Not so inadvertent
CLUMSY is a mild term to describe the double bungling in the Union Home Ministry’s processing of the final report of the M.C. Jain Commission on Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination.

Bihar — twilight zone
THE state-sponsored and officially effected bandh in Bihar on Monday has proved, as never before, the widely expressed view that Mr Laloo Yadav, the de facto Chief Minister, is holding the impoverished and ungoverned area of darkness to ransom.

Coalitions & corruption
by Inder Malhotra
DURING the United Front’s uneasy tenure in power in New Delhi, the BJP leaders, big and small, never stopped taunting first Mr H.D. Deve Gowda and then Mr Inder Kumar Gujral about the heterogeneity and ineffectualness of their ruling combination.

Naidu’s problems
and achievements
by A. Prasanna Kumar
MR N. CHANDRABABU NAIDU is the most focused Chief Minister of Indian politics today. He has always had the knack of hitting the headlines.

Preparing for Khalsa tercentenary by Jasbir Singh Ahluwalia A UNIQUE event of great historical significance occurred at Sri Anandpur Sahib in 1699 when the last Prophet of Sikhism, Guru Gobind Singh, created the Khalsa through the sacrament of baptismal “amrit”. Significance of 1999 by Baljit Malik THE 300th anniversary of the birth of the Khalsa shall soon be upon us. Preparations on a massive scale for this significant event are very much on. The thrill of thievery by D. R. Sharma CONTRARY to the paucity of mango crop in the country, our three trees in the backyard for the first time astonished us with their quality and opulence.

75 Years Ago

Pandit Motilal Nehru
PANDIT MOTILAL NEHRU, who on rising to deliver his speech was greeted with shouts of “Bande Mataram”, “Sat Sri Akal”, “Allaho Akbar,” stated that he was not there on that occasion as a mere office-bearer of the Congress to exhort the audience to follow or accept the Congress principles.

Not so inadvertent

CLUMSY is a mild term to describe the double bungling in the Union Home Ministry’s processing of the final report of the M.C. Jain Commission on Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination. And what makes it worse is the laboured explanation of how the blunder crept in. True, part of the blame should go to the report itself which suffers from a loose structure and equally loose prose. But the Indian bureaucracy has a well-deserved reputation for being extremely careful in studying reports and bringing out the highlights. That leads the trail to the political leadership and, as lawyers are fond of saying, there is ample circumstantial evidence to sustain political motives. The final report and the memorandum of action taken (ATR) were tabled in Parliament in the last week of July, the demand for a revision was raised within days and the correction has come now in a circuitous way! The ATR wanted DMK boss and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Karunanidhi to be further grilled by the proposed multi-disciplinary monitoring agency (MDMA). In plain words, the Chief Minister was a suspect. Now the ministry says it was a goof-up and although the MDMA will still look into the DMK leader, it will be under a vague and ambiguous brief. Even here there is political filtering. It is because the final report lists such names as former Prime Ministers Chandra Shekhar and Narasimha Rao, T.N.Seshan, Subramaniam Swamy and, well, Ms Jayalalitha along with Mr Karunanidhi as those who should be further interrogated to explore the validity of “The stand of the SIT (Special Investigation Team) on theories beyond LTTE” in the murder of Rajiv Gandhi. This is the heading of a chapter. But the ATR decided to concentrate only on the DMK chief, and that was when the ruling BJP-led combine was desperately trying to buy peace with Ms Jayalalitha and one way was to harass her favourite enemy in her state.

The Union Home Minister in his letter to DMK MP Murasoli Maran attributes this shift to “an inadvertent error” — that is, the ministry minions read his name wrongly in a chapter tellingly titled “Role of suspects in the assassination”. This is amazing, for 71 pages of dense annexures and conclusions separate the two chapters. A ministry spokesman has tried to play down the lapse by saying that a computer operator pressed the wrong key and a crucial word went missing and Mr Karunanidhi found himself in the wrong place. But surely somebody did read the report and got the broad idea, before sitting in front of the computer! Insiders have another, and more plausible, version. The Cabinet decided to go by the findings of the interim report in this case and ignore the final report. The interim one has accused Mr Karunanidhi of abetting in the LTTE’s crimes, while the final report has more or less exonerated him. The interim report is a slippery ground to hurl charges from, but it fitted in the political design of the ruling combine then. And going back to the final report is the need of the hour. Packing or pulling punches to score political victories is an age-old custom, but to use a controversial report on a sensitive assassination case as a political football is not the done thing. Even so the correction should have come from New Delhi, from the Union Home Ministry, not from Chennai. An upright admission of what the government still calls an “inadvertent error” is more in the style of Mr L.K.Advani. Somebody has wrongly advised him and that makes it four wrongs in a row.

