Table Of ContentThe Savage Freud
and other essays on possible
and retrievable selves
ASHIS NANDY
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
OXFORD
UNIVBRSITY PRBSS
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Contents
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
Published in India by
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© Uma Ashis Nandy 1995
PREFACE vii
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
The Discreet Charms of Indian Terrorism
First published 1995
Oxford India Paperbacks 2000 Sati in Kali Yuga: The Public Debate on Roop
Third impression 2011 Kanwar's Death 32
The Other Within: The Strange Case of
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Radhabinod Pal's Judgment on Culpability 53
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in Colonial India 81
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Modern Medicine and its Nonmodern Critics:
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and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer An Intelligent Critic's Guide to Indian Cinema 196
This edition not ror sale in USA, Canada, and Australia Satyajit Ray's Secret Guide to Exquisite
Murders: Creativity, Social Criticism, and the
ISBN-13: 978-0-19-564583-5 Partitioning of the Self 237
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IN1)t:X
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This hoM is tkdicaud 10 liar• • IndiaftS
who .rymboliu tJa. hundr«l-and-JifrJ-y«Jr-old tJlUmpt
to re-mgiru~ tJa. Indian
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1880-1965)
Preface
unflinching warrior for Hindu nationalism,
who spent his life trying to make the Hindus more martial,
masculine, cohesive and organized;
Damodar Dharmanand Kosambi (1907-1960)
indefatigable rationalist and progressive thinker, who
never gave up his efforts to make Indians more Kientific,
objective and historically minded;
and Nirad C. Chaudhuri (189J-) I would have titled this book Textual Politics but for the touch of
fashion and stylization associated with the terms in these re
the last of the great Edwardian modernists of India, who
portedly post-modern days. For while this collection of essays
has always thoughtfully shared the white man's burden,
deals with texts and has its politics, it is far removed from the
especially Europe's educational responsibilities in
South Asia. world of formal analysis of texts.
My main aim in the following essays became clear to me only
'Twelve voices ~e slwuling in ang~, and they w~e all aliIr.t ... after I had assembled some of them for publication in this
already it was impossible 10 say which was which.'
volume. The effort is to develop a critique of the dominant,
quasi-global consciousness that now frames the culture of com
monsense for all debates on public issues in modern India. This
consciousness has concocted, out of the various forms of con
ventionality available in the global mass culture, what is believed
to be a tough, realistic, historically rooted, masculine Indianness
that would reportedly stand the strains of the present global
system of nation-states and the global development regime.
There were criticisms of middle-class consciousness-by which
I mainly mean criticisms of the political world view of the urban,
quasi-westernized, upper-caste Indian-in the latter half of the
nineteenth century. In my part of India, Michael Madhusudan
Dutt's BUlj,o Stiliker Ghii4e Ro, Pyarichand Mitra's Aliiler Gharer
Duliil, Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay's Kamaliikanter Daphtar
and 'Babu' are obvious examples. Such critiques had a certain
verve till, in the 1920s, the Indian middle classes began to lose
their political confidence due to the new sociological profile the
freedom movement had started acquiring. Social criticism now
meant something different to a class threatened by its diminish
ing political power, even though the social and cultural power of
the class was growing, thanks to the expansion of the modern
sector in the country.
By the 1930s, with new versions of the theory of progress
"
VIII Priface Prefoce ix
flooding the Indian market from the West, all such criticisms of These core components cannot be defined exactly in a brief
modern India projected, as it were, a split personality. At one preface, mainly because in many cases they have been indige
plane, the criticisms continued to be directed at the hypocrisy, nized out of recognition. But they can be roughly represented by
greed and contradictions of the bourgeois life, but less and less at a series of concepts that have become central to all public
the cognitive categories that sustained and gave meaning to the discourse in modern India. Among them are the state (by which
life and justified the disproportionate power and privileges of is meant the nation-state); nationalism (defined as allegiance to a
the class being criticized. At another, such criticisms regarded steamrolling mono cultural concept of India, composed of the
the 'little' traditions of India as the bastions of violence and nmeteenth-century European concept of nationality); secularism
irrationality-and as the ultimate source of the pathologies of (used not as one possible way of containing religious' strife
the middle class-and refused to take seriously the categories of but as a synonym for the promotion of supra-religious alleg
iances to the now-rlominant idea of the Indian state); develop
these little traditions unless they tallied with the categories being
ment (which has now fully colonized the idea of social change);
popularized in modernizing India. As a result, what these
history (paradoxically seen as an ahistorical, linear., scientific
criticisms offered with one hand, they took away with the other.
