It is nearly three decades since the tragedy of June 1984 which engulfed the entire Sikh community in India. As a ‘critical event,’ it is now part of Sikh memory and history. It also remains a searing throb in India’s political history, a stinging blemish on Mrs Indira Gandhi’s statesmanship as the prime minister of India. Providing many vantage points to view this tragedy, the postcolonial state of India, the tragic event continues to haunt the Sikh minds. Every June the community pays homage to its martyrs and has erected a memorial inside the Golden Temple, while for India, it was a campaign for a separate Sikh state culminating in terrorism. The government of India saved the country from disintegration and its security forces undertook an action into the Golden Temple which had become necessary.
Issues surrounding 1984 have not gone away even as the times have eroded their immediacy. For one thing, there are many families still waiting for justice, some are still searching how their dear ones died as they were picked up by police. Others are waiting for compensation or disputing their allocated share especially those families who were damaged during Delhi’s anti-Sikh massacres. Then there are police officers –who have been found guilty, while others make periodic charge that they have not been rewarded for fighting insurgency on behalf of the state. Then there are cases which surface from time to time of ex-militants or ‘black cats’ who recall of their role killing some dreaded ‘terrorists.’
In this imbroglio, what was the appropriate role of journalists? Did they do their duty conscientiously? Did they act objectively in the difficult circumstances they were put through? How many investigative reports they came up with in the meantime of excesses by security forces or by militants? Why the state did not launch a full inquiry into the Punjab tragedy?
A background to the conflict
It is now almost forgotten in dubbing the Punjab events as that of ‘terrorism,’ and more locally as of ‘black days’ in Punjab, that it was a campaign to redress the balance of provincial power versus centralizing tendencies of India’s federal state structure. In 1982, the Akali Dal, a regional party of Punjab and representing the Sikh community launched a movement to seek a limited measure of autonomy for Punjab in order to manage local affairs free from central government’s excessive interference. A charter of demands, some 45 of them were presented in the first round of talks between Akali leaders and representatives of the central government led by Mrs. Indira Gandhi.
While it is far easier to characterize Akali Dal representing only the Sikh demands –hence unjust to start with, but a close look at the charter of demands reveal these demands were in the interest of a region as a whole. It was thus a constitutional and legitimate issue. It arose from a fundamental fact of Sikh leadership’s realization that Punjab as a homeland of the Sikhs required some measure of protection – and at the same time it also referred to the Sikhs’ numerical prominent position in Punjab in common parlance, (isKW dy bol bwly vwlw pMjwb) which was as neutral as saying Hindus are a predominant community of India. The Akali Dal had adopted a resolution of their demands which became much maligned as the Anandpur Resolution was shred into hundreds of commentaries –mostly unfavourable calling it anti-India, a Khalistani demand, or rank communalistic stance. This was adopted by the Akali Dal several years earlier but kept in abeyance while they had several years trying to find some coalition government to rule Punjab. It became a basis of demand for Punjab autonomy and was meant to mobilize the Sikh constituency of the Akali Dal; it made no demand for a separate Sikh state –an attribute which was read by the media and politicians often in the pre-1984 period, and then the army action sought its justification in blaming Akalis’ campaign for nothing less than a demand for a separate Sikh state.
More than that, the White Paper issued by the Government of India in July 1984 assured the Indian people how army action had saved India from a sustained campaign to dismember the country. In building this complex tissue of lies, the Indian state needed all the help of its ablest journalists who did not fail the state at this critical juncture. Even if it meant alienating a vital and patriotic community of India –forced to react in a situation of almost impossible odds –the desecration of their most sacred historic shrine by the Indian armed forces ordered by the Indian regime stretching their loyalty towards a country they had consciously become part of and to which they had contributed in all sort of ways. The government’s action –which was symbolically declaring war on a minority, could only now be justified by branding the entire Sikh leadership bent to destroy India, and for this all sort of false stories were to be cooked by the media –in this Punjab’s border with Pakistan, and substantial number of Sikhs settled in overseas countries became ‘convenient tyrants.’ Both were immediately branded as aiding terrorism in Punjab –as the Sikhs outraged by the desecration of Golden Temple started organizing their protests which immediately, as it was natural, spilled into violence. There ensued a battle between several organized Sikh groups and the Indian state security forces which lasted for a full decade. The Sikh protest was defeated utterly with the Indian state offering nothing except the return to democratic elections in Punjab. Thus the story of Punjab since 1984 was how the state terror defeated Sikh militancy –both sides committing serious crimes, killing innocents, and implicating large population of civilians in the process.