Bihar — twilight zone

THE state-sponsored and officially effected bandh in Bihar on Monday has proved, as never before, the widely expressed view that Mr Laloo Yadav, the de facto Chief Minister, is holding the impoverished and ungoverned area of darkness to ransom. Before going into the details of the organised and violent strike, it would be proper to remember that the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Central Government had full information about the possible happenings. The nerve centre of violent plans was Patna, the capital city. The three-day national executive meeting of the BJP at Jaipur had passed a resolution on Sunday which had said inter alia: "We view the developments in Bihar with concern and appeal to the Union Government to take appropriate action to save the state before it slips over the edge". Was this warning not serious enough to disturb the complacency of Home Minister Advani? Monday was the day fixed by the ruling Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) to show its capability to paralyse normal life. A riot-like situation prevailed in most of the districts. According to Mr Yadav, it was a "spontaneous and fitting reply to those who have insulted the state". What is this "state" and who were the instruments of insult? Mrs Rabri Devi, the rubber stamp Chief Minister and Mr Yadav's wife, is the "state". The insulting persons and agencies include probing officials sent by the Centre and the Central Bureau of Investigation. They did their assigned duty by searching the houses of Mrs Rabri Devi and Mr Yadav's relatives in connection with the fodder scam and related cases. The law of the land had gone into action. Even the premises of such powerful persons with immense clout as Mr Sukh Ram in the North and Ms Jayalalitha in the South were raided to confirm or dismiss various charges of corruption against the high and the mighty. But there was no arson or killing in Himachal or Tamil Nadu. Mr Yadav had given a clear call for a violent bandh.

Intelligence agencies in New Delhi and Patna had sufficient knowledge of the devastating RJD plan to propel the security agencies into pre-emptive action. There was no terrorist strike. Bihar was condemned to witnessing the manifestations of mobocracy, the rape of democracy and the extensive destruction of government property, besides random killings. Railway property was subjected to wanton destruction. Why? Because Mr Yadav's political rival Nitish Kumar is the Railway Minister. Engines, coaches, signal posts, railway stations and tracks were damaged beyond repair. People were beaten to death. Those with grievous injuries were dragged out of vehicles and made to die on the road. Can there be any worse kind of savagery? Mr Yadav's men broke in less than 12 hours which cannot be built in 12 years. And then he is threatening further action! What is the Governor doing in Patna? From the Tirhut Division to Chhotanagpur, Bihar is a shambles. Home Commissioner R.K. Singh has certified that "the bandh was by and large peaceful". Mr Yadav has claimed that the Centre should now have a clear evidence of the "fact" that the people have "full faith in him". If jurisprudence is to be believed, crime is an action or an instance of negligence that is deemed injurious to public welfare or morals or to the interests of the state and that is legally prohibited. By all accounts, the RJD supremo and his gang have yet again committed a serious crime against the state. We expect President K. R. Narayanan to intervene in the name of good governance and the citizens' rights to life and property. The Laloo-Rabri show must end before Bihar "slips over the edge".

Coalitions & corruption
The current unholy mess
by Inder Malhotra

DURING the United Front’s uneasy tenure in power in New Delhi, the BJP leaders, big and small, never stopped taunting first Mr H.D. Deve Gowda and then Mr Inder Kumar Gujral about the heterogeneity and ineffectualness of their ruling combination. The saffron people’s usual gibe used to be: “Kahin ki eent, kahin ka roda, Bhanumati ne kunba joda” (a brick from somewhere and a stone from somewhere comprise Bhanumati’s curious clan).

What a delicious twist of irony it is that the BJP stalwarts are being hoist with their own petard. In respect of both its internal dissensions and its utter inability to govern, the current dispensation is far worse than any that has preceded it. Ms Jayalalitha may not have burnished her own image but she has certainly reduced the Vajpayee government to a laughing stock. And, for good measure, she has succeeded in creating the auspicion that some people “close to the Prime Minister” may have accepted “hefty bribes” for changing the chief of the Union Finance Ministry’s Enforcement Directorate — a transfer order that has earned strictures from the Supreme Court.

