Gleanings From Others

A Patriot’s Death: Shame on India

A patriot had to die because his benighted country, far from recognizing his sacrifices for the nation, hounded him as a criminal. If even the martyrdom of former Tarn Taran SSP Ajit Singh Sandhu does not awaken us to the consequences of collective masochism, nothing else can. The irony is that those who never dared to budge from the comfort of their air-conditioned retreats while the Punjab Police was fighting the nation’s war on secessionists, are today sitting in judgment on transgressions of the law they allegedly perpetrated. Was the killing of thousands of innocent men, women and children by an insane bunch of mercenary terrorists not a transgression of the law? Was the attempt to dismember a part of the country at the instigation of an unfriendly neighbor not a transgression of the law? Did those policemen and their families who died at the hands of the terrorists have no human rights? Are human rights a privilege to be enjoyed only by merciless killers and their self-appointed intellectual patrons?

Do those who conspired to hound and humiliate a proud nationalist like Ajit Singh Sandhu realize that his death is probably being celebrated at the headquarters of Pakistan’s ISI? The ISI has every reason for jubilation: What trunkloads of cash, tons of RDX and tens of thousands of AK-47s supplied by them could not achieve, has been accomplished by their accomplices in India in the name of human rights. They ridiculed Ajit Singh Sandhu and exulted when he was assaulted inside a prison by terrorists.

Even in his emaciated state, Sandhu was man enough to deny his Lilliputian detractors the opportunity to drain out the last vestiges of his pride drip-by-drip. He chose to opt out of what he rightly termed ‘zillat ki zindagi.’ It is improper to condone suicide, but in this case it was euthanasia --Ajit Singh Sandhu took mercy upon his own putrefied state of being and refused to submit himself to further torture by a nation of ingrates. Those who have been yelping for his blood should now be smirking at their achievement. This, more than anything else in recent history, well further their cause of demoralizing security forces all over the country; this will help them realize their goal of reducing the Indian state to pathetic impotence. But why blame them? They are merely acting according to their calling; for them nationalism has always been a dirty word. By succumbing to their campaign of calumny it is we who drove Ajit Singh Sandhu to despair and death.

He waged a battle against terrorism and secession because as a loyal police officer he was commanded to do so. And when he and his brother officers retrieved Punjab from the brink, we charged him with unspeakable crimes against humanity and accumulation of illicit wealth. The State told him he had to fend for himself, he had to raise his lawyers’ fees by selling family heirloom. And, as anybody who has visited the modest Sandhu home in recent times would testify, he did not have enough money even to replace tattered upholstery in his living room.

If this Government, as the repository of the will of the people, has a modicum of conscience left, it will do something at least now to give a helping hand to the thousands of Sandhus scattered all over Punjab, Kashmir and the North-East. It must enact a law to grant them immunity from prosecution for actions committed while combating insurgency. When the tricolor is raised from the ramparts of the Red Fort for the 50th time on August 15 this year, the nation would do well to spare a thought for those valiant patriots who have sacrificed their all so that the flag can flutter from an erect pole. Even if the nation is too squeamish to acknowledge their contribution, let us at least pledge to hound them no more. Let Sandhu’s death not go in vain. We made him lose faith in his country in life. Let us try to restore it in his death.

[Editorial in The Pioneer]

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