militants,” the resident reported. “But they are unable to find any. So they harass the local population … Our womenfolk are taken into the army camp, all separately. … They come back after two or three days. They are very shy then, and don’t want to talk about what has happened to them. The army has pressured them not to speak about what happened.” (Human Rights Watch, “India: Behind the Kashmir Conflict”.)

As a result of the Indian crackdown, indigenously-based militant activity has been all but wiped out (the JKLF gave up its armed struggle in 1994). Most such activity today consists of guerrillas based along the border with Pakistan and supported by the Pakistani regime. These groups have become increasingly renowned for their terrorist tactics, including gendercidal ones. In June 1998, 25 men were murdered as they headed home from a wedding in the village of Champnagri, Doda district. One survivor of the massacre recalled:

After the wedding we went up to the roadside to wait for the bus by which we would return to our village. There were two wedding parties waiting there, and the men were standing separately from the women and children. We had been waiting for about fifteen minutes when suddenly five armed men showed up. At first we thought they were soldiers. … They asked us, the men, for our ID cards. … We showed them our cards. They lined us up in two lines. Then they told us to hand over everything we had. The moment we started opening our bags, they opened fire at us with their rifles. I was standing in the line, and the person next to me was hit and toppled against and over me. This is how I was saved. … (Human Rights Watch, “India: Behind the Kashmir Conflict”.)

In March 2000, one of the largest gendercidal massacres of the conflict took place in the village of Chattinsinghpura, allegedly at the hands of Muslim militants. “Indian police officials said the massacre, which took place on Monday night about 9 p.m., was carried out by dozens of Muslim militants. They descended on the largely Sikh village of Chattinsinghpura about 40 miles south of the summer capital of Srinagar, ordered people from their homes, then executed the men. Thirty-four men perished on the spot and two more died later at a hospital.” (Celia Dugger, “36 Massacred in India, as Clinton Begins Visit”, The New York Times, March 21, 2000.)

Punjab

The 1947 partition of Punjab between India and Pakistan resulted in intercommunal violence that was the worst, and most indiscriminate, that the Indian subcontinent had experienced for centuries. Widespread massacres occurred between Muslims and Sikhs (the latter occupying the western portion of Punjab, the latter the eastern regions). As many as half a million people died, and two million more were left homeless and destitute. Eventually, western Punjab was incorporated into the new Pakistani state, while eastern Punjab became part of India.

Punjab Map

Growing alienation from, and claims of exploitation by, Indian authorities spawned a powerful militant movement in the early 1980s, calling for the creation of an independent Sikh state of Khalistan. As in many such conflict situations worldwide, the economic and societal plight of younger males figured prominently the uprising. “Central to the present Sikh unrest is the excess numbers of young male Sikhs over the amount of honorable employment available,” wrote Conor Cruise O’Brien in 1988. “To own even a tiny farm is honorable, but the subdivision of the farmland appears to have reached its limit. … What career is open to a young male Sikh who doesn’t have a farm of his own and hasn’t been able to get a place in the defense forces or any other branch of government service? That question remains unresolved, and in the meantime there are too many young [male] Sikhs who find no suitable outlet within the law for their abundant energies.” (O’Brien, “Holy War Against India”, The Atlantic Monthly, August 1988.)

As in Kashmir, “disappearances” have been central to the Indian state’s counterinsurgency strategy in Punjab:

The scenario for a disappearance case is familiar. Plain-clothed police officers or members of the paramilitary forces stop a man in the street (disappearance victims are almost always young men who are suspected of being members or having support for one of India’s many armed militant groups), or they may pick him up from his place of work or his home. Often the abduction is done at night, but the disregard for the law and the lack of political will to eradicate these practices means the security forces are equally protected if the abduction takes place in broad daylight. … Many cases of disappearances result in death, disfigured bodies found in canals, by railway tracks and roadsides are testimony to the cover-up of state murder that is so much a part of everyday life in some parts of India. If suspicion of the killing is successfully laid at the feet of the police, it is often denied or invalidated by one of two improbable excuses; that whilst trying to escape he was shot or that he died in an encounter. (Khalsa Human Rights, “‘Disappearances’ in Punjab”.)

According to Joyce Pettigrew, “many young people killed have not been engaged in armed combat. They have been ordinary boys who have disappeared on an errand for their parents, visiting relatives, or while working in their fields, or who have been picked up from their own or their in-laws’ home. … Disappearances occurred primarily in the under-thirty age group. Some villages had lost more than forty young men. Sursinghwala in Amritsar district had lost seventy young men. Buttar Kalan, in Gurdaspur district, lost twenty. Each village has not kept a separate account of its losses. Erring on the conservative side … it is highly probable that most villages in the Amritsar district would have lost on average ten young men.” (Pettigrew, “Parents and Their Children in Situations of Terror: Disappearances and Special Police Activity in Punjab,” in Jeffrey A. Sluka, ed., Death Squad: The Anthropology of State Terror [University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000], p. 211.)