Far from being straightened out, the unholy mess is being compounded by what can only be called the BJP’s pusillanimity. Or call it expediency combined with a desire to cling to power and office by hook or by crook. Meeting at Jaipur, the National Executive of the BJP decided to do nothing to call Ms Jayalalitha’s bluff. Instead, in the words of the BJP President, Mr Kushabhau Thakre, the party leadership decided to put up with her behaviour “no matter how provocative”.

This, incidentally, is a rejection of the demand of some of the allies, principally Ms Mamata Banerjee, that the AIADMK and its obstreperous supremo be expelled from the BJP-led coalition. Ms Banerjee is unlikely to take such a treatment of her with equanimity, especially when she is engaged in a bitter dispute with the leader of the BJP in her home state of West Bengal.

Nor should anyone run away with the idea that the two temperamental ladies, one from Tamil Nadu and the other from West Bengal, are the only ones causing problems for Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee and his colleagues. Pinpricks and worse from other allies are no less frequent. The tussle with the Akalis over the inclusion of Udham Singh Nagar district in the proposed hill state of Uttaranchal remains unresolved. But that is small beer compared with what the more “substantial” members of the ruling coalition, owing allegiance to the Samata Party, are doing.

A bizarre event in New Delhi on the day the BJP leaders were holding their conclave in the Pink City was that the country’s Defence Minister, Railway Minister and other Samata leaders marched to Rashtrapati Bhavan. To do what? To demand that the Rabri Devi government in Bihar, which is but a proxy for Mr Laloo Prasad Yadav’s iron hold on the state, be dismissed at once. Surely, Mr George Fernandes, Mr Nitish Kumar and others are seasoned enough politicians to know that the President does not dismiss state governments without a recommendation to that effect from the Union Council of Ministers before him.

Of course, the President might decline to accept such a recommendation and advise the Cabinet to think again. This is precisely what he did when Mr Gujral, against his better instincts, allowed himself to be stampeded into endorsing the then U.P. Governor’s crass recommendation to impose President’s rule in the state and dissolve the assembly. Mr K.R. Narayanan tersely pointed out that the Kalyan Singh Ministry’s majority was intact and, therefore, he would not sign the proclamation placed before him. The Gujral government had had the good sense to back down.

Mr Fernandes and Mr Kumar need not make a spectacle of themselves by indulging in the kind of stunt they did. If they think that the dismissal of the Bihar set-up under Mrs Rabri Devi is absolutely essential, they must press the matter on the Prime Minister whose position they are wilfully eroding. In the event of Mr Vajpayee refusing to concede their demand, like self-respecting people they should resign from the Cabinet. Alternatively, the Prime Minister must serve notice on them that they should either stop their cheap tactics or quit.

The tragedy is that neither side is prepared to do the right and honourable thing, in accordance with democratic norms. No wonder, they have made utter nonsense of governance. Sadly, the “able leader” is in no position to provide the country with a government of any kind, leave alone a stable one.

However, while all the actors in the dismal drama being inflicted on the country are surely to blame, there are some bigger forces at work to which the country must not shut its eyes. To put the matter bluntly, Indian politicians of all hues are hell-bent on making it impossible for any kind of a coalition temper to develop at a time when coalition governments are becoming more and more unavoidable, thanks to the unending fragmentation of the Indian polity.

In Mr Gujral’s days it used to be fashionable to invest coalitions with supposed virtues — they being “more representative of Indian diversity” and “better guarantors of federalism” — which they never really possessed even then. In today’s circumstances to make the same claim will be a joke in a very bad taste. Let the stark facts speak for themselves. Every ally of the BJP, as also every faction within the “party with a difference”, is motivated by the pettiest, most parochial, most partisan, shamefully personal and entirely self-serving considerations and calculations.

Is it a pure coincidence that Ms Jayalalitha’s real programme is to get rid of the Karunanidhi ministry in Tamil Nadu and that of the no less voluble Samata leaders the sacking of the Rabri Devi ministry in Patna? Ms Banerjee’s sole concern is West Bengal. The Shiromani Akali Dal is bothered only about Punjab and the rich Sikh landlords of Udham Singh Nagar and so on. No one said one word about the wider national interest. The lady in Chennai has nothing to say about the fate of Bihar, nor is there a whisper by the Samata about Tamil Nadu. Where the hell does federalism come into this?

The one great federal achievement of Mr Vajpayee was to persuade the states concerned to agree on the sharing of the Cauvery waters. Ms Jayalalitha is not alone in sabotaging it. The Chief Ministers of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu are also putting spokes in the wheel. But the cake is taken by an AIADMK minister in the Vajpayee government who declared that award or no award, accord or no accord, Tamil Nadu must have its legitimate share of the Cauvery waters.