After all, moral criticisms of hypocrisy and greed are merely enterprise); rationality (as an allegedly non-partisan, contem
porary embodiment of the post-Enlightenment theories of
moral criticisms; they can be safely forgotten when the mean but
unavoidable principles of realpolitik and economic interests come progress) and a totally romanticized concept of realpolitilr. that is
into play. neither realistic nor truly political in its content.
These essays try to look at aspects of Indian public life while
The national movement on the other hand, despite the now
avoiding the loving embrace of these scaffolds of the culture of
commanding presence of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi,
the Indian state. Some of the essays, in fact, can be read as
gradually developed at its upper echelons an ideology that was in
attempts to demystify these scaffolds and provide a glimpse of
tune with the globally dominant idiom of the nation-state. This
the principles of dominance that sustain them politically. In the
idiom survived intact after India became independent and
process, the essays also act as pointers to some of the categories
established a centrality in Indian public life that would have been
that have been marginalized by the culture of the Indian state,
unthinkable even two decades earlier. It endorsed the relaxing
though not necessarily by the culture of Indian politics. The
self-reflexibility of the middle classes.
assumption is that these marginalized categories still make sense
This language of public life, which has now begun to preside
to Indians not fully socialized to modern political institutions
over the culture of Indian politics, has one marked strength: it
and they give Indian political life its distinctiveness. They are
leaves ample scope for in-house dissent-from Gandhian to
categories which confuse and exasperate metropolitan Indians
Marxist to Liberal. It has the strength a!ld elasticity to rephrase
who would like to consider themselves the sane, rational, tough
such dissent in its own terms and to nurture and comfortably live
minded political analysts of India's public culture. This book
with their tamed domesticated versions. This strength allows it to
celebrates that ability to confuse and exasperate.
claim for itself a superordinate presence in Indian public life; for
One final comment. The author of these essays is not the
it has the alleged ability to subsume all other idioms, or at least
offspring of village India. Nor is he a Gandhian social activist or
the saner parts of the idioms. The editorials of the country's
a fanatic environmentalist who finds the tinsel glitter of the city
national dailies, the values projected by the newly popular video
an immoral, seductive presence. He is a child of modern India,
news magazines, and the language of debate in Parliament are
looking for a language of social criticism that will not be entirely
~ood instances of this openness of the dominant idiom to what it
alien to a majority of Indians who have been increasingly
>cHeves to be sane alternatives to it. One thing, however, the
empowered by an open political process, however imperfect that
deology does not allow one to do: to challenge or remove any of
openness. Those who would prefer to read the following pages
he components that constitute its core.
I Preface Preface xi
..... wlllllnlic' InV()ntlion of Indian culture will do well to gained immensely from Hawley's detailed suggestions and
,tI ...t I ...I I. . , Itll" lIudl an:usations of 'romanticization' are never criticisms.
dll ... I. .. 1 IIMIIIIIIII Iht' return to Hellenic culture in any history of 'The Other Within' was given as a lecture at the Common
It. ••1 II.tIP""" of modern science during the Enlightenment. Yet, wealth Centre for Literary and Cultural Change of the U niver
It I. r. .r ly ohvious that the Greek science the Enlightenment sity of Virginia, Charlottesville, in April 1990. Later on, it was
r •• h •• 'ovllred wu not the whole of Greek science; nor were the presented at the Institute for Advanced Study in Humanities at
m.cheval traditions of European science that disjunctive with the Edinburgh and published in New Literary History, February 1992.
