Preaching Terror In Punjab

WHEN THE PREACHER ENTERED the precincts of the Golden Temple, his congregation was armed with rifles and swords. His gait and that of his nearest companion was confident to the point that one could be mistaken that they ran the place. One could be forgiven for a sense of déjà vu. The year is 2023 and not the unruly 1980s when the terrorist Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale lorded over the place without the government even raising a finger at him.

But that is exactly what transpired on February 24 when Amritpal Singh, a separatist political preacher (see box) and his companion, Lovepreet Toofan, marched into the Golden Temple. A day earlier, Singh and a mob that numbered in hundreds had attacked a police station in Ajnala in Amritsar district. Their demand was simple: release Toofan. Toofan, who had been booked in an assault and kidnapping case, was released post haste the next day. The triumphal march to the holiest shrine of Sikhism took place that very evening.

This is perhaps the only instance since Operation Black Thunder II in 1988 that anyone has entered the Golden Temple armed to the teeth with a posse as a show of strength. As in the 1980s, there was not a whimper of protest from the state government or Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann. Mann was away in Mumbai when reporters asked him about the events in Amritsar. He answered by saying that no one will be allowed to disturb Punjab’s peaceful atmosphere. The situation in Punjab, however, is very different from the soothing rhetoric of the state’s political leadership.

Since 2021, the state has witnessed a number of violent incidents. On December 23, 2021, a bomb blast in Ludhiana’s judicial court complex shattered the illusion of peace in the state. The operation was masterminded from Pakistan. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) chargesheet filed in January lists a Khalistani terrorist based in Pakistan and four others for the incident. The execution was done by smugglers and gangsters active in Punjab. Less than six months later, on May 9, 2022, a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) attack on Punjab Police’s intelligence headquarters in Mohali had a similar footprint: gangsters guided by terrorists abroad. Then, seven months later, another RPG attack, this time on a police station in Sarhali in Tarn Taran district. Sarhali was once the hotbed of separatist insurgency in the 1980s.

When viewed in isolation, these incidents show that terrorists based in Pakistan and Khalistani sympathisers in countries like Canada, Australia and Britain had limited purchase. The ability of these groups to ‘heat up’ Punjab is limited. Otherwise, there would have been more such incidents. But that situation may change. With the roving preacher being thrown into the mix, something much more dangerous has been injected into extremist politics in Punjab.

The state government has, so far, not taken any punitive steps against the preacher except for a homeopathic statement. Speaking in Bhavnagar, Gujarat, on February 26—two days after the incident in Ajnala—Mann said, “Those who have shamefully taken the shield of Sri Guru Granth Sahib to enter [the] police station can’t be waaris (inheritors) of Punjab.” He also said this is an “unpardonable crime which must be condemned by one and all.” The waaris in the statement was a hint at the organisation being led by Amritpal Singh, Waaris Punjab De (Inheritors of Punjab).

Apart from this statement, and the state’s director-general of police (DGP) raising the issue during a meeting of DGPs of states and Union territories convened by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), the preacher has freely gone about his incendiary messaging across the length and breadth of Punjab.

The danger now is twofold. At one level, Punjab has not seen a return to terrorism and insurgency. The last bout was squashed firmly by the mid-1990s. In more than a quarter century since those events, Punjab has remained peaceful. The violence-scarred population of the state did not want a re-run of insurgency. This, even as the idea of Khalistan never died but remained in the background. The spate of violent incidents in the last two-odd years has been the handiwork of gangsters at the behest of people not in the state. To that extent, Mann is correct about his assessment of the situation. But only to that extent: there is no appreciation of the danger that lies ahead.

The use of gangsters to carry out terrorist activities, while a serious problem, has not marked a return to the situation of the kind seen from 1979 to 1992. There is a crucial difference between the use of gangsters for violence and the violence perpetrated by homegrown terrorists. The latter, even if they were waging war against their country, had legitimacy in the eyes of separatists in the state. This included ordinary citizens who had been misguided by the idea of Khalistan and others openly sympathetic to the separatist cause. Gangsters cannot enjoy this sort of ‘legitimacy’ in the eyes of ordinary people in Punjab. This is dangerously close to being changed. The violence in Ajnala is likely to be forgotten soon as another marker in a state with a troubled history. It ought not to be seen that way.

The swarm of people that Armitpal Singh was able to mobilise in a brazen attack on a police station clearly shows the preacher’s ideas are gaining traction. He has openly advocated a separate state of Khalistan by dismembering India (see box). To make matters worse, the idea has now gained a dangerous level of traction.

One example is the Qaumi Insaf Morcha or the community justice march/front. The morcha, which suddenly became active in mid-February, is demanding the release of “Bandi Singhs” or incarcerated Sikhs. On this list are nine convicted terrorists involved in the assassination of Beant Singh, then chief minister of Punjab, in 1992 with an explosion at the civil secretariat in Chandigarh. Two key terrorists, Jagtar Singh Hawara and Paramjit Singh Bheora—who planned the assassination and were involved in its execution—are also on the list.

