1984

1984 Eyewitness:
A Young Flight Lieutenant in the Indian Air Force

PUKHRAJ SINGH

Every time the topic of the Indian Government’s invasion of the Darbar Sahib is touched upon in my family, one aspect which always dominates the discussion is my father’s chilling recollection of the events that unfolded in the scorching hot first week of June, 1984.

Then a young Flight Lieutenant in the Indian Air Force, trained to fly supersonic jets, my father had taken the abrupt and surprising decision of side-stepping to helicopters. The unit to which he got posted bore the proud history of being raised in the “resplendent heights of Leh” – it comprised of the rugged Cheetahs and Chetaks, and had been stationed in Jammu since long. He was regularly sortieing to the Siachen glacier, where the Indian government had got embroiled in a messy cartographic skirmish a year earlier.

As he returned from one of the trips, the commanding officer directed him to take a Chetak (the Cheetahs were better suited to the dizzying altitudes of Siachen) and head towards Amritsar.  He landed in the city on June 5. Around a dozen helicopters from various units had descended there to assist the army.

The invasion was already underway and my father got busy in ferrying senior commanders to nearby villages. While Harmandar Sahib was being raided, Brigadier-level officers were committing similar atrocities in the rural areas. Villagers were being rounded up in systematically conducted search-and-seizure procedures.

A poignant scene that remained with him was how hordes of frail old menfolk and children as young as eleven or twelve years (those who could not be even remotely connected to militancy, were being rounded up – their hands were tied at the back with disrobed turbans and they were thrown into the scorching fields.

The avid photographer that he was, my father had just bought a swanky new Yashica Electro-35. He had clicked thousands of panoramic aerial shots and instinctively brought the camera for that ominous trip as well.

Gliding low over Darbar Sahib on June 5, carrying another Army functionary out on a survey, my father saw the Akal Takht in flames and the parkarma mauled by tanks, littered with bodies here and there. Not realizing the intensity or enormity of the spectacle, he released the shutter three-four times.

Returning to Jammu after twenty sorties, as the soldier within took a backseat, the very magnitude of the incident got to him.

Now, before I go on, it must be said that my father doesn’t fit into the caste or class stereotype that plagues the Punjab peasantry today. He came from an impoverished family of tailors from Tarn Taran, some 25 kilometers from Amritsar. They could never have imagined one of their own, (after surviving on scholarships throughout his life), joining the ranks of an elite government service.

It was a coup of sorts. The proximity to poverty helped my father see through subtle societal constructs. Though he persevered to remain a proper Sikh, when donning the pilot’s helmet over uncut hair became a particular problem, my father exhibited a strange sort of inward agnosticism, a healthy aversion to religious symbolism.

So, when he narrated his account of the Amritsar tour to my mother, it was with a dispassionate understanding of spiritual politics and minus any prejudice, that my father murmured prophetically, “Jo mai dekheya hai, mainun nai lagda ke hun Sikhi kattadta zyada der chupp rahegi” (After what I saw, I don’t think the staunch yeomanry of the Sikhs will keep quiet for very long).

Indira Gandhi was indeed executed for her crimes less than six months later … by members of an elite Indian government security force sworn to uphold and defend the Indian Constitution.


[Excerpt from, and courtesy of NewsLaundry. Edited for sikhchic.com]
June 5, 2014

 

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