TIME Magazine
September 11, 1995 Volume 146, No. 11
INDIA
PIERCING THE ARMOR
Punjab's chief minister is assassinated in the latest explosion of the subcontinent's ethnic strife
BY ANTHONY SPAETH
WHEREVER HE WENT, BEANT SINGH traveled in a convoy of vehicles laden with policemen, paramilitary commandos and, taking up the rear, a soldier sitting at a swiveling machine gun mounted on a jeep. Sandwiched protectively in the middle were three armor-plated, white Ambassador sedans with tinted windows and identical license plate numbers. Singh, Chief Minister of India's Punjab state, would ride in one sedan; the others would drive along as decoys in a kind of deadly shell game against Sikh separatists who had vowed to assassinate him.
The terrorists won the lethal contest last week when they detonated a powerful plastic explosive in or near one of the sedans just as Singh was stepping into the car outside his official offices in Chandigarh. The blast killed Singh and 15 others instantly and injured 14 more, shattered windows in the capital complex and was heard 5 km away. The reverberations are likely to travel considerably farther. State officials are evaluating whether Singh's assassination presages a return of the terrorism that plagued verdant Punjab through the 1980s, which Singh had been instrumental in quelling. The attack also inflicted political damage on Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, who has been trumpeting peace and economic resurgence in Punjab as one of his main achievements since taking power in 1991.
Called India's breadbasket for its wheat production, the fertile and productive Punjab was thrown into chaos in 1984 when former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ordered the army to flush Sikh separatists from Amritsar's Golden Temple complex, the holiest shrine of the Sikh religion. Mrs. Gandhi had an eye on upcoming parliamentary elections and wanted to present a tough image to the electorate throughout India. That she did. But the army action, in which nearly 700 were killed, embittered Punjab's Sikhs, representing more than half the state's population, and gave fierce momentum to groups demanding a separate Sikh nation called Khalistan. Mrs. Gandhi paid the ultimate price, gunned down by her Sikh bodyguards in October 1984. So did many Punjabis: more than 20,000 people died in a decade of violence.
When Rao came to power, he maintained that the solution to the Punjab problem was local legislative elections, which would put an end to five years of often brutal federal rule. Few thought the solution would work: when the elections were held in 1992, all major Sikh groups boycotted them, and voter turnout was 28%. Rao's Congress Party won, and his choice of party stalwart Singh as Chief Minister did not inspire public confidence. But Singh joined forces with a dynamic police chief, K.P.S. Gill, and tracked down rebel terrorists operating within his borders. Fortunately, public support had swung against the Khalistanis, and in a nearly miraculous eight-month period, the militants' strength in almost every Punjabi village was broken and prosperity returned.
Singh's tactics were often ruthless. There were complaints of human-rights abuses: more than 120 court cases, involving more than 450 policemen, are pending against the Punjab police. Corruption and nepotism were rampant, and the Singh administration has had 17 high court indictments against it . In addition, Singh and his superiors in the Congress Party might have been taking their positive press clippings too seriously. Party minions had started calling him "Sher-e-Punjab" or "Lion of Punjab," an appellation formerly reserved for Ranjit Singh, the Sikh warrior king of the early 19th century. At a public meeting last month where Singh presided, the Chief Minister was compared with the Hindu god Rama, as well as revered Sikh gurus. "This doesn't go down well with the people," said journalist and Sikh historian Khushwant Singh.
The separatist Babbar Khalsa group claimed responsibility for Minister Singh's death. Just as swiftly, Indian officials heaped blame on Pakistan, which has provided across-the-border bases for three of the most formidable remaining separatist groups, Babbar Khalsa included, since 1984. There was no disguising that the incident, and its timing, dealt a huge double blow to Rao. In a general election that must be called by April 1996, he faces both intraparty defections and, according to recent state polls, an electorate indifferent to his government. Punjab was one of his seemingly unalloyed successes, and a vital building block: Rao has promised to solve the boiling separatist militancy in Kashmir with exactly the same strategy he used in Punjab.
Terrorism can't make a serious comeback without public support-which is why the circumstances of Singh's death are worrying. He was afforded the highest level of security available in India, a country that knows well the dangers of assassination. Less than a score of VIPs, including the Prime Minister and the President, are so protected. Yet early clues suggest that the bomb was either planted in his car while in the official compound and set off by a remote-control device, or it was delivered by a suicide bomber. Singh's death doesn't prove that the government's strategy in Punjab was faulty, as some analysts have warned. But it demonstrates that the terrorists continue to have supporters, including fanatical ones-even in the most sensitive places.
--Reported by Anita Pratap/New Delhi and Harpreet Singh/ Chandigarh
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