Was Bhindranwala a terrorist? — Debating Terrorism with Indian Nationalists

Introduction

Every year around the beginning of June, while Sikhs mourn the 1984 assault on their holiest shrine, the Golden Temple, by the Indian State, the Indian media produces a barrage of articles justifying the assault. The core argument of the justification is that the Golden Temple was forcibly occupied by Jarnail Singh Bhindranwala, who according to them was a terrorist and whose removal from the temple necessitated the assault. The most recent example of this accusation on Bhindranwala of being a terrorist comes from the NDTV anchor Barkha Datt, from whom these words are really not a surprise given the context of many other anti-Sikh and anti-Panjab claims she has made in the past.

Context

Facing economic slowdown, Modi introduced legislation affecting agricultural markets in all of India. The stated intent of the Legislation is to make farmers more prosperous, however the farmers themselves believe that the Legislation would be harmful to them (I point out why in a separate article where I elaborated on certain aspects of the new Legislation). There has been unrest among agriculturalists all over India but the farmers of Panjab and Haryana staged an especially large protest. The Indian national media which had so far been pretending this issue did not exist was forced to acknowledge it when the protestors marched into New Delhi last weekend, despite the Indian State’s best effort to stall them which included the use of tear gas, water cannons and of course of violence in the form of laathi charge.

Barkha Dutt invited Deep Sidhu who is one of the advocates of the farmer led protest and instead of discussing the actual issue, which has to do with the Legislation, the autonomy of Panjab and the Indian Constitution, she made sure Sidhu got bogged down on an unrelated topic — the question of whether or not Bhindranwala is a terrorist. While Sidhu is being commended by many in the Sikh community for not giving into Barkha’s pressure, I think the conversation could have been handled much better and this article will explain how.

Firstly, since the interview was supposed to be about the frustration of Panjab’s farmers and their helplessness given the extremely centralized nature of the Indian regime, the interview topic should have been strictly been the Constitution of India. Any attempt of sabotaging the discussion by, for example brining Bhindranwala into it, should have been recognized and called out for what it is. But let’s say that there is no other way forward, then Sidhu should have asked Barkha to first define terrorism. Without there being a definition of terrorism, there is no way to validate specific claims of an individual being a terrorist. And since there exists a definition for every other crime, there must be a definition for terrorism.

So, what is terrorism according to Indian Nationalists?

If you read the articles produced by major Indian publications or watch the interview by Barkha, you will notice that they never define terrorism or explain why their allegation of terrorism is true. The conclusion itself is the starting assumption and no explanation is necessary according to them. The reason they produce these allegations in the first place is because they picked them up from the Indian State. The reason Bhindranwala is a terrorist is because the Indian State declared him as one. So, we should really be looking at the definition of a terrorist by the Indian State. One such definition is in a law called the “Unlawful Activities Prevention Act 1967,” which is the Legislation most often used to punish people as terrorists by the Indian State. The following is Section 15(1) of the said law.

Whoever does any act with intent to threaten or likely to threaten the unity, integrity, security, economic security, or sovereignty of India or with intent to strike terror or likely to strike terror in the people or any section of the people in India or in any foreign country, —

(a) by using bombs, dynamite or other explosive substances or inflammable substances or firearms or other lethal weapons or poisonous or noxious gases or other chemicals or by any other substances (whether biological radioactive, nuclear or otherwise) of a hazardous nature or by any other means of whatever nature to cause or likely to cause —
(i) death of, or injuries to, any person or persons; or
(ii) loss of, or damage to, or destruction of, property; or
(iii) disruption of any supplies or services essential to the life of the community in India or in any foreign country; or
(iiia) damage to, the monetary stability of India by way of production or smuggling or circulation of high quality counterfeit Indian paper currency, coin or of any other material; or]
(iv) damage or destruction of any property in India or in a foreign country used or intended to be used for the defence of India or in connection with any other purposes of the Government of India, any State Government or any of their agencies; or

(b) overawes by means of criminal force or the show of criminal force or attempts to do so or causes death of any public functionary or attempts to cause death of any public functionary; or

(c) detains, kidnaps or abducts any person and threatens to kill or injure such person or does any other act in order to compel the Government of India, any State Government or the Government of a foreign country or an international or inter-governmental organization or any other person to do or abstain from doing any act; or

commits a terrorist act.

Now subclause (b) and parts of subclause (a) might seem like a fair description of terrorism to you, but I want you to pay attention to subclause (c), specifically the phrase “does any other act in order to compel the Government of India, any State Government … or any other person to do or abstain from doing any act.” So, according to this passage any act done to “compel” someone is an act of terrorism. Now, by or through this definition, any protest held ever is an act of terrorism which makes all the protestors — including the ones in New Delhi at the time of the writing of this article — terrorists. Not only that, by this definition even someone like Martin Luther King Jr who led the agitations for civil rights is a terrorist, not to mention Mohandas Gandhi.

