oe

FEATURES

The ‘Halistan’ venture
fo scuttle Indian unity

In the wake of recent widespread deaths in battles between
some sects of Sikhs and Indian government troops, particu-
larly at Amritsar, many Canadians are at a loss to understand
this violence after centuries of communal peace.

As a background to the bloodshed, the Soviet newspaper
Izvestia recently published an article by A. Ter-Grigoryan,
which notes that the paper has on several occasions written
about the origins of the current tragedy in the State of Punjab.
It notes that about half the population of the Punjab are Sikhs,
while many live in other parts of the country, and make up
from one-third to one-half of Indian army and police officers.

a ata

_ Until recently it has never occurred to anyone in mul-
tilingual and multinational India to consider religion the
hallmark of nationality. The Punjabis, who speak the
Punjabi language, always regarded themselves as one
people, irrespective of whether they professed Sikhism
or Hinduism. Moreover, Hindu families with many chil-
dren normally used to convert one of the sons to Sikh-
ism. There were no religious-communal clashes in Pun-
jab since Indian independence. That state was seen as
one of the most happily arranged and calm. People re-
fused to believe the first reports on flares of violence in it.

Several years ago; an American citizen of Sikh faith,
Ganga Singh Dhillon, invented the word ‘‘Halistan,”’
that is the ‘“‘land of the Halsa’’ or the Sikh community.
Another emigrant plying between Ottawa and London,
deprived of Indian and granted British citizenship, Jagjit
Singh Chaulkhan, was proclaimed the president of non-
existent Halistan. Dhillon and Chaukhan with money
received from the U.S. CIA opened ‘‘embassies’’ and
““consulates’’ of the invented state in a number of coun-
tries and printed ‘‘Halistan passports’ which began to
be given to all manner of renegades during anti-Indian
get-togethers in New York or London.

“‘Why should the Sikhs need Halistan when they al-
ready own the whole of India?’’ a leading Indian publi-
cist asked jestingly in one of his articles. And he seri-
ously answered: ‘‘It is not the Sikhs who need Halistan;
the Americans need it.’’

Saboteurs for Infiltration
The people in Washington were aware from the begin-
ning that separating the Punjab from India was an
unworkable proposition. It wasn’t going to be supported
by the majority of Sikhs, let alone the Hindu Punjabis.
Why then did Washington decide to finance the extre-

mist bands? For what purpose did U.S. secret services

through their agents in Pakistan set up a special camp on
the territory of that country where saboteurs for infiltra-
tion into the Punjab are being trained?

From the outset the Halistan venture was assigned the
role of a detonator that would explode the Punjab. A
“‘Halistan map’’ was slipped as a trump card into the
hands of bandits like Bhindranwale. The extremist wing
of the Sikh religious party Akali dal also used it to induce
the leadership to lay down a number of demands before
the central government. A large part of these demands
was recognized by the government as just and was satis-
fied. But some of them, such as a change of the border
between the Punjab and adjacent Haryana and the incor-
poration of Chandigarh, which is simultaneously the
capital of both states, entirely into the Punjab, are
impracticable or need long study and discussion.

Attempt to Destabilize

India’s enemies abroad, who are angry with her inde-
pendent foreign policy, are trying to destabilize the situa-
tion in that great Asian country. They support the religi-
ous and communalist fanatics in India’s north-eastern
states of Jammu and Kashmir and provoke Hindu-
Moslem violence. Many people were killed and injured
in Hindu-Moslem clashes which broke out in the state of
Maharashtra in the latter part of May. All sorts of reli-
gious and communalist extremist elements, who are

_ backed from the outside, have escalated their provo-

cations because national elections to the House of the
People are just a few months off. CIA strategists believe
that destabilization of the situation in various states will
undermine the positions of the ruling Congress (I) Party
and the Ghandi government. A special role in escalating
tension in various states is accorded by provocateurs to
leaders like Singh Bhindranwale.

Jarnal Singh Bhindranwale, a 37-year-old, blue-tur-
baned ‘‘prophet,’’ was, before his death this month,
responsible for many killings. Even before he was per-
suaded by his separatist friends to shoot opposition lead-
ers, Bhindranwale had murdered many Nirankari Sikhs,
a sect mortally detested by the bigots. The murders won
Bhindranwale the reputation of a ‘‘heretic-killer.”’

Bhindranwale’s men terrorized Punjab cities. Their
aim was to make the situation in the state intolerable.
They killed people at point blank, from behind, with a
kirpan or a shot in the back; they derailed trains and
planted bombs in buses crammed with passengers. They
killed policemen, doctors, military men, engineers, mer-

Armed Sikh extremists at the Golden Temple. —

chants and workers. They killed Sikhs because the latter
had no taste for the idea of creating the state of Halistan
and they killed Hindus because they were Hindus.

