Tarun Tejpal - The Thin Red Line

1
The Thin Red Line
2
I WAS AMONG several who saw him die. His name was
Surjit Singh Penta, and the year was 1988. A
smartly calibrated siege of the Golden Temple had
just ended in the surrender of all the militants
holed up inside the Harmandir Sahib, the Temples
sanctum sanctorum. As they filed out and squatted
in the courtyard of the serai on the Temples
periphery, a sudden commotion broke out. The
police spotters had recognised a major militant.
But before they could lay hands on him, he had
swallowed his cyanide pill, and though the police
threw him into a jeep to rush him to hospital, he
was dead. Pentas story deserves telling because
it illustrates the pathology of oppression. The
young Sikh was a national-level athlete
representing Delhi before he became a witness to
the brutal Sikh massacres of 1984. By the time he
committed suicide a few years later more than 40
killings were attributed to him.
3
Before he became a terrorist Penta had been
terrorised by the state or its malign absence.
That is often the sequence the states excesses,
followed by those of the individual. The line
between law enforcement and high-handedness is
always very thin. In India, dangerously, it is
being smudged every day. Are Naxalites victims
before they become perpetrators? Are young
militants in the north-east and Kashmir
brutalised before they become brutal? Is the
ordinary citizen meted out insensitivity before
he becomes desensitised? What does one say about
a country where one turns to the police with
trepidation, where no one expects the men in
khaki to do the right thing? While extreme
viewpoints have a right to exist in a free
society, it goes without saying that no one ought
to have any sympathy for the positions of bigoted
groups and individuals.
4
The kind who base their existence on perilous
ideas of divine rights, exclusion of unbelievers,
intolerance, violence, and a preferred way of
life to which everyone else must conform. If
SIMI is one such organisation, it deserves our
criticism and scorn. If it is breaking the law
and fomenting hatred, it deserves to be
rigorously investigated and brought to justice.
But what if it is a target of widespread and
growing prejudice? What if the drive against it
is misdirected and designed to seed more terror
than it aims to suppress? And while steel may cut
steel, as the old Hindi saw goes, can prejudice
ever neutralise prejudice? For the seven years
since SIMI has been outlawed, state agencies have
been insisting that the outfit is an
anti-national organisation engaged in
conspiracies to destabilise the government
through acts of terror and that it brazenly
preaches sedition, being closely linked with
Pakistanbased terrorist groups like the
Lashkar-e-Tyaba, Hizb-ul- Mujahideen, and the
Jaish-e-Mohammed.
5
Alleged SIMI activists stand accused of some of
the worst terrorist crimes on Indian soil,
including bomb blasts that killed 187 people in
Mumbais local trains two years ago. BUT A
three-month long investigation by TEHELKA
carried out all over the country reveals that a
large majority of these cases are redolent of a
chilling and systematic witch-hunt against
innocent Muslims. Sadly, the expose shows it is
not just the policing and intelligence agencies
that are to blame even the judicial process is
often complicit in the terrible miscarriage of
justice. Ajit Sahis painstaking and remarkable
reportage reveals a shocking web of dubious cases
being pursued against so-called operatives of
SIMI cases which lack evidence, cases which
flagrantly ignore standard procedures of criminal
investigation and trial, cases that callously
destroy the lives of young men and their
families.
6
The Indian state must tread carefully. The
individual tragedies point to a wider psychosis.
For the last many years abetted by global
trends the states actions and utterances seem
to be deepening a prejudice against Muslims.
Catching the mood, Bollywoods arch villains are
now mostly Islamic. India has 160 million Muslims
- more than Pakistan, more than any other country
save Indonesia. Even if 10,000 are radicalised
its barely a tree in a forest. To create an
atmosphere that blights the entire forest is a
mistake. To foster a psychology of siege in an
entire community is a disaster. Before it seeks
further bans, the state ought to vigorously
introspect. William Faulkner wrote that
prejudice is shown to be the most destructive
when it is internalised. TEHELKAs detailed
investigation suggests, alarmingly, that in the
shining struggling India of today there is a real
danger of that.
7
In a 28-year career as a journalist, Tarun Tejpal
has been an editor with the India Today and The
Indian Express groups, and the Managing Editor of
Outlook. He is the founder of Tehelka- which has
garnered international fame for its aggressive
public interest journalism. In 2001, Asia Week
listed Tarun j Tejpal as one of Asias 50 most
powerful communicators, and Business Week
declared him among 50 leaders at the forefront of
change in Asia. Tarun Tejpal's debut novel, The
Alchemy of Desire, was hailed by The Sunday Times
as an impressive and memorable debut, and by Le
Figaro as a masterpiece. In 2007, The Guardian,
UK, named him among the 20 who constitute Indias
new elite. Tarun Tejpals second novel, The
Story of My Assassins was published in 2009 to
rave reviews. Pankaj Mishra has said, It sets
new and hauntingly high standards for Indian
writing in English, while Altaf Tyrewala has
called it an instant classic.