Jagjit Singh Chohan

BABBAR KHALISTANI · April 5, 2007

http://www.indianexpress.com/story/27521.html

Chohan, who fanned militancy in Punjab, meets tame end

Anju Agnihotri Chaba

JALANDHAR, APRIL 4 : For a man who first hoisted the flag of Khalistan in Britain in 1971 when Punjab was still untouched by winds of separatism, it was a very tame end. Dr Jagjit Singh Chohan, 79, was getting ready for a meeting with the Hoshiarpur Senior Superintendent of Police this morning when death overtook him at his residence.

His last rites will be performed on April 6 after his widow Charanjit Kaur returns from England. The couple have no children.

Lionised in the heyday of militancy, much reviled after peace returned for sending thousands of Punjabi youths to a violent end, Chohan’s death comes at a time when separatist leaders of the state got a decisive drubbing in the February Assembly elections.

The self-proclaimed “president of the Republic of Khalistan”, who quietly sneaked back into a peaceful Punjab in 2001, when the SAD-BJP Government was in power, spent the last few years trying to revive the separatist movement, but in vain.

For the last two-three years, he had been paying more attention to a charitable hospital he set up in Tanda, where in 1977 he had raised the demand for Khalistan for the first time on Indian soil. He was hugely popular as a doctor, and a large number of patients turned up to pay their respects.

Calling him a man out of sync with the times, veteran politician Umrao Singh said Dr Chohan lost his relevance because there were no takers for his divisive policies: no Sikh organisation or panthic group roped in his services, and in the end he floated his own outfit.

His return to India in 2001 following the Punjab & Haryana High Court’s orders asking the Indian Government to release his passport itself continues to be shrouded in mystery. He was released after only a few hours of detention even though he faced a slew of charges, including those of sedition.

Umrao Singh says this had to do with Chohan’s being a shrewd operator and explained why he used to praise Capt Amarinder Singh during press conferences.

Born into an affluent family of Nagal Khunga village in Tanda in 1928, Chohan fancied himself a revolutionary and freedom fighter. He lost an arm trying to make a bomb, but that was before Independence.

Post-Independence, the contested elections in 1967 as a candidate of the Republic Party of India, had a brief stint as finance minister in the coalition government of Lachhman Singh Gill, and was Deputy Speaker when Gurnam Singh was chief minister.

But soon the idea of Khalistan took over him.

“Chohan, the Khalistan ideologue, first shot into international limelight when pictures of him receiving the keys of Nankana Sahib gurdwara from Pakistan’s Gen Yahya Khan were flashed on the PTV in 1971,” recalls Kanwarpal Singh, general secretary of Dal Khalsa, a right wing party. He returned to Punjab in 1978 and hoisted the flag of Khalistan at Anandpur Sahib before returning to England in 1980 to anoint himself as president of “Republic of Khalistan, Government-in-Exile.” Safe in the UK, he directed all his energies into embarrassing the Indian Government by setting up consulates in countries like France and issuing Khalistani currency.

He also played the godfather to militants like Gurbachan Singh Manochahal and Wassan Singh Zaffarwal, who were operating on the Indian soil.

Today, Zaffarwal was among the first to reach his house on hearing about his death. Also present were members of Dal Khalsa, a right wing party, which was one of the few to ally with him when he floated his Khalsa Raj Party after landing here in 2001, the avowed aim of which was to “achieve Khalistan, albeit in a democratic manner.” He once told this correspondent, “I don’t believe in violence any more.”

However, even last year he made a speech and hoisted a Khalistan flag, for which he was charged with sedition and spent two months in jail.

Calling him “a failed man and a failed politician with a failed mission”, Dr Jagroop Singh Sekhon, head of the Department of Political Science, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, said Chohan’s idea of Khalistan, too, was borrowed. “He was not an original ideologue of Khalistan, the word was first coined in 1945.”

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2007/20070405/main5.htm

Chohan dead

Our Correspondent

Hoshiarpur, April 4

Khalistan ideologue Dr Jagjit Singh Chohan died at his residence at Tanda, 32 km from here, today following a massive heart attack. He was 80. He is survived by his wife, Charanjit Kaur.

According to Jorawar Singh Chohan, a close relative of the deceased, Dr Chohan had been looking after his clinic at Tanda and his ancestral house at his native village Nangal Khunga.

His wife Charanjit Kaur, who is with her nephew Rupinder Singh in the UK, has been informed. The cremation will take place on her return. The body of Dr Chohan has been kept in a private mortuary at Jaja village, adjoining Tanda town.

Dr Jagjit Singh Chohan, a qualified MBBS doctor, was running a private indoor clinic before entering politics.

He was first elected to the Punjab Vidhan Sabha from Tanda as a candidate of the Republican Party of India in 1967. He later became Deputy Speaker when the Akali Dal-led coalition government assumed office in the state. Later, when Lachman Singh Gill became Chief Minister, Dr Chohan was made Finance Minister. He is credited with introducing state lotteries during his brief tenure as Finance Minister.

In 1969, he lost the Assembly election and two years later moved to the UK. He returned in 1977 and at a public rally in Tanda, raised the demand for "Khalistan". Before he flew back to England in 1980, he had generated much heat by demanding "Khalistan".

Since then, he had been in England. There was a case against him for trying to set up a transmitter in the Golden Temple complex. In England, he spearheaded the Khalistani propaganda after becoming chairman of the Council of Khalistan.

"There were cases of sedition against him. These were registered when he pronounced Khalistan, issued its currency and passports and regularly published literature and brochures in support of his kingdom in exile. But in all these cases, he had been either acquitted or the cases had been closed as untraced," sources in the police department said. They said there was no case of violence, murder, attempt to murder, sabotage, rioting or bombing against him ever.

On June 26, 2001, he again returned to India and delivered inflammatory speeches at Amritsar with other like-minded SAD leaders. Cases of waging war against India, sedition, and making false statements had been registered and he was arrested by the Kotwali police station, Amritsar. In a similar case, he was also arrested by the Tanda police on June 14, 2005, but was later released on bail.

He also formed the Khalsa Raj Party to enter the political arena once again.

Harcharanjit Singh Dhami, a senior leader of the Dal Khalsa, while paying rich tributes to Dr Jagjit Singh Chohan said the Sikh Panth had lost a great visionary who had shown the right path to the Sikh masses.