modll"', I am grateful to these institutions and to R. S. Khare, Ralph
These essays are not historical reconstructions of the past; Cohen, Peter Jones, C. Douglas Lummis and Richard Falk, for
they are part of.a political preface to a plural human future. My prOviding the facilities and help without which the paper could
source of inspiration in this enterprise are those Asian, African not have been written. I am also grateful to some members of the
and South American intellectuals who, whether they know it or family of Radhabinod Pal-Balai Pal, Lakshmirani Pal, Pra
not, are trying to ensure that the pasts and the presents of their shanta Kumar Pal, and Debi Prasad Pal-and to Masao Kuni
cultures do not survive in the interstices of the contemporary hiro, Girdhar Rathi, Sarvani Sarkar, Savita Singh and Sujit Deb
world as merely a set of esoterica. These intellectuals implicitly for their comments and help. Nearly a decade before this essay
recognize that for the moderns the South is already, defini was written, M. J. Knottenbelt had sent me unsolicited papers
tionally, only the past of the contemporary West and the future and data, some of which I accidentally rediscovered recently and
of the South is only a glorified term for the present of the West. found immensely useful while revising the essay.
Only the past remains unconquered. Despite the painstaking 'The Savage Freud' was first presented at a conference at
efforts of modern historians, at least the remembered pasts of Karachi sponsored by the World Institute of Development
the savage world have not yet been fully appropriated by the Economic Research and the UN University in 1989. It was
North. Hence the desperate and often-pathetic attempts to rewritten for Frederique Apffel Marglin's Decolonizing Knowledge
return to the past in the southern world, not only to time-travel (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Work on the paper began when I
or locate one's utopia in the past, but also to discover possible was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for
alternative bases for social criticisms of the existing order. Scholars, Washington, in 1988 and was compl~ted at the
Department of Politics, University of Hull, when I was Charles
'The Discreet Charms of Indian Terrorism' has grown out of the Wallace Fellow there in 1990. I am grateful to these institutions
Gandhi Memorial Lecture, 1987, delivered at the Raman for the facilities they provided. They are not, however, res
Research Institute, Bangalore, and published in The Journal of ponsible in any way for the contents of the paper. I am also
Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, March 1990. It was also beholden to the participants in the Karachi conference, es
presented at the Department of South Asian Studies, the pecially Durre Ahmed and Frederique Marglin, and to Alan
University of Pennsylvania, in 1988. The present version owes Roland for their extensive criticisms and suggestions. The
much to the issues raised by the listeners and to informal present version of the paper owes much to Roland's detailed
discussions with scholars, activists and friends, particularly Sivraj comments. It has also gained from discussions with Debiprasad
Ramaseshan, Satish Dhawan, S. Radhakrishnan, R. L. Kumar, Chattopadhyay, Bijayketu Bose, Bhupen DeSai, Charuchandra
and Girdhar Rathi. Bhattacharya and from the help given by Tarit Chatterji, Hiranmay
'Sati as Profit Versus Sati as a Spectacle' was first published in Ghosal, Heather Harlan, Amit Das, and Sajal Basu. A section
The Illustrated Weekly of India on 17 January 1988. The present of the paper was presented at the Delhi Group for Psychoanalysis
version was prepared for John S. Hawley (ed.), Sati, The Blessing in 1990, where it benefited from the comments of Shib
and the Curse (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). It has K. Mitra, Indrani and Ashok Guha, Ashok Nagpal, and
cii Pr'./ace
I eena Das. 1 would not perhaps have used the idea of the secret
elf as an organizing principle in this essay but for a long
liscussion on the subject with Noel O'Sullivan. The Discreet Charms of Indian
'Modem Medicine and its Nonmodem Critics' has grown out. of
Terrorism
ihiv Visvanathan's and my participation in a project sponsored
)y WIDER and first appeared in Dominating Knowledge. edited by
;"rederique Apffel Marglin and Stephen Marglin (Oxford:
~larendon Press, 1990). It has benefited much from the sug
~estions given by the participants in the project. especially
Francis Zimmerman, Tariq Banurl, and Stephen and Frederique
Marglin.
