Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale
Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale was a Sikh militant. After Operation Bluestar, he posthumously became the leading figure for the Khalistan movement, although he did not personally advocate for a separate Sikh nation.
He was the fourteenth jathedar or leader, of the prominent orthodox Sikh religious institution Damdami Taksal. An advocate of the Anandpur Sahib Resolution, he gained significant attention after his involvement in the 1978 Sikh-Nirankari clash. In the summer of 1982, Bhindranwale and the Akali Dal launched the Dharam Yudh Morcha, with its stated aim being the fulfilment of a list of demands based on the Anandpur Sahib Resolution to create a largely autonomous state within India. Thousands of people joined the movement in the hope of retaining a larger share of irrigation water and the return of Chandigarh to Punjab. There was dissatisfaction in some sections of the Sikh community with prevailing economic, social, and political conditions. Over time Bhindranwale grew to be a leader of Sikh militancy.
In 1982, Bhindranwale and his group moved to the Golden Temple complex and made it his headquarters. Bhindranwale would establish what amounted to a "parallel government" in Punjab, settling cases and resolving disputes, while conducting his campaign. In 1983, he along with his militant cadre inhabited and fortified the Sikh shrine Akal Takht. In June 1984, Operation Blue Star was carried out by the Indian Army to remove Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his armed followers from the buildings of the Harmandir Sahib in the Golden Temple Complex, which resulted in hundreds to thousands of deaths according to various reports, including that of Bhindranwale.
Bhindranwale has remained a controversial figure in Indian history. While the Sikhs' highest temporal authority Akal Takht describe him a 'Martyr', with immense appeal among rural sections of the Sikh population, who saw him as a powerful leader, who stood up to Indian state dominance and repression, many Indians saw him as spearheading a "revivalist, extremist and terrorist movement", which remains a point of contention.
Early life
Bhindranwale was born on 2 June 1947, as Jarnail Singh Brar to a Jat Sikh family, in the village of Rode, in Moga District, located in the region of Malwa. The grandson of Sardar Harnam Singh Brar, his father, Joginder Singh Brar was a farmer and a local Sikh leader, and his mother was Nihal Kaur. Jarnail Singh was the seventh of eight siblings of seven brothers and one sister. He was put into a school in 1953 at the age of 6 but he dropped out of school five years later to work with his father on the farm.Marriage
He married Pritam Kaur, the daughter of Sucha Singh of Bilaspur at the age of nineteen. The couple had two sons, Ishar Singh and Inderjit Singh, in 1971 and 1975, respectively. After the death of Bhindranwale, Pritam Kaur moved along with her sons to Bilaspur village in Moga district and stayed with her brother. She died of heart ailment at age 60, on 15 September 2007 in Jalandhar.Damdami Taksal
Early years
In 1965, he was enrolled by his father at the Damdami Taksal also known as Bhindran Taksal, a religious school near Moga, Punjab, named after the village of Bhindran Kalan where its leader Gurbachan Singh Bhindranwale lived. Though based out of Gurdwara Akhand Parkash there, he took his pupils on extended tours of the countryside. After a one-year course in scriptural, theological and historical studies with Gurbachan Singh Khalsa, partly during a tour but mostly during his stay at Gurdwara Sis Asthan Patshahi IX near Nabha, he rejoined his family and returned to farming, marrying in 1966. Maintaining ties with the Taksal, he continued studies under Kartar Singh, who became the new head of the Taksal after Gurbachan Singh Khalsa's death in June 1969, and would establish his headquarters at Gurdwara Gurdarshan Prakash at Mehta Chowk, approximately 25 kilometers northeast of Amritsar. He quickly became the favourite student of Kartar Singh. Unlike other students he had had familial responsibilities, and he would take time off from the seminary and go back and forth month to month to take care of his wife and two children, balancing his familial and religious responsibilities.Successor to the Taksal