To say that all through the woes that are racking, if not yet ruining, the Vajpayee coalition runs the thread of corruption and corruption charges will be to stress the obvious. But the point must be made that what Mr Kushabhau Thakre has called the “compulsions of coalition politics” have really got reduced to demands for either saving someone from charges of corruption or fixing someone else on the basis of such allegations.

It was also a revealing coincidence that the Chief Minister’s official residence in Patna was raided by the CBI — the first time any such thing has happened — in connection with a case of alleged corruption against Mr Laloo Yadav on the day when Mr Fernandes and Mr Nitish Kumar were clamouring for the Bihar government’s dismissal.

The crowning irony is that Ms Jayalalitha has managed to turn the tables and put the Vajpayee government in a very awkward position. Mr Vajpayee used to upbraid the Gujral government for refusing to act on charges of corruption without first seeking prima facie proof. He has now reversed his position 180 degrees. The Jayalalitha offensive, backed by many others, who see mischief in Mr M.K. Bezbaruah’s transfer from the Enforcement Directorate and fear more monkey business in the appointment of the Chief Vigilance Commissioner, continues.

Naidu’s problems and achievements
by A. Prasanna Kumar

MR N. CHANDRABABU NAIDU is the most focused Chief Minister of Indian politics today. He has always had the knack of hitting the headlines. Business Week has placed him among Asia’s top 50 celebrities, and his deals with Microsoft and software and hardware giants, and plans of a high-tech revolution in Andhra Pradesh have established him as the most forward-looking state leader.

Mr Naidu, not even 50, has launched “Vision 2020”, the fulfilment of which he may well see whether he will be in power or out of it.

For the first time in many years Andhra Pradesh has had no power cut this year, and the position is likely to improve with many power projects being launched. Roads are being widened and the state Capital, Hyderabad, and the holy place of Tirupati bear testimony to the speedy repair and reconstruction work in progress.

But the task is a daunting one for anyone leading the huge state of Andhra Pradesh. Rumblings within the party are heard regularly. With the exceptions of N. Sanjiva Reddy, undoubtedly the ablest Chief Minister Andhra Pradesh has had, and N.T. Rama Rao, the most charismatic Andhra leader, every Chief Minister was troubled by dissidence and factional politics. Naxalite violence is on the increase and the hold of the PWG on some districts of the Telangana region is pronounced.

Caste is a major factor in the politics of Andhra Pradesh, and the rivalry between the two dominant castes, the Reddis and the Kammas, manifests in different forms. Added to this is the raging feud between the Malas and Madigas among the Dalits. Naidu has been shrewdly playing the balancing act, keeping his caste, at least publicly, away from him.

He knows how his father-in-law had to pay for depending on his own caste people. While appointing heads of corporations and even Vice-Chancellors, Mr Naidu has been acting cautiously and tactfully, trying to satisfy the demands of various groups. He knows too well that “keeping the herd” together, his partymen, is as hard as making the bureaucracy work efficiently. Still, round-the-clock work, frequent tours of the districts and regular meetings with party leaders and officials have paid off since Mr Naidu became the Chief Minister almost three years ago.

“Back-stabber”, “crafty and cunning” and “dangerously clever” are some of the epithets used against Mr Naidu by his critics. He did come to power by “back-stabbing” his father-in-law, the late NTR. But that is nothing new in politics. Brahmananda Reddy had done the same to his mentor, Sanjiva Reddy, three decades ago and since then every Andhra leader, like his counterparts in other parts of India, has played the game regularly. But it must be admitted that Mr Naidu has, in so doing, rendered great service to NTR, who otherwise would have crashed to ignominy under the weight of his own fantasies and hallucinations.

Mr Naidu, however, has his own limitations and he is aware of them. There are many who predict his fall in the elections to the state assembly next year. The incumbency factor may work against him. But this man in hurry will have achieved much for the state before this happens. He may even convert the threat to his advantage, as he has done so many times during the past over 1000 days, beginning with a daring film-style street-fight in Hyderabad (from Hotel Viceroy) to pull down the greatest God of Telugu screen, hailed as the most powerful Chief Minister Andhra Pradesh ever had!

Anything can happen in Indian cinema and politics. Right now something encouraging is really happening in Andhra Pradesh under the leadership of Mr Naidu, who wants to yoke the state’s agricultural prosperity to high-tech culture for making the state a model worthy of emulation. The dream may be ambitious, even unrealisable. But it is the effort that deserves the attention of one and all.