An earlier version of The Intelligent Critic's Guide to Indian According to the poet Umashankar Joshi, Arnold Toynbee said
::inema' was serialized in Deep Focus , 1987-8 and parts of it were after Gandhi's death, 'Henceforth, mankind will have to ask its
published in The ILlustrated Weekly of India. It has benefited from prophets, "Are you willing to live in the slum of politics?'" This
my long discussions with Chidananda Dasgupta and Iqbal is a compliment Gandhi would have accepted. for he had always
Masud and from the criticisms and comments offered by two held that morality took different forms at different times and
young activists, R. L. Kumar and George Kutty. that in our time it took the form of politics. 1 For the right kind of
A section of'Satyajit Ray's Secret Guide to Exquisite Murders' politics not only allowed one to test out the yugadharma, ethics
borrows from an essay published in The Illustrated Weekly of India. appropriate to an age, it also allowed one to confront the multi
It was written for the International Conference on Perceptions layered realities of cultures and personalities.
of Self: China, India, and Japan, held at Honolulu in August After this one comment, it will be for the reader to decide
1989 and published in Films, East and West, June 1990. I am whether the events related here have anything to do with th. ~
grateful to the panicipants at the conference. Wimal Dissana Gandhian vision: with its simultaneous emphases on cultural
yake in particular, and to Punam Zutshi for their comments. I traditions as a reaffirmation of a moral universe. and on politics
-I
am also indebted to BUoylakshmi and Kajal Bose and to Sujit as a dialogical encounter which, set within that moral universe.
Deb for helping me with some not-so-easily available books. My can reduce the area of human violence.
grateful thanks to Chavi Bhargava for doing the index.
Finally a comment on the style of spelling. Sanskritized
11
spellings of Indian names and titles and diacritical marks have
been used in this book only when English versions of such names At 5.50 p.m. on 5 July 1984, a group of Sikh terrorists hijacked
or titles have not been used by the persons or authors themselves an Indian Airlines flight, Ie 405. flying from Srinagar to Delhi.
and when they are not in common use. When used, the The hijackers struck soon after the plane. an airbus, took off,
diacriticals and the spellings seek to retain the flavour of and directed it to Lahore. There they gave a six-hour ultimatum
vernacular usage. As with a number of my recent works, Surabhi to the Indian government to meet their demands, which were: a
Sheth has helped me with this part of the story. ransom of about Rs 300 million as compensation for the damage
A.N. done to the Golden Temple complex during the army action
1 See for instance Bhikhu Parekh, Gandhi's Political Philruophy (London:
Macmillan, 1989).
\I The Savage Freud 1M DisCTm CAar.s of bttIit.aa TerrorUwt s
Ihrlr ill .June 1984, the return of the cash and valuables seized that this groUp of hijackers was more ruthless than the earlier
hy Ihe' IUmy, and the release of all Sikhs arrested following the one! He had reason to say so; during the take-over, amidst the
",'Iiem. confusion, Mehta had resisted the hijackers and was stabbed.