Thousands of Punjabis disappeared in the state terror and families whose sons and daughters were so killed had no access to legal measures, nor they were compensated, all living in wilderness. What were Punjab and ‘national’ journalist doing? Did they follow any stories of torture, killing by security agencies? Record of the English newspaper Tribune is typical –the total number of investigative stories it pursued were less than half a dozen. Even here, the cases came be highlighted through brazen bureaucratic deficiency. As for Mahasha press of Punjab –one of the journalists who is also creative Punjabi writer, Prem Prakash recorded the attitude of proprietors as ‘to exaggerate the news concerning militants killings as a matter of policy.’ As far as national papers such as the Times of India, Indian Express, Hindustan Times or Statesman are concerned, they hardly touched any story for investigative analysis.
Reporting Terrorism: Major Issues
It is unfortunate that there are few serious studies of 1984 in terms of media coverage. In almost singular attempts, Ram Narayan Kumar and Jaskiran Kaur in some of their writings highlighted issues of state terror and the role of media in Punjab –the latter was generally castigated for not taking up case studies of such abuses. In an only study of the media in Punjab, Vipul Mudgil at Leicester University undertook a major investigation.
The following are reflections of a Sikh journalist, Jaspal Sidhu in Amritsar during the 1980s, especially on the events surrounding the army action into the Golden Temple, and how he was personally affected by them He was reporting from there from 1982 to 1986, this essay concerns a few events immediately following June1984 as he found himself being questioned by the army. In reflecting upon this period, while events are crystal clear in his mind, as a Sikh journalist in Amritsar at this critical time, his experiences proved to be unique. As a professional journalist he gathered news around the city as anyone else, and like everyone else’ what appeared of these jottings at the end were modified by bosses sitting in Chandigarh and finally in Delhi. The UNI, the l news agency he worked for, was naturally under considerable pressure at such a critical juncture in India’s history –with news of mutinies among Sikh regiments, and general uprising of Sikhs in various parts of Punjab. So he could understand why there were such changes to my original submissions from the ground.
It was clear to him then and has become even more apparent since, Indian journalists in general and most newspapers from Delhi displayed both covert and explicit bias in favour of Indian state’s viewpoints –and this was a bias so universal with almost all the media that he felt odd thinking about it. He also felt a tremor of fear and doubts of what he was doing. However, faced with this overwhelming evidence about ‘mainstream’ Indian journalism performing such a prejudiced and one sided view -taking the side of the Indian state, supporting stories emanating from police or army sources and then justifying the army action into the Golden Temple, what could a lone dissenting Sikh voice do?
A Journalist’s Career in Retrospect
Now reflecting back, Jaspal Sidhu summarizes those events and the attitude of Indian journalists and raises the question: what is an adequate model to represent this unprecedented biased journalism as far as events in the Punjab are concerned? And how this squares with oft-repeated tributes to India’s ‘independent press’ and its polity as world’s largest democracy? As far as Punjab and some other states of India such as Kashmir, and of North Eastern region, the democratic regime has to be termed something different, while the epithet ‘freedom of press’ must mean ‘servitude’ to the Indian state.

It is apparent that most of my journalist colleagues supported the Hindutva agenda, a majority were in fact Hindus, a few from South who came down to pick up a story for a few days were generally better than their North Indian counterparts. As far as a few Sikh journalists, like Sidhu, they were generally employed at junior positions, or indeed as freelancers by prominent journalists, having no say, most of them were bound to a patron-client relationship. In such a dynamic environment, how could one represent and seek unbiased reporting from the grounds of Amritsar? So it proved to be.
It is a pity that few studies of bias in reporting are available as far as Punjab is concerned. The accounts of Gobind Thukral, Ram Naryanan, Akali Patrika’s Mohinder Singh and Tribune’s V K Naraynan -only underline my point. In Punjab and some other states the media could be gagged at will to support the state’s version of events. Over the intervening years, this process has become well-entrenched. The recruitment of journalists on contract ensures they would not risk their jobs for a revealing story against even local officials, much less of a bigger stake of the state; toeing the official line as desired by state-corporate executives becomes their adopted agenda. A large question now hangs over the neutrality or impartiality of the Indian media.
References
Gobind Thukral, Troubled reflections: reporting violence: media’s symbiotic relationship with violence, ethnic violence, terrorism and war.Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, 2009. This is a major commentary upon Punjabi media and violence of 1980s. Several essays are on Punjab, one on Punjabi daily, Ajit etc.,
- Darshan S. Tatla

Hastakshep Desk