(The writer is a retired professor of political science, Andhra University.)

The thrill of thievery

by D. R. Sharma

CONTRARY to the paucity of mango crop in the country, our three trees in the backyard for the first time astonished us with their quality and opulence. Luckily, the wild winds of March this year shelved their fury and the bloom remained in tact to inundate us with sacks and baskets of delectable dussehri and langra.

The mango aroma in the house — in the pantry, kitchen and dining room — made me wistfully recall my pastoral childhood. I had often portrayed the scenes of mango harvest which my wife started appreciating only this year. “Was this the smell?” she asked when she moved to monitor the stock in different corners of the house.

Our 20 trees in the land across the canal used to be the envy of relatives in general and the fellow villagers in particular. While two trees planted by my father had edible skin, the fruit of others was no less sweet. But they were all of the sucking variety involving a delicate coordination between mouth and hands. As far as I recall, one tree near the spur of the Ravi tributary called khal yielded big fat mangoes perhaps meant to be sliced, but slicing a mango was unmannerly in my hamlet.

What I remember the most about that early mango bonanza relates to the primordial human wish to dare and dream. Although we had a glut of mangoes at home, my friends in school would narrate ballads of valiance involving pluck, skill and speed. “We climb the trees at night, and slide down speedily to fly off with the booty,” they remarked and invited me once to join their gutsy squad.

What happened that night I can never forget. “Let’s plunder that treasure on Milkha Singh’s tree,” suggested Balbir, who now wears thick glasses and wobbles with a stick in hand. With a voice vote I was elected the gang leader.

We were up hidden in those branches, doing our homework, when arrived Milkha with a massive bludgeon in hand. Hurling thunderous expletives on the little poachers, he asked us to sail down and face the summary trial. Being the team leader, I was the last to come down and join the quacking crew.

While spanking my comrades, he abused everyone in the lineage of the crime perpetrators. Truly speaking, I wasn’t scared of the burly peasant — our one-time tenant — but of something else. It wasn’t fear of the man but a deep sense of shame emanating from that futile and stupid exercise. Ultimately when my turn came, he menacingly advanced and suddenly stopped when he recognised me. “Lambar Junior, why rob when you have plenty at home? ” he asked more in anguish than anger.

His soft, humble tone sharpened my ignominy — and it got sharper still when I noticed in the next few days that he never reported the matter to my sibling, the headman of the village.

75 YEARS AGO
Pandit Motilal Nehru

PANDIT MOTILAL NEHRU, who on rising to deliver his speech was greeted with shouts of “Bande Mataram”, “Sat Sri Akal”, “Allaho Akbar,” stated that he was not there on that occasion as a mere office-bearer of the Congress to exhort the audience to follow or accept the Congress principles.

He had been doing so long; but his object was to place before them, the highest tribunal, his own case for their final decision. The facts of the case were heart-rending and full of agonies for him.

In the Martial Law days the wounds that were inflicted upon the people were due to the bureaucracy; but the present wounds were caused by their own men and not by others as before.

Preparing for Khalsa tercentenary
By Jasbir Singh Ahluwalia

A UNIQUE event of great historical significance occurred at Sri Anandpur Sahib in 1699 when the last Prophet of Sikhism, Guru Gobind Singh, created the Khalsa through the sacrament of baptismal “amrit”. The Guru thereby institutionalised the universal, humanistic teachings of Guru Nanak, who had envisioned a new civilisation characterised by a new value pattern based on the primacy of the human spirit.

Here was a unique message: the humanity of God and the divinity of man — a concept from which emanate, in a sense, the ideals enshrined in the Preamble to the United Nations Charter which, inter alia, reaffirms “faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women, and of nations, large and small”.

We are approaching 1999, the 300th anniversary of that divine moment in the flux of time that changed the very course of history, particularly in the Indian subcontinent.