Pakistan had at first refused to permit the plane to land and One of his colleagues, Flight Engineer Pran Mahajan, too, was
a
blocked the Lahore runway. But the hijackers, claiming to be injured.' A more fearsome account of the take-over was given by
suicide squad consisting of the family of some of those killed Bose in a first-person story soon afterwards; according to him,
during the action at the Golden Temple a month earlier, the hijackers had said, 'Our leader "Sant Bhindranwale is alive
threatened to blow up the plane if permission was not given. and we are taking you to him in Khalistan which is situated in
However, once the plane landed at Lahore, the Pakistanis did Pakistan. There your fate would be decided? They also, Bose
not concede the hijackers' demands, which were to offioad the added, mercilessly beat up the passengers and the crew, and one
passengers, refuel the plane, and leave for another country. of the hijackers 'took particular pleasure in walloping the
There were 149 men, 72 women, 19 children and 15 infants Hindus in the cabin and humiliating them'" Bose did not
on board the plane. Two persons suffered injuries when the explain how the hijackers 10 quickly identifted the Hindus
plane was seized-one allegedly from a bullet, the other from a from among so many non-Sikb passengers.
penknife. Airhostess Kuldeep Kaur Gujral had resisted the There was also much pushing and scrambling after the take
attack by banging the cockpit door on the hijackers. She had now over. The hijackers went after two uniformed army men, one a
to cool their ire by revealing that she was a Sikh. The ploy major .. nd the other a colonel, stripped them of their rank, and
worked. The hijacker who had threatened her earlier called her tore their clothes, Bose saw the major 'severely beaten' and lying
'sister', touched her feet and asked for forgiveness.2 'bleeding with his hand fractured'. At one point it seemed to
Soon other details began to come in. Mohan Ram, a veteran Bose that the hijackers would kill the officers." The major
journalist caught in the hijacking, wrote his story in the Indian himself later gave a less dramatic version of the event. He did
&press. According to him, after the plane took off from not mention his fracture but said that the leader of the hijackers
S
Sri nagar, half a dozen Sikhs jumped out of their seats shouting gave him a bandage and some cotton to tie over his swollen right
slogans and brandishing knives, pistols and an iron bar ripped hand after the assault.'O Most of the passengers sat still during
off the plane. There were three dean-shaven Sikhs among them. the take-over and watched the goings-on in 'grim silence', for the
They now put on yellow and blue turbans. All of them looked hijackers had told thern, 'Fasten your seat belts and don't move
very young, the youngest no more than fifteen, or so it seemed or we will shoot'.11
to Ajay Bose, another journalist in the plane. 'One of them On reaching Lahore, the plane landed amidst full-throated
rushed towards our row', says Ram, and told the panic-stricken slogan-shouting by the hijackers. From the testimony of pas
passengers, 'Mere pas do pistol aUT grmaJ.e hai'-'I have two pistols senger Shama Kohli, 25, one surmises that slogan-shouting was
and a grenade'.' the main occupation of the hijackers during t)le flight to Lahore
Despite their youth, the hijackers looked rather fearsome to and subsequently during the night at Lahore airport.'Y One
some of the passengers and the crew. Flight Steward D. K.
Mehta, who had experienced an earlier hijacking in 1981, said
• TIu TiIIw of /nditJ, 7 july 1984,
"Ibid.
• TIu Sunday Obsnwr, 8 july 1984.
• The Tinus of JnditJ, 8 July 1984. "Ibid.
'InditJn EXfJress, 7 July 19M. "Ibid.
• Ibid. According to later accounts, there were eight or nine hijackers in all. All ,. TIu Tinu.f of JnditJ, 7 july 1984.
Hindi and Punjabl expressions used in this paper are quotations from newspapers. II JnditJfI Express, 7 july 1984.
Hence the occasional odd spelling, grammar, and inconSistency. 12 TIu Tinus of JnditJ, 7 july 1984.
f
~p... /':' r '1'ttI "iavage Frnui The Discreet Charms of Indima TerrDriswa 5
f4~ w• ••1 I,J(edly roughed up because he did not shout
the hijackers gave 'top priority' to the children and 'saved water
' . .h. ... wlch the hijackers.
and fruits for them'.