Patricia Gossman cites the comments of an Indian police officer who claimed that when armed conflict broke out between Sikh militants and Indian security forces in the early 1980s, “a profile was developed of who was considered to be antigovernment and pro-Khalistan. Based on that profile, young Sikh men between the ages of 18 and 40, who have long beards and wear turbans, are considered to be pro-Khalistan. Whenever the police receive a report from an informant or any other individual that Sikh militants have visited the home of a Sikh family, the police are dispatched to raid the home of that family. Pursuant to that raid, any Sikh male who fits the profile described above is arrested.” (Gossman, “India’s Secret Armies,” in in Bruce B. Campbell and Arthur D. Brenner, Death Squads in Global Perspective: Murder with Deniability [St. Martin's Press, 2000], pp. 266-67.)

The failure to turn up a sufficient quantity of young men for persecution and execution sometimes leads to the detention of female relatives. Though they are rarely killed, rape is common. “When mothers and sisters have been held in custody by the police, their ultimate fate unknown, not all fathers and brothers have been able to cope with the threat of what might happen to them and to remain underground to fight. As one old lady from Sabrawan village, Amritsar district, told me, referring to the many abductions of young girls by the police, ‘In every village and each house there is sadness.’ Hence, to protect their sisters or indeed some other family member, some young militants and their sympathizers have compromised and become informers.” (Pettigrew, “Parents and Their Children,” pp. 211, 219.)

Like their Kashmiri counterparts, Punjabi militants have also resorted to terrorism, committing a number of gendercidal massacres as well as indiscriminate attacks against women, men, and children. Buses travelling along rural roads have been a favourite target. One such massacre, “the worst carnage of all in the [then] five-year history of blood, gore and terror in Punjab,” took place in August 1986, when 14 Hindu men were killed and seven injured by terrorists brandishing machine-guns and automatic pistols. “There was … added cruelty this time in the manner the killings were executed, letting out women and children, making the clean-shaven men bury their heads between their knees and then shooting each one turn-by-turn while shouting, for the benefit of the survivors, that they wanted to teach a lesson to ‘these fat Hindus.’” (Shekhar Gupta with Gobind Thukral, “Punjab: On a Short Fuse,” India Today, August 15, 1986.) Two much larger massacres occurred aboard passenger trains in Punjab in June and December 1991. Some one hundred people, overwhelmingly men, died in the first attack on two trains, when Sikh “gunmen ran alongside the train, ordering women, children and Sikhs to descend” before opening fire on the remaining passengers. (Tony Allen-Mills, “Sikh Train Massacres Derail Poll in Punjab,” Sunday Times, June 23, 1991.) In the December attack, “Hardeep Singh was playing cards in his railway compartment when the killers, all wearing distinctive khaki-coloured turbans, burst in. ‘While all the Sikhs, women and children were ordered off the train, the others began pleading for mercy. The militants assured us that they would only be taking us somewhere and then letting us go. … But then they bolted the doors and opened fire.’” Fifty-one people died in the attack. (Tim McGirk, “India Train Massacre Caps Year of Violence,” The Independent (UK), December 29, 1991.)

Such tactics turned most of the Punjabi population against the militants, whose struggle has now subsided within the state itself. “The last few years of the Punjab conflict largely consisted of an inter-gang war of unprincipled thugs who had no legitimacy whatsoever in the community,” notes Canadian scholar Hamish Telford. “In fact, most citizens in Punjab seem to accept the actions of the police and army because the insurgents became so unscrupulous in the end. The Khalistan option is now only advocated by fundamentalist Sikhs in Canada, the U.S., and the U.K.”

The Delhi Massacre, 1984

On June 3-6 1984, in Operation Bluestar, Indian forces laid siege to the Golden Temple, Sikhism’s holiest shrine, in the Punjabi city of Amritsar. The temple had been occupied by heavily-armed Sikh militants under the leadership of Sant Bhindranwale. In the massacre, and in dozens of other mass killings that took place simultaneously at religious sites throughout Punjab, thousands of Sikhs were murdered by Indian security personnel. At the Golden Temple, according to Human Rights Watch, “Indian government forces were guilty of outrageous violations of fundamental human rights — deliberately attacking the temple at a time they knew thousands of religious pilgrims were inside, not offering an opportunity for surrender, and summarily executing those it captured.” (“India: Arms and Abuses in Indian Punjab and Kashmir”, September 1994.) Many children and women were killed in the assault, along with a preponderance of Sikh men. “Civil liberties organisations, such as the Movement Against State Repression, have claimed that the total number killed in Operation Bluestar exceeded ten thousand. Thousands of young men also went missing in the period after Bluestar.” (Joyce Pettigrew, The Sikhs of the Punjab: Unheard Voices of State and Guerrilla Violence, p. 24 [n. 10].)

