Lal Masjid and Golden Temple

Writing recently in a Pakistani newspaper, an Indian analyst dismissed the comparison between the operation against Lal Masjid and the one against Golden Temple as a case of chalk and cheese. He did so on a number of grounds.
First, he argued that in the latter situation it was a predominantly Hindu army pitted against the Sikh community, whose appeal was confined to a limited area, whereas in the former a Muslim army was fighting Muslim extremists who had an appeal across the entire country. Secondly, the West did not support the Indian operation because it viewed the Indian Prime Minister as a villain. As opposed to that, it fully supported Gen Musharraf because he was its darling. Finally, Pakistan aided and abetted Sikh separatism whereas no allegation of Indian involvement in the Lal Masjid case has surfaced. Are these contentions justified?
To answer the question we begin by looking at the geneses of the two incidents. The Golden Temple crisis owed its origin to the grievances that the Sikh community had against New Delhi. These grievances were part secular, part religious. Taking advantage of the Sikh discontent, Sant Bhindranwale, a religious leader with political ambitions, worked for the establishment of a sovereign independent Sikh State. Starting from 1978 till his death six years later he openly used violence in pursuit of his objective. In the end, he along with his followers retreated into Golden Temple where he accumulated a large cache of arms and fortified the Akal Takht.
As opposed to the Golden Temple crisis, the Lal Masjid issue began when the CDA demolished seven mosques in Islamabad. In protest the students of the Jamia Hafsa madrassa affiliated with Lal Masjid occupied the adjacent children’s library. The Lal Masjid administration initially demanded reconstruction of mosques to which it soon added the demand for the establishment of Sharia rule in the country. Additionally, it started dispensing “justice” through a “moral brigade” which it had put in place. The moving spirit behind all this was the Khatib Lal Masjid, Maulana Abdul Aziz, and his deputy and brother Abdur Rashid Ghazi who, when the going got tough, along with their followers and weapons, barricaded themselves in the madrassa.
The foregoing narrative shows that despite differences in the geneses of the two issues, there are striking similarities between them. For example, in both cases religious leaders with political agendas were at the forefront of the movements. Additionally, they shared an identity of purpose that in one case was limited in space while in the other encompassed the entire country. In any case, it affected the two states either in terms of their territorial integrity or political character. Thus, Bhindranwale wanted Punjab to secede from the Indian Union to constitute an independent sovereign Sikh State whereas the Ghazi brothers wanted to bring the state of Pakistan under their hold under the garb of Sharia rule in the country.
The second similarity between the two incidents is that the Indian and Pakistani governmental leaders virtually created the two Frankensteins before they turned against their creators. For example, the Chief Minister of Punjab and later President of India, Giani Zail Singh; and the son of the Indian Prime Minister Indra Gandhi, Sanjay Gandhi, used Bhindranwala as a pawn for their own political ends. The story of Ghazi brothers is not much different. President Zia initially used their father Abdullah, whom he had appointed Khatib of Lal Masjid, to promote the cause of jihad in Afghanistan. Following Abdullah’s assassination in 1998 the Musharraf government used the Ghazi brothers, who succeeded their father as custodians of Lal Masjid, for similar purposes in Kashmir and elsewhere.
The third similarity between the two incidents was the concerted efforts that the two governments made to resolve the crises before undertaking military action. For example, the Indian government claimed to have made 26 abortive attempts to resolve the crisis. Mrs Gandhi also reportedly wrote a personal note to Bhindranwale to avoid armed confrontation but to no avail. Similarly, the Pakistan government made all possible efforts at conflict resolution that included mediation by the Minister of Religion, the PML President and the JUI leader Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman but failed to get the desired results. The government also got the Wafaq-ul-Madaris, a body that awards degrees to madrassa students, to cancel Jamia Hafsa’s affiliation with it. It even invited the Imam of Kaaba specifically to persuade the Ghazi brothers to abandon their stance but to no avail.
The fourth similarity was the intelligence failure and the government’s inability to read how the operation would touch people’s raw religious nerves. As far as Golden Temple is concerned, Gen Sunderji who led the assault observed that inadequacy of intelligence would be an understatement of the year. In his opinion, it was simply non-existent. The IG police alleged that when arms were smuggled into the Temple in trucks carrying provisions for the kitchen he had oral instructions from “the top” not to stop them. Similarly, the Indian government was utterly unable to foresee the consequences of sending the army into the Temple. Khushwant Singh writes in his “A History of the Sikhs” that the government “felt that a show of strength followed by a bold frontal assault would frighten them into submission”.
Regarding the Lal Masjid, it is amazing that intelligence agencies failed to detect the movement of weapons to a location that was so close to the President House and the Parliament. The government ministers felt embarrassed when they were asked to explain it. There was allegation that it was not the intelligence failure but a conspiracy by a federal minister and some intelligence people that resulted in the Ghazi brothers’ acquisition of weapons. Similarly, it appears as if the government did not believe that the operation would stir up the religious feelings the way it did. Nor did it hope to achieve its objective through the use of force as testified by the fact that it stumbled into the operation.
The last similarity relates to the actual fallout of the two operations. As far as Golden Temple operation is concerned, it had dire consequences for India. To begin with, India paid a heavy price in the shape of assassination of the Indian Prime Minister. Besides, over 4000 Sikh soldiers deserted their regiments, slew their officers and tried to get to Amritsar. Several Sikh members of Lok Sabha and the Punjab legislature resigned; a Sikh diplomat in Norway asked for political asylum; and several distinguished men of letters returned “honours” that the government had bestowed on them. Many young Sikhs took up arms to fight for a separate Sikh state. It has taken almost quarter of a century to heal the wounds that the operation inflicted.
As far as Lal Masjid is concerned, the consequences for Pakistan are already no less catastrophic. To begin with, there was an attempt to bring down the plane in which President Musharraf was travelling. So far there have been numerous terrorist attacks including suicide bombings that have resulted in more than 200 deaths. Besides, the terrorists have killed Chinese nationals in the NWFP and Balochistan forcing the Chinese government to abandon at least one mega project by recalling its nationals working for it. More importantly, the question arises whether this gory incident will usher in Sharia rule in due course of time as foretold by Maulana Abdul Aziz. Let us not forget that the bloody Qadiani movement that sought “Ahmedis” to be declared non-Muslims succeeded in 1970s though it had initially failed.
The foregoing analysis shows that the Lal Masjid and Golden Temple operations are not like chalk and cheese. Where there are dissimilarities between the two there are similarities too, of which perhaps the most disturbing one relates to the fallout of the two operations.
We know the heavy price that India paid for the Golden Temple operation because almost a quarter of a century has elapsed since the incident took place. The price that Pakistan may ultimately pay for the Lal Masjid operation is still hidden in the womb of time. We will have to wait for a while to know that. One lesson is however immediately discernable: history does repeat itself and humans do not necessarily learn from it.

The writer is a former dean of social sciences at the Quaid-i-Azam University. He can be reached at hussain_ijaz@hotmail.com