In view of the significance of the Khalsa tercentenary, high hopes were raised among the Sikhs, all over the world, enthused by Akali-BJP rule in the state, with most cordial relations with the Centre during the tenure of Prime Minister I.K. Gujral and the Akali participation in the Vajpayee government. The Shiromani Gurdwara Prabhandhak Committee was also expected to play a multi-dimensional role in the 1999 celebrations. As loudly proclaimed in an illustrated brochure — “Programme Outline of Events and Activities” — brought out by the Department of Information and Public Relations, Punjab, last year, the Punjab government made a solemn commitment “to observe the 300th year of the birth of the Khalsa as a mega event on a global scale”. Ambitious programmes and projects were announced in this brochure, including the Khalsa Heritage Memorial (the eighth wonder of the world), the constitution of the country, committees all over the world, the constitution of a national celebration committee headed by the Prime Minister, the setting up of the state committees throughout India, a great Khalsa march starting from the birthplaces of the original Panj Pyare (the first five baptised by Guru Gobind Singh), a summit meeting of world spiritual leaders, development of Anandpur Sahib as the 21st century modern city of scholarship and learning, hosting of national games at Anandpur Sahib, establishment of a military academy there, etc.

For the implementation of these and some other programmes, the Punjab government set up a number of forums, including the state-level celebration committee, the Anandpur Sahib Planning and urban Development Authority and the Anandpur Sahib Foundation. The state-level celebration committee, since its creation over one year ago, has met only once, while two meetings of the Anandpur Sahib Planning and Urban Development Authority have taken place for infrastructural development of Anandpur Sahib which work, of course, is being carried on on a war-footing; the authority has decided to erect five ceremonial gates at Anandpur Sahib and has also approved the project of a martial arts academy there.

Unfortunately, the Anandpur Sahib foundation has not met even once since its constitution last year, though some meetings of its executive committee have taken place over the past few months, but without disclosing as to what is being planned and implemented even to the members of the foundation — such being the bureaucratic concept of transparency that was pledged by the ruling Akali Dal in its election manifesto on the eve of last Vidhan Sabha elections. The foundation was given Rs 1 crore last year, followed by a budgetary provision of Rs 35 crore this year.

The Anandpur Sahib Foundation was envisaged to be an autonomous organisation and not an appendage of the government; but thanks to bureaucratic handling, the foundation has been reduced to a department of the state administration housed in the building of the Directorate of Cultural Affairs, with a bureaucrat — though efficient and energetic — being its member-secretary in his ex-officio capacity, as well as its chief executive authority in individual (life-long) capacity. Thanks to its bureaucratisation, the foundation is naturally stuck at the very take-off stage and has not so far been able even to finalise and get approved the designs of the 11-component Khalsa Heritage Memorial for which world-famous architect, Moshe Sufdie, was engaged last year. All that the foundation has so far “achieved” is the finalisation by the executive committee of an indigenously prepared design of one monument known as Nishan-e-Khalsa in the shape of khanda.

There is nothing original about this monument, as there is already in existence a high-rise (64 feet) khanda erected by the Namdharis near Malerkotla, now being coated with special quality steel imported from Japan; the khanda is harmoniously poised in a 6-acre landscaped surroundings, with a globeshaped meditation centre with a pool on the one side and a museum and a conference hall on the other. In contrast, the proposed khanda monument at Anandpur Sahib, aesthetically speaking, is prosaic and that too has now been rescheduled to be completed by the Baisakhi of the year 2000.

This monument can still be imbued with a highly poignant tenor and texture, evocative of the cosmic energy of God, making it a metaphor of the divine synergy of the creative and destructive aspects of mahakal as envisioned by Guru Gobind Singh in one of his hymns; it was in this symbolic sense that the Guru used the khanda in preparing “amrit”. But this metamorphosis of the design would require the creative imagination of a scholar in tune with the spirit of Sikhism, and not simply the craftmanship of an architect or the craftiness of a bureaucrat.

The Khalsa heritage memorial, proclaimed as the eighth wonder of the world, remains frozen in the files. The officers concerned seem to have succeeded in convincing the political executive with the characteristic bureaucratic cliche: “such things take time”. The selection of legends, episodes and other material out of last 300 years, to be depicted in the Khalsa Heritage Memorial through multi-modal, audio-video and virtual reality techniques, was entrusted to a core group of scholars. This group, after having held a few ad hoc meetings, repeatedly, urged upon the authorities to formalise its constitution but that was not done at all, with the result that leading members of the group disassociated themselves from the exercise, rejecting a bulky draft, got prepared by the department of Information and Public Relations, that had just copied down legends and episodes from Sikh history without realising their inner spirit.

Modern approach, as adopted by scholars of different religions, requires de-construction of the inherited legends and myths to arrive at their inner sense and signification and, their re-construction in modern idiom and context: we have also to employ the same methodology in dealing with our historical-mythological legends, myths and episodes.

