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Baba Santa Singh's colourful Nihangs arrival adds intriguing element to the Punjab drama Shekhar Gupta with Gobind Thukral Wednesday, August 15, 1984 Were the situation not so serious, it would have been viewed as nothing more than a comic interlude in a rather grim drama. Yet, for all that, when the short, stout Falstaffian figure of Baba Santa Singh waddled onto the Punjab stage last fortnight, it did add an intriguing new element to the long-running drama. After being dominated so long and so tragically by men of evil countenance, the unexpected arrival of Santa Singh in the Golden Temple was something of an anticlimax especially since he also symbolized the Government's desperation in trying to come to grips with the post-operation situation in Punjab. After negotiations between army generals and government representatives with the Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC) over the sensitive question of kar sewa to repair the heavily damaged Akal Takht had broken down. New Delhi played one of its few remaining cards in the form of the rotund Nihang leader. Initially, it appeared that the card was a joker. Dressed in the colorful saffron and blue-skirted dress of the Nihangs, Baba Santa Singh Chheyanvi Kirori (one with 96 crore followers) arrived at Amritsar's famous Gurudwara Burz Akali Phula Singh in a blaze of government- inspired publicity under the escort of scores of Punjab police commandos and army jawans. "Here look at my forces, we are a sect of martyrs," he declared pointing to the hundreds of his followers dressed in ancient warrior costumes. Within hours of his arrival, the gurudwara resembled a Nihang chhawni (cantonment). While some of his followers set up community kitchens, others stacked the arms they had arrived with. Meanwhile, the Baba's personal staff washed his scarred feet or trailed behind him with a room cooler on a long electric cord, an essential part of his baggage. But behind the surface comedy lay the grim reality that Santa Singh and his fellow Nihangs represented the storm-troopers of the Government's new offensive aimed at destroying the remnants of the Akali Dal leadership and also its desperate search for a solution to the Punjab problem. But the Akalis retaliated with a tactical stratagem. On a stage dominated for nearly a fortnight by the Nihang chief, entered yet another Baba, one a lot less comical and far more illustrious. For nearly a month after Operation Bluestar, Mrs Gandhi's favorite trouble-shooters from Delhi, led by Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Buta Singh, had made the rounds of Bir Baba Budha Ji, a hallowed shrine 20 km from Amritsar, trying to persuade Baba Kharak Singh to take over kar sewa. The 90-year-old Baba, one of the most prominent builders of gurudwaras through kar sewa turned down Buta Singh's repeated entreaties but then suddenly sprang a surprise last week by announcing that he was ready to perform kar sewa, on the request of the SGPC and Akali Dal who in turn, promptly added the rider that the Government first withdraw the army from the temple. Santa Singh's reaction was angry and sharp. Said he: "Before I came in I wrote to Baba Kharak Singh, offering to help in kar sewa led by him. He never replied. It does not behave of him to step in suddenly now. This could only lead to confrontation." Matters were complicated further by the SGPC and Akali Dal who, while inviting Baba Kharak Singh, also charged the Government with having forcibly imposed Santa Singh on the Sikhs. The stage was set for yet another politico-religious battle between the two babas. It also placed the Government on the horns of a vicious dilemma. If it persisted with Santa Singh, the Sikh masses would never accept kar sewa. If it decided to sacrifice Santa Singh, he could raise a tremendous stink. Besides, that would be just the kind of concession on which the Akalis would claim victory. Moreover, once the work was handed over to Kharak Singh, the Government would have no way of ensuring that the Akal Takht was rebuilt and not retained in its present, bombed out state, which has been the Government's main apprehension. Mrs Gandhi could perhaps not have anticipated this additional complication when Parliament reopened for its monsoon session on July 23. In a no-holds-barred offensive the ruling party pulled out all stops as it sought to paint the Akalis and the Opposition as abettors of extremists. In the lead was Mrs Gandhi herself who argued that the Government had delayed action since the Opposition had been optimistic of an accord with the Akalis. It was then the turn of the new Home Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao to take up the cudgels followed by Rajiv Gandhi who, in an hour-long speech sounded off against the Opposition. The Government's strategy became clear as events unfolded. Mrs Gandhi had decided to go on the offensive to deny the Akalis any political mileage out of the situation. It was a ruthless attack where the ruling party often even contradicted itself or indulged in sheer prevarication. Charges not mentioned in the White Paper were leveled against the Akalis - Mrs Gandhi dismissed the White Paper as a document written by "bureaucrats". There