Dashmesh Pictures: Homepage Dashmesh Pictures:  Mission Statement Learn about Team Dashmesh Pictures Dashmesh Pictures:  Newsworthy Items Featured Works Other Works Contact Us Links and Reference Help Wanted Inspiration and Guidance Donations Welcomed



Saturday, June 10, 2006

Golden message from the Golden Temple

http://www.cybernoon.com/DisplayArticle.asp?section=fromthepress&subsection=editorials&xfile=
June2006_onthespot_standard160&child=onthespot


On The Spot - Tavleen Singh

Thursday, June 08, 2006 10:29:47 IST

I learnt from this visit to the temple that we have not learned lessons. On the basis of caste and creed, our political leaders continue to allow a sense of grievance to build up and then use the inevitable explosion for political ends

Last week I visited the Golden Temple after an absence of many years. I went with my sister, a religious Sikh, to whom the temple is only a sacred place. Her memories of it are not scarred by the violence of the early eighties that I remember as if it were yesterday. In the pilgrim spirit she looked for signs on the long drive from Delhi that her pilgrimage took place at an auspicious moment and the omens were good. A dust storm on the GT Road produced a silver lining at the edge of dark clouds, a rainbow appeared a little later and no sooner did we enter the temple, late in the evening, than it started to rain. "It is shubh" said my sister "it is auspicious for it to rain."

As the purpose of my visit was to search for signs of people in the temple who might be commemorating the 22nd anniversary of Operation Bluestar (June 6, 1984) the rain hampered my investigations. So I went back again early the next morning and instead of entering through the main entrance took the road of the serais that leads to the Guru Ram Das Serai, that once was a centre of militant activity, and the Guru Nanak Niwas where Sant Jarnail Singh Bindranwala once resided in a penthouse suite.

Memories of Bluestar
Memories flooded back as I walked past the Guru Ram Das Serai. I remembered that it was here, in a spartan room on an upper floor, that I interviewed General Shabeg Singh just weeks before Operation Bluestar. He was bitter about the manner in which he, a war hero, had been dismissed from the army on charges so flimsy they were thrown out of court. He won his cases but remained bitter about what had happened and was more than ready to help Bhindranwala fortify the temple against an attack.

Last week there were only pilgrims in the serai. They drank sweet, milky tea out of large steel glasses and wandered about the courtyard seemingly oblivious of the death and terror that had once infected the air. The only remainder of that terrible time were a few bullet holes that still pockmark the serai's whitewashed facade and it is easy to miss these unless you are looking for them. I was looking because I remember the blackened facade I saw when I came here the week after Operation Bluestar.

After Operation Bluestar made Bhindranwale temporarily into a Sikh hero vendors of religious paraphernalia used to sit on the pavement outside the serais and sell pictures of him. This time there was no sign of them and no sign of anyone with connections to the militancy. The Guru Nanak is unrecognisable to those of us who knew it in the old days. Then, it was a grubby building whose dark corridors teemed with young men armed with Sikh swords and automatic weapons. They guarded Bhindranwale and acted as his stormtroopers. Today, the Guru Nanak Niwas glistens with fresh, whitewash and new glass windows and there is not an armed man in sight.

Opposite it, has risen a new serai that is so posh and white it looks as it has been built exclusively for well-heeled Sikhs from foreign lands. It conceals the Manji Sahib entrance to the temple which was used to bringing tanks when it seemed like the Akal Takht would not fall. It was the tanks that changed the course of the battle and after it was over those militants who managed to escape in the last moments told journalists that in the early hours of June 6 Bhindranwale and his lieutenants, General Shabeg Singh and Amreek Singh, had come out into the forecourt and when they saw the damage decided that they would come out into the firing line and make their last stand. They sensed perhaps that after having caused the destruction of the symbol of Sikh political independence they were better off dead.

The Indian army did not know that the Akal Takht was built a foot higher than the throne of the Moghul Emperor in Delhi. It was more important than the temple but Bhindranwale and his colleagues did. Their bodies were found in the forecourt of the Akal Takht on the morning of June 6 and Operation Bluestar was over.

When I saw the Akal Takht, on that first trip to the temple after Bluestar, it was a blackened, gutted husk of a building. Mrs. Gandhi ordered her faithful Sikh Home Minister, Buta Singh, to rebuild it but when the temple was returned to the Sikh community it was torn down and built again with kar sewa. Today it is a shiny white building with gold domes and the entrances that led out into the city from the old Akal Takht, and through which many militants escaped, have been sealed.

Lessons (un)learnt
And, what did I learn from this anniversary visit to the temple? That we have not learned the lessons of that time. On the basis of caste and creed, our political leaders continue to allow a sense of grievance to build up and then use the inevitable explosion for their political ends. A sense of grievance is being allowed to build among Muslims and our "secular" leaders are encouraging this by surveys that seek to establish that their per centage in the army and in government is too low. Where caste is concerned, Arjun Singh has just played a grievance card that we will pay heavily for in coming times. They are right when they say Indians have no sense of history.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Links to this post:

Create a Link

<< Home




RestoringThePride.com
2008