In the last 20-odd days, the morcha has laid siege to the border between Chandigarh and Mohali—the satellite city adjoining the Union territory that lies in Punjab—and have set up semi-permanent structures in the roundabout demarcating the two jurisdictions. It is interesting to note that many participants in the morcha belong to the more aggressive factions of the Bhartiya Kisan Union (BKU) that spearheaded the agitation against the farm laws on the borders of Delhi.

IT IS NOT as if these activities—the morcha and the roving preacher’s activities—are being carried out secretly. All this is happening before the state government’s eyes but so far it has chosen to keep them closed.

Over the last year since the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government under Bhagwant Mann took charge, not a day has passed without some morcha or dharna in some part of Punjab. So much so that for a long time the chief minister’s personal residence in Sangrur was besieged by protesters. In the Malwa region of Punjab, it is normal for any number of ‘protesters’ or any of the BKU factions to block the state’s roadways and highways. The breakdown of law and order is so severe that in the winter that just passed, it was ‘normal’ for officials to be held hostage in villages when they went there on duty. There were multiple such instances of officials being held hostage when they arrived to check stubble-burning, an environmentally damaging practice rampant in Punjab.

So far, the Mann government has not taken any action against these offenders. It is not hard to see why this is so. AAP as a political party attained success in Punjab in what is probably the most populist state of India. The party won the election by making even more populist promises. Its ascent to the top of Punjab’s greasy political pole has been rapid. It has done that within two electoral cycles. Traditionally, Punjab is not hospitable to third political formations. The result is a party in power that is yet to sink deep roots in the state. Its reluctance to check, let alone halt, the state’s downward spiral towards extremism is based on a dangerous illusion. It thinks it will be able to consolidate its hold on Punjab’s polity faster than the extremists can disrupt it. Such a calculation was made once before in the state by an established political party. Then too, a wily religious preacher got the better of Punjab’s ‘sophisticated’ politicians. Nearly four decades after his death, another preacher has arrived on Punjab’s political scene. But in an instance of history repeating itself, a government is making the same mistake that had earlier proved deadly for Punjab’s peace and security.

Who’s Amritpal Singh?

At first sight, the resemblance between Amritpal Singh—the fiery preacher who has taken Punjab by storm—and Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale is eerie. The blue turban, the slinging sword and scabbard and the fiery rhetoric about Sikh slavery are almost a carbon copy of what the dead terrorist used to spout in his heyday. Amritpal (29) is just a tad younger than Bhindranwale was when the latter launched his Dharam Yudh Morcha in 1982.

Little is known about Amritpal. His early life is obscure except for the briefest of details. Born at Jallupur Khera village in Baba Bakala subdivision of Amritsar, the boy Amritpal was involved in his family’s transport business. Later, he moved to Dubai. But he is a modern-age preacher with a LinkedIn profile (from his Dubai days) and an Instagram account with hip photographs (now restricted).

But that is where the resemblance between the two preachers ends. While Bhindranwale took the traditional route to ascend the religio-political pole in Punjab—through the Damdami Taksal seminary—Amritpal is a ‘lateral’ entrant to this kind of politics. When Punjab pop singer Deep Sidhu died last year, Amritpal took over Sidhu’s organisation Waaris Punjab De (Inheritors of Punjab). Sidhu was a controversial singer who championed the separatist cause during the farmers’ agitation in 2020-21. This gave Amritpal a ready set-up to launch his activities. If Deep Sidhu’s family is to be believed, it was a hostile takeover.

Whatever the truth of the matter, Amritpal lost no time in launching his incendiary rhetoric. The themes are simple: Sikhs are an “enslaved nation” and without bearing arms and violence, no one gets what they desire. To buttress his ‘reformist’ credentials, Amritpal also advocates rehabilitation of addicts and ending the drug menace in Punjab. These themes are lapped up by his audiences.

It has taken just six months for the preacher to take the state by storm. In contrast, it took Bhindranwale five years to reach that point when he was killed. This relatively short period and the site of his activities paint a disturbing picture of contemporary Punjab. While Amritpal has pan-Punjab appeal, his focus area remains the old Amritsar and Gurdaspur districts. It is interesting to note that his place of birth—Jallupur Khera—Bhindranwale’s seminary at Chowk Mehta and Sri Hargobindpur, the police station with the most number of reported terrorist incidents, form a small triangle on one side of the river Beas. This area with its miasma of religion, Sikh separatism and backwardness are an ideal stomping ground for anyone trying to fish in troubled waters. The logistics manager from Dubai knows that very well.
Amritpal has the same shrewdness that marked Bhindranwale and, if anything, more so. For example, he understands the political situation in Punjab very well. So far, his speeches and rhetoric are aimed at the Centre. He has gone so far as to threaten Union Home Minister Amit Shah. In contrast, there is barely a whimper against the state government. It is exactly the kind of symbiotic relationship that led Punjab to a grievous misadventure four decades earlier. It seems the state is back on that road again.

Amritpal SinghBhindranwalepoliticsPunjabSikh extremists