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Violence Sets Up Dera in Punjab,
Shun It Out
Gian Inder Singh
 VIENNA/PUNJAB:
5800 kilometres east of a Jalandhar dera, a bunch of men attacked a
dera head and his deputy over an issue of theology and politics. One
dera man died, the attackers were recipients of reprisal violence,
one of them is even dead and all are under arrest. But Punjab went
on fire and flames are still leaping through the social fabric.
Top brass of the
Dera Sachkhand knew only too well that there was no defence of its
actions, and that encouraging devotees to touch the feet of dera
head in the presence of Sri Guru Granth Sahib was sacrilege for most
Sikhs. Men of peace can have no excuse to provoke and hurt religious
sensitivities of others. Just as democratic notions do not condone
violence. Neither the kind that happened in Vienna, nor the violence
in Punjab.
But there is a
difference. And in our rush to be politically correct, we must not
lose sight of the essential difference that defines the kind of
people who were involved. The Vienna attack on the visiting head of
the dera and his deputy, Niranjan Dass and Rama Nand, both no doubt
revered by the devotees of the dera in Jalandhar, was a targetted
one seemingly by a few men who were provoked by the dera's violation
of a Sikh Code of Conduct. (However, these are reasons being
guessed, and exact reasons will come out after the investigations.)
But the violence
in Punjab, which has already left four people dead, was an act of
thousands of lumpen elements who went around beating up innocent
civilians, often targetting Sikhs, damaging shops, burning buses and
other vehicles, threatening school going children, setting fire to
trains and brandishing weapons in the face of not just the police
but even the Army.
 Ever since
Sunday night, Punjab has been burning. Its citizenry has been held
to ransom. No one who is heart broken because of an attack on his
spiritual Guru goes around with a lathi in hand to beat up a few
innocent men and women. That is a rather queer way of grieving the
death of an ostensibly religious persona who, we are told, preached
nothing but peace. Clearly, the dera has not been doing a very good
job of preaching peace and love.
Of
course, in the season to be politically correct, the Dera Sachkhand
has also put out an advertisement in Punjabi newspapers on Tuesday
asking people to maintain calm. Hours after the advertisement
appeared, more violence was seen in Punjab and Haryana. Two more
people died, taking the death toll in the rioting to four, including
one woman.
Jalandhar,
Ludhiana, Amritsar, Phagwara, Phillaur, Nakodar, Hoshiarpur, Malaot,
Muktsar and many other places reeled under curfew on Monday and
Tuesday. Initially, Jalandhar was the epicenter on Sunday evening
but by Monday morning, the violence had stepped up all around.
 Clearly,
governance had taken a back seat and the reluctance to act in the
initial hours of violence allowed the situation to go out of hand.
Hooligans led the mobs on the roads but senior police officers said
they were helpless because there was not only no direction from the
political bosses to act but the ruling Akali Dal in fact gave a call
for a bandh on Monday.
"What signal was
to be read then? Obviously, it was not a sign to act in accordance
with law," said a senior police officer.
Dera spokesman
S.R. Heer has defended the role of the devotees saying the
anti-social elements took advantage of the protest demonstrations
and indulged in violence.
The Punjab
government's decision to impose curfew made things only worse since
it was never enforced and was reduced to a joke.
India's
Home Minister P. Chidambaram made it clear and said he could "see a
number of anti-social elements roaming freely without any fear of
the police.”
In Malout, on
Tuesday, after Dera Sachkhand followers went on a rampage, police
had to fire at the crowd. One person was injured. In Jalandhar, a
man was killed when an Akali Dal councillor was forced to open fire
in self-defence.
From Jammu to
Amritsar to Jalandhar to Bathinda, thousands of passengers were
still stuck on railway platforms with virtually no help from the
government and situation made worse by curfews and heat.
Temperatures hovered above 40 degree Celsius and with stranded
people running out of cash and a government missing in action, the
idea of India being a democracy was only a joke but no one bothered
to laugh in grave times.
National TV
channels were content with showing eye-ball catching shots of blood
thirsty mobs armed with swords and sticks rampaging through the
streets and setting alight vehicles, mercifully after asking the
passengers to alight, and then turned its attention towards
discussing how prepared was New Delhi for terrorist acts like 26/11
in Mumbai. Apparently, media was marking 26/11's six-months, without
noticing that the government was not even prepared to deal with a
bunch of lumpen elements, and discussing solemnly how better
equipment would help in dealing with sophisticated weaponry of
terrorists.
 The
unsophisticatedly armed however kept the government indoors. In
Delhi, PM Manmohan Singh made an appeal for peace, referred to the
teachings of the Gurus, extolled the message of tolerance and then
got busy with cobbling together his cabinet, a task that saw the
doctor permanently "in" ever since he was sworn as PM.
In Punjab, the
mollifying exercise is on. Parkash Singh Badal condemned the
incident in Vienna, his party called a bandh on Monday, and on
Tuesday, apart from holding the ritual of an all party meeting, the
Badals were making arrangements to bring back the body of Dera
Sachkhand's second-in-command (Sant) Rama Nand who was killed in the
attack in Vienna.
It is to be
flown to the Dera in a helicopter after it reaches
Delhi.
An all party meeting has made the ritual of noise without bothering
to study the aspects of exclusion of the lower castes and the sense
of deprivation in urban areas for the poor and the lower castes.
Conflagrations over resources and control of shrines have been
occurring in Punjab for quite some time now, and with the state
having 29 per cent of its three crore population as Dalits, it could
be a dynamite waiting to explode.
The problem in
Vienna resulted in ratcheting up tensions after the news of the
death of Sant Ramanand on Monday and in the ensuing violence, one
person was killed in Jalandhar while another died at Phillaur. One
Narinder Singh (38), an advocate’s associate, died on the spot after
the car he was traveling in turned turtle on being pelted with
bricks and stones by protesters at Phillaur.
Protesters set
afire a Jammu bound train near Jalandhar Cantonment station. Many
Punjab
roadways buses and private trucks burnt across
Punjab's
highways even as police got busy ferrying the buses owned by the
ruling Badal family into police stations in Punjab.
Army was alerted
on Sunday night itself and troops were out on the roads on Monday
morning. In Jalandhar, they came under attack and one person was
killed when the army men fired back. Common citizens' can be
imagined when even the convoy of IGP (Zonal) Sanjeev Kalra came
under attack and his men had to fire many rounds to extricate the
police officer. The vehicle of police superintendent Sarabjeet Singh
was set afire. Kapurthala Deputy Commissioner had to run to save his
life and took shelter in someone's house. A police Sub-Inspector was
the target of mob fury and police had to fire to save him. One
protester, Rajinder Kumar, a resident of Ramgarh Nangal village in
Phillaur sub-division, was killed in that firing in Phillaur.
Sooner or later
this violence will come under control, and then gradually peter out.
As it did when Dalits had risen in virtual revolt against a boycott
imposed by higher caste residents of Talhan village near Jalandhar.
But in an area where baseball bats are astonishingly rising and no
one plays with them, it is only a matter of time that tempers could
become frayed again at the edges. When the have-nots make it good
and carry the burden of being pushed to the margins, they need to
find ways for social assertion. Often, a baseball bat may come in
handy, unless the elite and the haves understand that the philosophy
of social inclusiveness is not only to be applied to economic growth
but also to the social fabric.
Unresolved
questions of caste will keep seeking answers. A trigger may come
from anywhere. Even from Vienna. Next could be a deep nook of Mochi
Mohalla in
Ludhiana.
Are we paying
attention to the problem within? So that we can deal with the
problem outside?
27
May 2009
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