In the first (and so far the last) meeting of the state-level celebration committee, the programmes and projects, other than the Khalsa Heritage Memorial, were scuttled by the SGPC President on the ground that the celebrational programmes should be left to the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabhandhak Committee. The shrewd jathedar in Mr Gurcharan Singh Tohra, as such, burdened Mr Parkash Singh Badal with the money-consuming, time-involving project, while keeping for himself the populist, image-building celebrational programmes. The SGPC woke up to this task only a few months ago when a 31-member committee was set up, which is still in the process of doing its paper work, without any tangible programme appearing on the horizon.

The most significant mission of the Khalsa Panth was proclaimed by Guru Gobind Singh in his prophetic message that All humanity is one in spirit. In this context, the Guru Gobind Singh Foundation way back in 1992 submitted a memorandum to the Secretary-General of the United Nations for declaring 1999 as the UN-sponsored “year of the human spirit”; a favourable reply was received from the office of the Secretary-General. But, as per protocol, a reference from a member-state is essential. Accordingly, the Punjab Vidhan Sabha, under the leadership of Mr Parkash Singh Badal, passed a unanimous resolution on March 6, 1997, urging the Centre to take up with the United Nations the proposal of 1999 as the “year of the human spirit”.

The memorandum of the foundation was signed, among others, by Mr Inder Kumar Gujral, who on becoming the Prime Minister, ignored the same, Mr Balwant Singh Ramoowalia, as Vice-Chairman of the National Minorities Commission, got a resolution passed by the commission requesting the then Prime Minister to take up the proposal with the United Nations. But Mr Ramoowalia after becoming a Cabinet Minister, slept over the proposal.

Despite his written commitment to the Guru Gobind Singh Foundation to support the proposal when he was the leader of the Opposition in Parliament, there has been no response from Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, who has not so far cared even for setting up a national celebrations committee for observing the Khalsa tercentenary.

Certain other proposals, including the issue of a five-rupee coin and a five-rupee postal stamp in memory of the “Panj Pyare”; production of TV films and serials by Doordarshan; erection of memorials at different places in India consecrated by the touch of Guru Gobind Singh; celebration of the historic occasion by Indian missions abroad; publication of the holy hymns of Guru Gobind Singh in Indian languages, etc. have elicited no response from the Central government or any of its agencies, despite persistent efforts over the past few years.

The callous and indifferent attitude of the bureaucrats concerned entrusted with the 1999 celebrations is manifest from an utter lack of coordination and division of tasks among various governmental, semi-governmental and non-governmental organisations. There is no formal coordination between the state government and the SGPC; no effective contact has been established between the Punjab government and other state governments. Central organisations like the National Book Trust and the Sahitya Akademi should have been involved in the tercentenary celebrations, particularly for the translation and publication of selected hymns of Guru Gobind Singh in Indian and foreign languages; no definitive entrustment of tasks, avoiding overlapping and duplication of efforts, has been made to the universities of the region.

Exhibition of the Khalsa heritage, if at all planned, remains paralysed in files. The Victoria and Albert Museum, UK, has already announced the inauguration of an exhibition on the arts of the Sikh kingdoms in London on March 25, 1999, after which it will be taken to North America from September to December next year. Dr Deborah Swallow, who came to India for exploring the possibility of bringing this exhibition to Chandigarh and Anandpur Sahib, went back dismayed at the cold officious response of the bureaucrats who even tried to dissuade her from visiting Anandpur.

The years 1999 and 2000 being the closing years of the present century, a number of international organisations have planned global events, particularly for the next year, focusing on the likely role of religion in the 21st century. Here was an opportunity for involving Sikhism in such international religious dialogues and deliberations, particularly at the next session of the Chicago Parliament of World Religions in South Africa in 1999; the organisers have agreed to devote one session to the Khalsa message of Guru Gobind Singh that all humanity is one in spirit, but those, on this side, who should take care of selection and sponsorship of the delegation are displaying a “why bother” attitude.

However, at the initiative of the Guru Gobind Singh Foundation, the US-based Millennium Institute has incorporated the above preaching of the tenth Prophet of Sikhism in its earth message for the 21st century and the third millennium (website...http// www igc. apc.org/millennium).

The 1999 celebrations can still acquire momentum and create impact by “spreading out”, as against the present tendency of “drawing in”, a tendency that would ultimately result in making this historic occasion a festivity of the Sikhs, by the Sikhs and for the Sikhs. This, in a sense, reveals that the universalising elan vital of Sikh religion is giving way to a self-limiting proclivity in contemporary Sikhism.

