When even unfriendly visitors are welcome

 Julio Ribeiro

Our Prime Minister entertained the 23 members of the European Parliament in Delhi even though their visit to the country was unofficial. Their intention was to visit J&K because they had been invited to do so by an obscure NGO which people in the country were unaware of. Naturally, the visit and the circumstances under which they came here invited much adverse attention and some criticism.

Jogging my own memory about such visits by foreigners, excluding foreign journalists, to Punjab during my stay there, I shall talk about three such visits.

The first, when I was still the Director General of the state’s police, was when seven Canadian MPs, whose constituencies featured a big proportion of Canadian Sikhs, landed in Delhi on a fact-finding trip. Normally they should have approached our High Commission in Canada with a request which would be vetted by RAW and the Home Ministry before the Ministry of External Affairs gave the green signal. I do not think that this was done because I got a call from BG Deshmukh, then Cabinet Secretary, asking for my opinion if the gentlemen should be allowed to visit Amritsar and the Golden Temple, in particular.

BG was an old friend. He was quite surprised when I immediately agreed to receive the delegation in Amritsar. He warned me that they were not friendly and might report adversely to please their Sikh constituents back home. My own view was that since we had nothing to hide, there was no reason why we should hesitate to welcome them.

I sent SS Virk, an IPS officer from the Maharashtra cadre, on deputation to Punjab, to accompany the delegation to all the places they wished to see except the Golden Temple, where the police were ‘persona non grata’.

The delegation visited the Golden Temple and returned to Delhi. I got a call the next morning from BG that the Canadian High Commissioner had requested my presence at his residence to answer any questions that the delegation had for me. The government had agreed to this arrangement and so I went, along with my Security Officer, Avinder Singh Brar.

I fielded all the questions put by the delegates except one, which I left to Avinder. The delegation wanted to know why the Sikhs in Canada were making highly exaggerated insinuations and allegations against the Punjab Police and the Indian Government. They themselves had not seen any evidence to substantiate their complaints. Avinder thought that the reason for this was that Canadian Sikhs, enjoying a quality of life that was vastly superior to their relatives back home, harboured a sense of guilt that made them spew falsehoods.

The visit went off very well as far as our government was concerned because the Canadian newspapers reported the positive findings that their MPs had gathered after their visit. Our High Commission in Canada sent a report that must have pleased Rajiv Gandhi and his advisers.

A year later, as Adviser to the Governor, I was asked to receive and facilitate the visit to Amritsar of a US Congressional delegation led by Congressman Stephen Solarz, a known friend of India. Not all members though were friendly to our country but by the time they left, they realised that the Punjab Police had nothing to hide and were only doing their duty to protect innocent people from being killed by terrorists. Any country, including the US, would have to meet the menace head-on as we were doing. An Akali delegation, consisting of an MP and some other leaders, met the US Congressmen at a guest house in Amritsar and insisted on sitting on the open lawns because they suspected that the police had bugged the premises! I agreed immediately and this alone convinced the Congressmen that we had nothing to hide. Solarz told me so himself before the delegation left Amritsar.

I think that if we operate within the law and are committed to justice for all, there is no reason why we have to quietly arrange for unofficial delegations or utilise the services of obscure NGOs.

Earlier, I had entertained a three-member police delegation from the West Midlands, led by its Chief Constable, Sir (later Lord) Geoffery Dear. I put up the three in my own residence and took them into the interiors to see for themselves firsthand the difficulties under which Punjab Police were fighting terrorism of the variety that the Brits had themselves faced in Northern Ireland.

Our government in Punjab was not very happy with the way in which I happily took the English around the countryside, but opinions changed dramatically when English papers reported the findings of the delegation. Chief Constable Dear was all praise for the way in which Punjab Police were doing a really difficult job.

The moral of this story is that if consciences are clear, there is no need to resort to unorthodox ways of obtaining good chits from foreigners who matter. Allow them to come and see for themselves, but then, we ourselves must believe in the principle that justice is for all.