Kartar Singh Khalsa died in a car accident on 16 August 1977. Before his death, Kartar Singh had appointed the then 31-year-old Bhindranwale as his successor. His son, Amrik Singh, would become a close companion of Jarnail Singh.Bhindranwale was formally elected the 14th jathedar of the Damdami Taksal at a bhog ceremony at Mehta Chowk on 25 August 1977. He adopted the name "Bhindranwale" meaning "from Bhindran ", the location of the Bhindran Taksal branch of the Damdami Taksal, and attained the religious title of "Sant". He concluded most of his family responsibilities to dedicate full time to the Taksal, thus following a long tradition of “sants”, an important part of rural Sikh life. Henceforth his family saw him solely in Sikh religious congregations known as satsangs, though his son Ishar Singh would describe his youth as being "well looked after" and "never in need." As a missionary Sant of the Taksal, he would tour the villages to give dramatic public sermons and reading of scripture. He preached the disaffected young Sikhs, encouraging them to return to the path of the Khalsa by giving up consumerism in family life and abstaining from drugs and alcohol, the two main vices afflicting rural society in Punjab, and as a social reformer, denounced practices like the dowry, and encouraged a return to the simple lifestyle prior to the increased wealth of the state and the reversal of the decline in morals following the Green Revolution. As one observer noted, "The Sant's following grew as he successfully regenerated the good life of purity, dedication and hard work.... These basic values of life...had been the first casualty of commercial capitalism." His focus on fighting for the Sikh cause appealed to many young Sikhs. Bhindranwale never learned English but had good grasp of Punjabi language. His speeches were released in the form of audio cassette tapes and circulated in villages. Later on, he became adept with press and gave radio and television interviews as well. His sermons urged the centrality of religious values to life, calling on the members of congregations to be:
From July 1977 to July 1982, he extensively toured cities and villages of Punjab to preach the Sikh faith. He also visited other states and cities in India, mostly in gurdwaras, in Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh. His meetings were attended by rapt "throngs of the faithful – and the curious." He advocated against decreasing religious observance, cultural changes occurring in Punjab, rising substance abuse, and use of alcohol and pornography, encouraging religious initiation by taking amrit and fulfilling religious obligations, including wearing the outward religious symbols of the faith, like the turban and beard. He appeared at a time when leaders were not engaged in the community, traveled from city to city instead of being based in an office or gurdwara and delegating, solved domestic disputes and showed no interest in a political career, seeing himself foremost as a man of religion. People soon began to seek his intervention in addressing social grievances, and he began to hold court to settle disputes. This reflected the widespread disenchantment among the masses with expensive, time-consuming bureaucratic procedures that often did not ensure justice. Bhindranwale's verdicts were widely respected and helped to gain him enormous popularity, as well as his "remarkable ability" as a preacher and his ability to quote religious texts and evoke the relevance of historical events in the present time.
Khushwant Singh, a critic of Bhindranwale, allowed that
Politics
It is generally believed that in the late 1970s, Indira Gandhi's Congress party attempted to co-opt Bhindranwale in a bid to split Sikh votes and weaken the Akali Dal, its chief rival in Punjab. Congress supported the candidates backed by Bhindranwale in the 1978 SGPC elections. The theory of Congress involvement has been contested on grounds including that Gandhi's imposition of President's rule in 1980 had essentially disbanded all Punjab political powers regardless, with no assistance required to take control, and has been challenged by scholarship. According to the New York Times, Sanjay Gandhi had approached Bhindranwale, then the newly appointed head of the Damdami Taksal, after Indira Gandhi lost the 1977 Indian general election, but after Congress resumed power in 1980, would find out that he could not be controlled or directed.The Congress CM Giani Zail Singh, who allegedly financed the initial meetings of the separatist organisation Dal Khalsa, amid attempts to cater to and capitalize on the surge in Sikh religious revivalism in Punjab. The Akali Dal would also attempt to cater to the same electoral trend during the same period following electoral defeats in 1972 and 1980, resulting from a pivot to a secular strategy in the 1960s and the accompanying coalition partnerships necessary to guarantee electoral success, most notably with the Jan Sangh, a party of urban Hindu communalism. This later turned out to be a miscalculation by Congress, as Bhindranwale's political objectives became popular among the agricultural Jat Sikhs in the region, as he would advocate for the state's water rights central to the state's economy, in addition to leading Sikh revivalism.