Hindu men rampage through the
streets of Delhi, November 1984
Hindu extremists on the rampage, November 1984 On October 31, 1984, the Indian Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, who had ordered Operation Bluestar, was assassinated in a revenge attack by her two Sikh bodyguards. Over the following five days, one of the worst gendercidal massacres of modern times took place in the Indian capital, Delhi. The victims were Sikh males of all ages. At 10 p.m. on the evening following the Prime Minister’s assassination, widespread killings broke out across Delhi, apparently organized by the Hindu extremist parties that have become prominent players in Indian politics. Hindu men roamed the streets, declaring an open season on Sikh males (those who were religiously observant were easily identified by their long hair and turbans). The gendercidal character of the killings was indeed almost total. According to the Indian feminist Madhu Kishwar,

The nature of the attacks confirm[s] that there was a deliberately plan to kill as many Sikh men as possible, hence nothing was left to chance. That also explains why in almost all cases, after hitting or stabbing, the victims were doused with kerosene or petrol and burnt, so as to leave no possibility of their surviving. Between October 31 and November 4, more than 2,500 men were murdered in different parts of Delhi, according to several careful unofficial estimates. There have been very few cases of women being killed except when they got trapped in houses which were set on fire. Almost all the women interviewed described how men and young boys were special targets. They were dragged out of the houses, attacked with stones and rods, and set on fire. … When women tried to protect the men of their families, they were given a few blows and forcibly separated from the men. Even when they clung to the men, trying to save them, they were hardly ever attacked the way men were. I have not yet heard of a case of a woman being assaulted and then burnt to death by the mob. (Kishwar, “Delhi: Gangster Rule,” in Patwant Singh and Harji Malik, eds., Punjab: The Fatal Miscalculation [New Delhi, 1985], pp. 171-78.)

A typical account of the atrocities was provided by a female witness whose “husband and three sons … were all killed on 1 November.” As investigators summarized her testimony:

When a mob first came the Sikhs came out and repulsed them. Three such waves were repulsed, but each time the police came and told them to go home and stay there. The fourth time the mob came in increased strength and started attacking individual homes, driving people out, beating and burning them and setting fire to their homes. The method of killing was invariably the same: a man was hit on the head, sometimes his skull broken, kerosene poured over him and set on fire. Before being burnt, some had their eyes gouged out. Sometimes, when a burning man asked for water, a man urinated on his mouth. Several individuals, including her sister’s son, tried to escape by cutting their hair. Most of them were also killed. Some had their hair forcibly cut but were nevertheless killed thereafter. (Quoted in Khalsa Human Rights, “Cases of Victims”.)

The estimate of 2,500 dead offered by Kishwar (above) is almost certainly too low. The New York Times in 1996 cited the research of Sikh activist Gurucharan Singh Babbar, who “has piles of affidavits from victims’ families that prove, he says, that 5,015 Sikhs were killed, more than double the official figure …” Whatever the exact death toll, it was “one of the darkest chapters in [India's] half-century of independence.” (John F. Burns, “The Sikhs Get Justice Long After A Massacre,” The New York Times, September 16, 1996). Throughout the massacre, Indian police and security forces stood by or assisted in disarming Sikhs, rendering them defenceless. An Indian Supreme Court Justice, V.M. Tarkunde, stated in the aftermath of the slaughter that “Two lessons can be drawn from the experience of the Delhi riots. One is about the extent of criminalisation of our politics and the other about the utter unreliability of our police force in a critical situation.” (Quoted in Khalsa Human Rights, “The Delhi Massacre: An Example of Malicious Government”.)

A Sikh woman weeps after her husband
was burned to death in the Delhi massacre.
Sikh woman weeps after her husband was burned to death It is important to note that while few if any Sikh women were intentionally killed, hundreds, if not thousands, were raped — sometimes repeatedly — by rampaging Hindu men. Many of the female survivors of the massacre today live in Tilak Vihar, a quarter of Delhi that has become known as the “Widows’ Colony.” Since 1984, they have pressed for justice in the killings, and finally achieved some success in 1996, when “a magistrate … imposed a death sentence on a butcher found guilty of two Sikh murders in the riots. Evidence presented in court indicated he was also involved in at least 150 other killings.” The justice in question, Shiv Narain Dinghra, has led a “personal crusade” of his own, sentencing dozens of rioters to five years’ “harsh imprisonment.” Nonetheless, official Indian attitudes toward the slaughter reflect a belief that “the massacre was necessary to teach a lesson” to the Sikhs, according to Dinghra. (Burns, “The Sikhs Get Justice.”)

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May 28, 2010

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Pakistani Mobile Phones Improve Literacy via SMS Messaging

A UNESCO sustainable literacy pilot programme using Mobile Phone SMS text messaging has shown significant results in rural Pakistan. In this pilot project which ended last month, the learners who …

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