Kan­warpal Singh blasts the un­truths and lies in KPS Gill’s book, Pun­jab -The En­e­mies Within.

Dal Khalsa spokesper­son and a par­tic­i­pant in the in­sur­gent Sikh strug­gle in Pun­jab in the last cen­tury blasts the un­truths and lies of KPS Gill’s swan song, Pun­jab -The En­e­mies Within. The book is noth­ing but al­ter­na­tive facts -a phrase coined by the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion in US but used much ear­lier by those in In­dia known to twist facts to suit the­o­ries rather than mould the­o­ries to suit facts.

As age catches up, in­fa­mous and no­to­ri­ous KPS Gill, has come out with a book called “Pun­jab – The En­e­mies Within” in which he weaves a web of lies, dis­tor­tions and sub­terfuge.  The book is a joint ven­ture of Gill and anti-drug abuse ac­tivist Sad­havi Khosla.

When I picked up the book, I thought that at least at the fag end of his life, Gill may have done some soul-search­ing and made some frank and hon­est ad­mis­sions, but that was not to be.

Af­ter read­ing the book, I can eas­ily say that, “The so-called su­per cop of one small sec­tion of Pun­jab and “Butcher of the Sikhs” for an­other has spun not just half-truths but lies ga­lore.The 47-page chap­ter penned by Gill is noth­ing but hate-filled pro­pa­ganda -not only against Sikh rebels but all those who sym­pa­thised with the cause of rights and jus­tice. The book is mainly one-way traf­fic dom­i­nated by bi­ased views and dis­torted ver­sions of every big or small event that oc­curred dur­ing those times.

As they say every­one has his own truths. It de­pends upon which side of the fence you are. Gill is surely on Del­hi’s side and those who were part of the mil­i­tant move­ment in­clud­ing my­self rep­re­sent the Sikh side.

Tar­get­ing me in a per­sonal re­mark, Gill has ac­cused me of hav­ing con­tacts with sub­ver­sive and dis­rup­tive el­e­ments in the state and be­yond. Ob­vi­ously, the dar­ling of the In­dian state does not need to give proof, as if his words are gospel truth. Go­ing fur­ther, he says that Dal Khalsa un­der Gajin­der Singh tried to float a joint plat­form with the mil­i­tants of Kash­mir in 1997-98. Laugh it off as this is far from truth.  I do not think I should say more than this to his wild ac­cu­sa­tions against my party and me.

His nar­ra­tion of events bor­ders on the ab­surd at many places in the book. He has wrongly blamed Bhai Fauja Singh for hack­ing off the arm of a Hindu sweet­meats seller on his way to the Ni­rankari con­ven­tion on April 13 1978 and that he was shot dead be­cause he at­tempted to kill the Ni­rankari chief Gur­bachan Singh who was hold­ing a sat­sang over there.

It is com­mon knowl­edge that 13 de­vout Sikhs in­clud­ing Bhai Fauja Singh fell to the bul­lets of Ni­rankaris and the po­lice on that day in Am­rit­sar when they went to protest against the den­i­gra­tion of Sikh re­li­gious ethos by Ni­rankaris. The jatha of peace­ful Sikhs was with­out firearms, car­ry­ing tra­di­tional Kir­pans and they were shot at near the venue. The ques­tion of Bhai Fauja Singh reach­ing in­side the pan­dal and at­tempt­ing to kill the hereti­cal cult-head just does­n’t arise.

Apart from many other gaps, Gill harps on the longest per­ma­nent pres­ence of Coun­cil of Khal­is­tan in Pak­istan rep­re­sented by Bal­bir Singh Sandhu -the sec­re­tary gen­eral of the or­ga­ni­za­tion.  Sandhu ex­pired 12 years back in 2005 af­ter a brief ill­ness. Ac­cord­ing to Gill, Jag­tar Singh Tara, the as­sas­sin of Pun­jab CM Beant Singh lives in La­hore whereas the fact is that Pun­jab Po­lice ar­rested him from Thai­land in June 2015 and brought him back. He is lodged in Chandi­garh jail since the last twenty-two months. The “highly-ac­claimed” of­fi­cer has failed to get his facts right, which are clas­sic ex­am­ples of his work­ing style. It shows his pub­li­ca­tion is with­out ground work, ver­i­fi­ca­tion and his­tor­i­cal cor­rect­ness.

Not known for be­ing truth­ful, Gill in his de­tailed ac­count of Pun­jab’s mil­i­tancy era has in­dulged in mas­sive self-praise, pat­ted his own back, prais­ing his dare-devil meth­ods and re­it­er­at­ing that he was the sole-ar­chi­tect of bring­ing down mil­i­tancy. Mir­ror­ing the New Delhi mind­set whom he rep­re­sented fully as the “Sube­dar of In­dia” in Pun­jab, he viewed and han­dled the Pun­jab prob­lem as a law and or­der prob­lem. For him, like for the gov­ern­ment of In­dia, Sikh as­pi­ra­tions never ex­isted, nor do they ex­ist even now.

Harp­ing on the same old the­ory based on hearsay, Gill like many other con­tem­po­rary writ­ers and colum­nists has linked Sant Jar­nail Singh Bhin­drawale’s emer­gence on the po­lit­i­cal can­vass of Pun­jab as a Con­gress mis­chief, merely aimed at un­der­min­ing the po­lit­i­cal base of Akali Dal.   A lead story by sea­soned jour­nal­ist and for­mer In­dian Ex­press scribe Jag­tar Singh on June 26, 1981 with the head­line, “Mav­er­ick in quest of mar­tyr­dom” be­lies all such vague ac­cu­sa­tions and sus­pi­cion about pro-Pan­thic cre­den­tials of the Sant.  It’s very much clear that any­one who is will­ing to die for a just cause and ready for mar­tyr­dom can­not be a plant of some­one else. Sant at­tained mar­tyr­dom in the true spirit of Sikh tra­di­tion.