, I .. h", .. , Ihe hijackers waited with transistor radios to hear II
"'WI Other passengers complete this picture. Ritu Murgai says that
,hi f'rum All India Radio and Radio Pakistan. They also
the hijackers 'kept saying that the passengers should not worry
1'I.'thIINiled In half a dozen impassioned recitals of Sikh religious
'"11. as they would be released' .19 Mushtaq Ahmad remembers the
The passengers were told not to disturb them. Pistols were
hijackers saying that their quarrel was with the Central Govern
lNt'ntM at those who moved or even fidgeted. It was very stuffy
ment, not with the passengers, who would not be harmed.1e
n the plane and many passengers wanted' to go to the toilet.
Andre Goldstein, an American student, felt that the hijackers
They were allowed to do so after being frisked. 'In the beginning
were mostly 'very nice' with the passengers. But the hijackers
the hijackers tried to terrorize the passengers', Ram says in his II
did say that if their demands were not met, the plane would be
article but adds, 'one or two of them seemed decent-they
blown up.
provided the infants with baby food and milk',13 The process of
Sophia Bamu gives a more precise account of the happenings.
normalization was helped by Pinkha Singh, a well-behaved
She said to the press that one of the hijackers was 'very kind' and
:(
hijacker nicknamed :Jolly' by the passengers, assuming leader
offered the passengers milk and cakes; another looked 'very
ship.14
tough' and beat up anyone who argued with him. She also
At night, the hijackers took over from the airhostesses and
guessed that one of the hijackers was no more than fifteen or
served the passengers. Next morning, the airhostesses were back
sixteen.n This does not seem to tally with Flight Steward Mehta's
at work. The hijackers then checked the passengers' tickets and
impression that the hijackers were a ruthless lot but does tally
divided them into four groups: Indians, Muslims, Sikhs, and
with the evidence of passenger Har Prem Singh Longman that
foreigners. This may have been a formality. For passenger
one of the hijackers had fainted during the hijacking and
Dilmohan Singh claims that there was no discrimination among
another had cried.
IS
the communities and everybody was treated equally well. 15
However, at 10 a.m. the following day, the hijackers threw a
There was now considerable activity and much discussion among
bombshell and announced that they had finally decided to blow
the hijackers. Mohan Ram got the feeling that they were divided
up the plane in five minutes. 'You can all say your last prayers
over their next move.16 But they took one joint decision; they
now', they said and proceeded to force the passengers to say 'Vai
released seven passengers on the grounds of health during the
Guru Satya Nam'.t4 Few disbelieved their threat and some women
wait at Lahore.
began to cry. According to Kilam, some of the hijackers, too,
The children on the flight were at ease with developments. were now in tears and they said 'Ah chot! dete Min'-'Now let us
Ram heard a child tell a hijacker, 'Uncle, toiletjand /&ai'-'Uncle,
» release them'.:L~ But everyone was not equally impressed by the
I have to go to the toilet'. Some of the yo~ters, according to sentiments expressed, Mohan Ram says, 'We all thought that it was
Ram, were even building up their appetite for a good meal. One
now all over. Everyone sat in mournful silence'.~
of them told his mother, 'Main aj alu baigan khtiunga'-'Today I
shall eat potatoes and eggplant'}7 The children had probably
sensed what passenger Bhavana Kilam later told the press-thal 111M StauS1lll.ln, 7 July 1984.
I'lbid.
IOlbid.
01 Ibid.
"India" Exprt.I.I, 7 July 1984.
n Tilt Times of India, 7 July 1984.
" Tilt Sunda) Oh.~nwr, 8 July 1984. IS Ibid.
" Th, Sl4lfJmnn. 7 Jllly 1984. "Ibid.
II; Indian ExprtJJ. 7 July 1984. IS 1M StaleS1lll.ln, 7 July 1984.
" Ibid.
"lfIIlitm Express, 7 July 1984.
u
~.