In 1979, Bhindranwale put up forty candidates against the Akali candidates in the SGPC election for a total of 140 seats, winning four seats. A year later, Bhindranwale used Zail Singh's patronage to put up candidates in three constituencies' during the general elections, winning a significant number of seats from Gurdaspur, Amritsar and Ferozepur districts. Despite this success, he would not personally seek any political office. He had the acumen to play off of both Akali and Congress attempts to capitalize off of him, as association with him garnered Sikh votes while putting other constituencies at risk. According to one analysis,
Bhindranwale himself addressed rumors of being such an agent, which were spread by Akali leadership during mid-1983, as his expanding support came at the expense of the Akali Dal amid mass leadership defections, seeing them as attempts to reduce his by-then huge support base in Punjab. He would refute this in April 1984 by comparing his actions to the Akalis, referring to the granting of gun licenses to Akalis by the Congress administration while his had been canceled, and that he did not enter the house of any Congress-aligned faction, Sikhs associated with him being arrested and their homes confiscated, and police destruction on his property, while Akali politicians would have dinners with figures aligned with Congress, like former chief minister Darbara Singh, who Bhindranwale would accuse of atrocities against Sikhs.
Bhindranwale did not respect conventional SGPC or Akali Dal apparatchiks, believing them to have "become mealy-mouthed, corrupt and deviated from the martial tenets of the faith," after they had failed to support the Sikhs during the 1978 Sikh-Nirankari clashes due to pressure from their coalition partners. Described as having "unflinching zeal and firm convictions," Bhindranwale did "not succumb to the pressure of big-wigs in the Akali Party nor could he be manipulated by the authorities to serve their ends." According to Gurdarshan Singh, "Those who tried to mend him or bend him to suit their designs underestimated his tremendous will and ultimately lost their own ground. He never became their tool. People who promoted his cause or helped him to rise to prominence were disillusioned, when he refused to play the second fiddle to them and declined to tread the path laid down for him. Paradoxical though it may seem, they became his unwilling tools. Thousands listened to him with rapt attention at the Manji Sahib gatherings. He had tremendous power to mobilise the masses. His charisma and eloquence overshadowed other leaders."
In order to overcome the hegemony of the Akali Dal, rather than being used, Bhindranwale would exploit the Congress and then the Akali Dal itself. The Akali Dal had begun to neglect Sikh needs in favor of maintaining political alliances necessary to keep power, resulting in their electoral loss in 1972, and the resulting Anandpur Sahib Resolution, meant to win back Sikh support, remained neglected while the party focused on reversing the overcentralization of political power that had taken place during the Emergency. Described as "a rational actor with his own goals," his first concern was to rejuvenate Sikhism as a leader of the community.
Further, the Damdami Taksal already had a history of openly opposing and criticizing Congress government policies before, as Kartar Singh Khalsa Bhindranwale, the leader of the institution prior to Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, had been a severe critic of the excesses of Indira Gandhi's Emergency rule, even in her presence as far back as 1975. Kartar Singh had also gotten a resolution passed by the SGPC on 18 November 1973, condemning the various anti-Sikh activities of the Sant Nirankaris, which were based in Delhi. Both Kartar Singh Bhindranwale and the Damdami Taksal had commanded such a level of respect in Sikh religious life that the Akali ministry had given him a state funeral upon his death on 20 August 1977. Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale would also mention the Sikhs facing the government with 37 major protests against Emergency rule under Congress during this era as fighting against tyranny. Emergency rule had initially been utilized to avert criminal charges on Gandhi, who was linked to misuse of government property during the upcoming election, which would have invalidated her campaign, and endowed the central government with powers including preemptive arrests, as well as the arrest of many political opponents.
On Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale becoming leader of the Damdami Taksal, another of the Taksal students explained, “ in political terms. It was just the same way. The Indian government thought that maybe although they could not stop Sant Kartar Singh , maybe Sant Jarnail Singh would be weaker. That was not the case.”