was the usual insinuation of a foreign hand but once again, Mrs Gandhi and her spokesmen refused to specify anything, arguing that she was not making a case in a court of law. On the ground, in Amritsar, it was equally clear that the Government was in no mood to allow the Akalis a say in the rebuilding of the Akal Takht and it was determined that the repairs would be undertaken quickly one way or the other. The Government's front man was Baba Santa Singh who ignoring the fulminations of the priests and the Akalis Pressed his followers into action to start clearing the mound of debris from the vicinity of the Akal Takht. Daily wage labourers were joined by Muslim craftsmen brought in from Ajmer and Udaipur to craft marble slabs for the damaged building. Earlier in the fortnight, engineering art and archaeological experts, hand-picked by the Government and accompanied by Buta Singh had spent hours taking notes and measurements inside the Akal Takht remains. An old detailed map of the building had been fished out of the archives and details of carvings and terracotta work had been obtained from the government museum in Chandigarh. The plan, clearly, was to keep everything ready for reconstruction as soon as Santa Singh's followers cleared the debris and neutralized opposition from the Akalis. Said an architect involved in the work: "It is nothing like the restoration in Germany after the Second World War. But we have undoubtedly begun the biggest restoration plan in our history." Buta Singh boasted confidently: "I put the Asiad together in such a short time. This will not take too long either." But as an official admitted: "If our objective was to build a facade for speedy repair of the Akal Takht, it has been achieved. But if it was to make the Sikh masses swing away from their traditional leadership, we may have ensured just the reverse." Yet, for a fleeting moment on July 16, there was hope in Amritsar. As the hoot of the pilot car's siren announced the arrival of the army's top brass - including the acting army chief Lt-General Tirath Singh Oberoi - into the SGPC-run Guru Ram Dass Hospital, Akali leaders, including Bibi Rajinder Kaur, chief of the party's women's wing, were brimming with hope. Three days of intense negotiations had thrown up a formula of sorts. The Akalis promised not to let arms enter the temple and to invite Baba Kharak Singh to perform the kar sewa. While the army insisted on a right to maintain a picket on the darshani deori, the Akalis were inclined to give two rooms on the parikrama, facing the temple, to jawans dressed in mufti. But now, in the evening, the generals had brought in a surprise. They told the Akalis that New Delhi had decided that they were still not trustworthy and thus Baba Santa Singh had been brought in to share kar sewa with them. For the Akalis, who have a running feud with Santa Singh's pro-Congress Nihangs, this was a no-go situation. It later turned out that while the generals had been made to talk to the Akalis for hours together, a fleet of buses guarded by Punjab police commandos had quietly brought in the Nihangs into curfew-bound Amritsar from their headquarters near Bhatinda, about 300 km away. Even to the army brass the news of the move was broken by Congress(I) MP Arun Nehru and K.C. Pant who flew in from Delhi in the evening. The retaliation was not long in coming. The five high priests camping in Amritsar issued a hukamnama (edict) barring the Sikhs from participating in the kar sewa without their sanction. Immediately, Santa Singh was summoned by the head priests to explain his conduct. He haughtily ignored the summons and was ex-communicated from the faith. The same threat was held out to all other Sikhs participating in the kar sewa. Overnight, what initially began as a row between the Government and the Akalis was transformed into an internecine battle between the Sikhs themselves. Never in the faith's 500-year history had the traditional authority of the panth been challenged so brazenly. Said Santa Singh haughtily: "Who are these priests but salaried employees of the SGPC? How can they issue a hukamnama when the Akal Takht itself has been destroyed. We will first build the Akal Takht, restore its maryada (tradition and dignity). Then we will see what hukamnama is issued." While most people were still not inclined to view him seriously, Santa Singh's robust logic and defiance caught even the Sikh religious leadership on the wrong foot. Obviously, behind a ridiculously outlandish facade Santa Singh hides a shrewd politico-religious personality. As he repeatedly took them to task for having allowed the Golden Temple to become an extremist sanctuary, the SGPC and the priests could answer him only in unconvincing embarrassment. Understandably surprised by the defiance, the priests were confused. "You are taking your army away. But how are we going to get rid of this army you are leaving here?" one of them, in visible desperation, asked Major-General K.S. Brar as he came to the temple on his farewell visit before leaving for Meerut. Said the acting Akali Dal chief Prakash Singh Majithia: "What can you do when people turn against their own faith? All I can say is that these are not Guru Hargobind's Nihangs. They are Congress(I) Nihangs."