Mr Gurcharan Singh Tohra in an interview published in a leading English daily on June 30, rightly expressed the anguish of the Sikh community when he said that “the officers have no feel for Punjab, leave alone Anandpur Sahib. The whole impact of the tercentenary programmes will be lost if you cannot complete anything by Baisakhi 1999”.

Though there is little hope now for the Khalsa tercentenary celebrations becoming the promised “global maga-event”, there is enough time to salvage this gloomy situation and to implement and execute some of the programmes and projects. But for that the Punjab Chief Minister, with his innate political will and vision, would have to exert himself emphatically and energetically with requisite structural changes in the handling of the celebrations.

(The writer is President, Guru Gobind Singh Foundation, Chandigarh.)

Significance of 1999
By Baljit Malik

THE 300th anniversary of the birth of the Khalsa shall soon be upon us. Preparations on a massive scale for this significant event are very much on.

Seminars and symposiums are to be held; prayers and hymns to be offered; institutions to be opened, donations solicited, and much chest-flaunting shall be indulged in. Mind you, within and around these activities there will also be much merry money-making, contract-grabbing, the usual social and political belly-expanding and hullaballoo.

Given the propensity of the present-day Sikh-Singhs to be in the eye of the storm of conspicuous consumption and spending (even within the portals of their gurdwaras), a particular responsibility devolves upon the Sikh clergy and ecclesiastical establishment to elaborate on the significance, meaning and origins of the concept and precept of the Khalsa.

The Khalsa is a 17th century phenomenon of the search and articulation of the identity and honour of a robust and earthy people. A search that combined religion, politics, militarism, heroism, poetry and saintliness. A search that, nevertheless, made deep excursions into antiquity before it yielded its treasure-trove of a new world religion, if not order.

The Sikh and later Khalsa (Singh) experience from the first to the tenth Gurus (15th-18th Century) drew and drank generous peg measures of Biblical, Quranic, Vedantic and Bhakti traditions. All this is well known, indeed well recognised and documented. But these classic antecedents of the Sikh faith, tradition and style do not the whole story tell or make.

History, on account of sheer human intellectual limitations, can only offer an incomplete panorama of the evolution, growth and decay of myth, legend and reality. Sometimes it requires a dream into history, combined with a little common sense, to explain the happenings that often appear to be clouded in uncertainty or fogged in mystery.

Thus it is that Delhi, where this piece has been written, has rather special significance in the emergence of the Khalsa. For Guru Gobind’s psyche was steeled and honeyed, in part, by the critical martyrdom of his father, Guru Tegh Bahadur, in Shahjehanabad’s Chandni Chowk.

Moreover, the Aravali Hills, the Shivaliks, and the jungles, hills and rivers of Punjab and the Indo-Gangetic and Yamuna plains became Guru Gobind’s theatre of spiritual, military and adventure training. It was in these territories of the tribals, the very folk whom Ashoka had tried to vanquish and proselitise, that he and his mother Mata Gujri spent many years traversing difficult terrain to survive and evade capture by the Mughal armies that were in hot pursuit of them. It was in these forested tribal domains that young Gobind lived and hunted to sharpen and hone his poetic and military reflexes and skills. It was in these Adivasi domains that Gobind, his mother and father learnt to revere, fear and empathise with their (the tribals’) holy ghosts and holy smoke.

It was under the shade and aroma of mahua, kusum, karanj and khajoor that young Gobind learnt how to live off the land without tearing it apart. It was amidst the trees, brooks and boughs of the jungle that he learnt how to dress and “fire” a catapult with deadly precision, to let his tresses grow long, to adorn his wrists with steel, to fashion combs from driftwood, to forge iron and steel from the ore of our Good Earth; perhaps even to weave his own cloth for his “jangias” (under-pants).

There could be no better way to repay that debt than to reforest the deforested tracts and cleanse the polluted streams, springs and rivers in the environs of Anandpur Sahib in the Shivaliks. A herculean task, indeed, but one that could be counted as a kar seva for 1999 and the coming century. And there could be no better way to engage in such a noble task than to join and rub hands and shoulders with the Munda-Mundi, Kurukh-Oraon and Kharia who are today the sweat and backbone of Punjabi agriculture and political economy.

Finally, during and after the performance of this debt-redeeming kar seva to save Anandpur Sahib from wanton desertification, the reforested tracts should be handed over to the Jharkhandis for peace-keeping and safeguarding. From the Jharkhandis the Sikhs took elements of their faith, from them they (the Punjabis) even drew the well-springs of their language.