If one ad­mits Gill’s ver­sion that a large sec­tion of peo­ple of the state were af­fected by vi­o­lence car­ried out by mil­i­tant groups, his writ­ing is silent about State ter­ror­ism un­leashed by the Pun­jab po­lice un­der his jack­boots with full sup­port of the Union gov­ern­ment.

While Gill takes sadis­tic plea­sure in tar­nish­ing the ethics of mil­i­tants, he re­mains silent on his openly known love for wine and women, some­times even in full pub­lic view.  Like all his al­le­ga­tions with­out au­then­tic­ity and gen­uine proof, he blames the mil­i­tants, with­out be­ing spe­cific, of rape in the house­holds that shel­tered them.  There is no de­nial that dur­ing rev­o­lu­tion­ary strug­gles, peo­ple with per­sonal weak­nesses tend to creep in. At the same time, the dirty tricks de­part­ment of the po­lice too spon­sored crim­i­nal el­e­ments, rene­gades and po­lice vig­i­lantes to carry out such acts to de­fame the move­ment.

Fol­low­ing New Del­hi’s line Gill never ever ac­cepted that the Pun­jab prob­lem re­quired a po­lit­i­cal res­o­lu­tion. Gill has to­tally ig­nored how Pun­jab was robbed of its river wa­ters, ter­ri­tory, le­git­i­mate rights in­clud­ing right to self-de­ter­mi­na­tion.   He re­duces the cases of ex­cesses to a per­sonal level by say­ing that there were some stray in­ci­dents of vi­o­la­tions by in­di­vid­ual cops and that courts have pun­ished them. He even termed the ab­duc­tion and sub­se­quent elim­i­na­tion of well-known rights ac­tivist Jaswant Singh Khalra as one of the lim­ited and in­di­vid­ual ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties that oc­curred. That it was state pol­icy is ve­he­mently de­nied by him.  In his eyes, all hue and cry by vic­tims for jus­tice and ad­vo­cacy groups is mere pro­pa­ganda. It was a trav­esty of jus­tice that Gill was not in­dicted in the Khalra case de­spite clinch­ing ev­i­dence. The ma­nip­u­la­tions of the po­lit­i­cal mas­ters of KPS Gill pro­tected their “yes man” from the so-called ‘long arm of the law’.

Gill glar­ingly ad­mits, that af­ter he took over the reins of DGP, cops who sym­pa­thised with the Khal­is­tani cause were seg­re­gated to re­duce their in­volve­ment in sen­si­tive du­ties. He, how­ever, re­mains silent on how many such po­lice per­son­nel were mys­te­ri­ously elim­i­nated by rene­gades (called po­lice cats) and for that also the blame was put on the shoul­ders of mil­i­tant groups and in­ci­dents termed as in­ter-mil­i­tant ri­valry.

Not in a mood to ac­cept the blame for hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions by the Pun­jab po­lice, Gill took refuge in di­ver­gence of num­bers cited by dif­fer­ent Sikh groups.  He cited the vari­a­tions of the num­bers by ad­vo­cacy groups from 20000 to 50000 Sikhs killed dur­ing the course of  the strug­gle to give clean chit to his force. Ad­mit­tedly num­bers of vic­tims of state ter­ror­ism may be wrong, per­haps even ex­ag­ger­ated but the fact is that un­der Gill, the right to life in Pun­jab was vir­tu­ally sus­pended and the im­mu­nity given to the po­lice re­sulted in gross hu­man rights abuse from tor­ture to ex­tra­ju­di­cial killings.  Num­bers are im­por­tant but the life of even in­di­vid­ual is more im­por­tant than any of the mis­guided logic of Gill put to­gether.

Strongly con­test­ing and chal­leng­ing Gill’s por­trayal of Khal­is­tani ide­ol­ogy and vi­sion, as the Tal­iban­ized ver­sion of Sikhism, I must cat­e­gor­i­cally say that the strug­gle for free­dom of Pun­jab is ful­fill­ment of a quest for Sikh sov­er­eignty. His­tor­i­cally, it is the cul­mi­na­tion of re­gain­ing Sikh self-rule lost in 1849. Like many writ­ers of the past, the au­thor has also failed to see and un­der­stand this his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive.

Sur­pris­ingly Gill ad­mits that 65 per­cent of all civil­ian vic­tims killed by mil­i­tants were Sikhs. By say­ing so, he him­self ques­tions the no­tion of the Sikh strug­gle be­ing anti-Hindu.   Ad­mit­tedly, loss of in­no­cent lives, ir­re­spec­tive of one’s re­li­gion, dur­ing the course of Sikh strug­gle is re­gret­table. If one has to leave Pun­jab just be­cause he was not a Sikh, I feel sorry for that.

Moved by the suf­fer­ings of vic­tim fam­i­lies of fake en­coun­ters and en­forced dis­ap­pear­ance and their long un­end­ing wait for their loved ones,  I can say that the shrieks of sis­ters and moth­ers whose broth­ers and sons were killed ex­tra-ju­di­cially on the or­ders of Gill, will con­tinue to haunt him and them.

Sig­nif­i­cantly, the book is priced at Rs. 420.