The Savage Freud
The Discreet Charms of Indian Terrorism 7
liuw('ver, a flurry of activity followed and Ram sensed that the
hijackers were divided on whether or not to blow up the plane.' Pakistan had acted adroitly and handled the hijackers well; that
7
Eventually, wiser counsels prevailed. The hijackers told the '.,; I the hijackers, finding the Indian and Pakistan governments
passengers that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had rejected their equally firm, became nervous and started changing their de
demands but that the passengers would be released in any case. mands frequently and this was fully exploited by the officials at
'We are against the tyranny of the government. We are releasing Lahore. In the end, the gamble paid off.S! Gopalakrishnan in his
you all on humanitarian grounds. We don't want to hurt inno brief comments said that 'Security at the Srinagar airport had
cents.'28 The passengers were asked to leave the aircraft about 38 been very tight'.
33
hours after the drama began. The hijackers stayed back. Ac Already however the press, especially the editorial writers and
cording to The Times of India, 'They surrendered to the autho political analysts, were building up the hijacking as the act of a
rities with tears in their eyes and many of the passengers also group of well-trained, well-armed, merciless commandos let
broke down. They said that if they had caused any inconvenience loose on Indian soil by enemy countries and traitors; taking
to anyone, they were sorry for that'. 29 They also said that they advantage of the poor security at Indian airports. Thus, Reddy,
did not want another Harmandar Sahib.3()
il who was not on the plane, pointed out-as did The Times of India
Young journalist Ajay Bose, who had earlier assumed the tone editorial of the same day-the security lapses at Srinagar airport
...
of a war correspondent, was by now thoroughly perplexed. He which allowed terrorists 10 board the plane with pistols, hand
had to locate his experience beyond the range of normality and grenades and iron bars. Neither was unduly perturbed by what
sanity.
Gopalakrishnan had said on the subject to the Times. Nor was
Reddy's style, or that of the Times, cramped by the statement of
Suddenly passengers and hijackers were in each others' arms,
the bruised major of the pirated plane, published the same day
crying like children as the tension of the past twenty hours visibly
in The Times of India, that he thought the hijackers only carried
melted away. It was a crazy scene I shall not forget. Passengers
who were hijacked, humiliated and beaten up by these nine toy pistols, that the only deadly weapon they seemed to have was
desperadoes were actually jostling with each other to get the the pickaxe picked up from the plane itself.
hijackers' autographs on the back of their air tickets. Conversely The major was also aware that he had been attacked because
all the aggression and mental resolve of the Sikh extremists he was in uniform, for there was much resentment amongst
seemed to be cracking up. The fearsome Sikh with an axe ran j' Sikhs about the army action at the Golden Temple. The captain
round hugging passengers while Pinkha Singh made it a point to of the hijacked plane, C. S. P. Singh, also did not see much
shake hands individually with everyone in the cabin and the
planning in the piracy. He told The Times of India that six of the
hfiifst eheena-ryte oaru-to.l"d boy hijacker just sat down on the floor and cried , nine hijackers had looked like amateurs.'" The Indian Express,
too, pointed out that the hijackers seemed to have been youthful
Within a day, analyses of the hijacking began to appear. Two of novices acting on a passing impulse or whim. They were 'des
the first were by G. K. Reddy, in The Hindu, and K. Gopala perate youth with no clear idea of what they wanted to do apart
krishnan of The Week who, as a passenger of the pirated plane, from embarrasSing the Government oflndia'.M The Pakistanis who
spoke to the press. Reddy pointed out that the Government of dealt with the hijackers had the same impression.a6
The Times of India also mentioned the hijackers' youthfulness,
., Ibid .
•• Th~ Tim~s of India. 7 July 1984 .
.. Ibid.
SI The Hindu, 7 July 1984.
'" That is, a bloodbath of the kind that took place at the Golden Temple. .. The Times of India, 7 July 1984.
Dilmohan Singh, quoted in TM SlaUsman. 7 July 1984. 54 Ibid., 8 July 1984.
3) T/a, Sway OIJsmJer, 8 July 1984. 55 Indian Express, 7 July 1984.
lI6 Pran Chopra, ibid., 12 July 1984.