How much further does this definition go? Does this also mean parents who compel their children to not go out after a certain hour at night are also terrorists? Does this mean that my bank that “compels” me to make my auto loan payments on time is also a terrorist group? Does this also mean the people of the United States, who by voting a certain way “compelled” Trump to leave office are terrorists? The point I am trying to make is that this definition is just ridiculous. It places no limits in its description and could be used to label anyone as a terrorist. Hence, this is not a definition that can be considered legitimate.

You might be wondering how does this definition of terrorism fly in the face of international institutions and media. The answer is that: a) how India defines terrorism is not a hot topic in academics or the international media, so the Indian State can basically get away with anything b) The definition that the Indian state provides in its annual reports of terrorism is not the same definition that it actually uses inside India. They changed the definition to remove the non-sensical parts and one such report in which that definition has been changed is linked at the end of this article. Since there is no real freedom of press inside India, the Indian State can get away with these acts of deception.

A more reasonable definition of terrorism

United Nation’s academic consensus definition, which is also one that is widely agreed upon by members of UN is provided by Alex P Schmid, according to whom “terrorism is an anxiety-inspiring method of repeated violent action, employed by (semi-) clandestine individual, group or state actors, for idiosyncratic, criminal or political reasons, whereby — in contrast to assassination — the direct targets of violence are not the main targets. The immediate human victims of violence are generally chosen randomly (targets of opportunity) or selectively (representative or symbolic targets) from a target population, and serve as message generators. Threat and violence-based communication processes between terrorist (organization), (imperiled) victims, and main targets are used to manipulate the main target (audience(s)), turning it into a target of terror, a target of demands, or a target of attention, depending on whether intimidation, coercion, or propaganda is primarily sought.”

The reason I think this definition is legitimate is because it does encompass historic acts of immoral violence that we in the West would recognize as terrorist acts while not being so loose that it blurs all lines between terrorism, murder and war. Now, who was Bhindranwala and does this definition apply in his case?

Was Bhindranwala a terrorist according to UN’s definition?

Bhindranwala was a Sikh leader most famous for organizing the people of Panjab, in a peaceful manner, to agitate for Panjab’s autonomy, which was seen by him as necessary in protecting and promoting Panjab’s interests. The movement he led was called the Dharam Yudh Morcha and the demands were listed in a document called the Anandpur Sahib Resolution. The reason there was a demand for autonomy in first place is that the Indian State, unlike a federal democracy like United States or Canada is extremely centralized with all power residing with the Central Government, leaving the Constituent units at the mercy of the said Central Government. This, by the way, is also why the current Government led by Modi was able to pass laws affecting the farmers of Panjab and Haryana without prior consent of the Governments of Panjab or Haryana.

Since that is who Bhindranwala was, we can conclude he was not a terrorist according to UN’s definition. Indian Nationalists would point out that Bhindranwala and his followers were armed with automatic rifles which were illegal in India. The response to that is those weapons were kept for self-defense. Since the then Indian Government led by Indira Gandhi had proved itself willing to carry out acts of violence against unarmed Sikhs agitating for freedom and autonomy, it had become imperative that people carried arms to protect themselves. Bhindranwala’s own life was under threat from the Indian State and ever since he moved into the Golden Temple in 1982, Indian paramilitary forces surrounded the Temple in effect imprisoning Bhindranwala and preventing him from leaving. Indira Gandhi was able to commit acts of violence against its own citizens because the Indian Constitution does not provide any safeguards to protect people from State tyranny. As long as you are in power in India, you can legally put people through any kind of brutality.

Even if you believe that keeping weapons for self-defense in an authoritarian state is wrong, that still does not make Bhindranwala a terrorist according to UN’s definition because he did not carry out any offensive violent action(s) that can be dubbed as within the acceptable confines of the term “terrorism.” Thus, if you want to argue that Bhindranwala was a terrorist, you need to provide a solid argument as to what violent actions were undertaken by him against civilians or carried out under his command, and possibly any police investigatory assessment.

Conclusion

Most Indian Nationalists claim and believe that Bhindranwala was a terrorist because that is the label the Indian State put next to his name. However, as we have seen the definition of terrorism used by the Indian State is so ludicrous that it can apply nearly to everyone, even to people like Dr. Martin Luther King. We have also seen that Bhindranwala was nowhere close to being a terrorist according to the definition used by the United Nations. This is something that Deep Sidhu should have confronted Barkha Dutt with during his discussion.

References

• UAPA 1967: https://www.mha.gov.in/sites/default/files/A1967-37.pdf
• Eighth report on Terrorism in India (https://web.archive.org/web/20121209121437/http://arc.gov.in/8threport.pdf). Please read the definition of terrorism as quoted from UAPA in this report on page 11 and compare to the actual definition in Section 15 in UAPA and note that the definition has been changed
• Barka Dutt’s interview with Deep Sidhu: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBIH_R5jMO4
• An article explaining the farm bills: https://medium.com/@anmolsingh95/the-farmer-demonstrations-problem-root-cause-and-solution-e2a006f3c81b