In the last two months, before the showdown of Am-
ritsar, the death toll in Punjab had reached more than’
250. :

Connections with CIA :

One of those hiding in the Golden Temple with
Bhindranwale, in the shadow of the latter’s sinister
glory, was B.S. Sandhu, secretary-general of the So-
called ‘‘Halistan Council.” It became hard to say which
of the two men was more closely linked with the three
terrorist organizations led by the Dal Halsa gang.

Sandhu had specialized in giving interviews to West-
ern journalists on behalf of ‘‘Halistan leaders,” while
Bhindranwale’s job was to make ‘‘incendiary
speeches. The former has made no secret of the fact that
he follows orders from Dhillon and Choukhan who are
notorious in India for their connections with the CIA.
The latter tried hard to play a saint, allegedly far from
politics and who did not publicize his links with Dal
Halsa. He hid-from the public his role of a puppet Mant-
pulated from abroad.

‘‘Let the police enter the Temple,”’ he said defiantly.
“‘Let them dare.”’ ;

But the tremor in his voice betrayed his fear: he knew
he was doomed.

Not all the leading residents of the Golden Temple are
hiding there from the police. The Akali dal leaders, for
example, who negotiate with the government from time
to time, had no need to hide. They knew perfectly what
kind of man Bhindranwale was but they kept mum and
were in no hurry to dissociate themselves from him. —

Far from the Golden Temple, on the other side of the
world, the people who have been trying all these years to
turn Punjab into a mine that would blow up Indian unity

‘and into a trap into which the ruling Congress (I) Party

might get caught on the eve of the national election are
rubbing their haads in joy. These people who hypo-
critically anathematize ‘‘international terrorism’ impuU-
dently manipulated the actions of the terrorists.

We have all kinds of notions about how a health sys-
tem should work in a socialist society. What is common
to all socialist countries is that there is no cost to a patient
for hospital or medical care. But there are differences in
administration and funding in, say, the Soviet Union,
Czechoslovakia, Cuba and East Germany (German
Democratic Republic.) :

It is not my purpose to make comparisons between the
various socialist health care systems, excepting to note
they all work rather well. Each is based on its own
traditional medical concepts and practices.

The medical profession in the GDR has many of the
structural forms common to western medicine. For
example, there is a ministry of health in the central
government of the GDR. It sets the standards for medical
care and sees those standards are met by county medical
boards and various medical institutions.

In the GDR, the costs of medical care are met by their
social insurance plan. This is funded by contributions
from employees, companies and the government. There
is nothing unusual about that. In fact, that is pretty well
the funding system as Canadians know it. The big dif-
ference is who is in control of the funds.

Ever since 1956, the FDGB (Confederation of Free
German Trade Unions) has been in charge of the basic
social insurance system. Can we imagine the CLC
(Canadian Labor Congress) processing all hospital, med-
ical, and sickness and accident claims? Hardly. Critics of
unions would scoff at sucha concept. Yet in the GDR the

Where the unions operate medicare

From the GDR

Jim Tester

unions not only do a good job of administering the social
insurance system, but do so with a minimum of flack.
from the workers.

This is because the social insurance administrative
structure is part of the union apparatus. Each work-team
of 20:to 30 workers elects a social insurance rep-
resentative. These are unpaid, voluntary reps who meet
at least monthly with the others in their plant, or com-
pany, to form a social insurance committee. There are
300,000 social insurance reps who function on the team
level. It is their job to visit ill and injured workers,
evaluate their problems and represent them in the
processing of their claims.

Because there is so much voluntary activity, admin-
istration costs are held to .04 per cent of the 25 billion
marks (approximately $13.5-billion) spent annually in
social insurance funds.

An exception to the above is a state-run insurance
plan, which roughly covers about 10 per cent of the

population, who are members of agriculture co-ops,
self-employed craftsmen, private retail merchants, etc.
They enjoy the same benefits as the social insurance plan
run by the union movement.

The cost to employees is 10 per cent of their monthly
wages, up to a maximum of 60 marks. Since the average
wage is nearly double that on which the amount is cal-
culated, the real charge is closer to 5 per cent of wages,
on an average. The employer kicks in 12.5 per cent; the —
state makes up the difference in the operating budget,
which runs to nearly double employee and employer
contributions. Pensioners and all students pay no contr-
butions. :

Besides financing sickness, accident and maternity
benefits, all old age benefits are paid by the social insur-
ance plan. The latter are based on income and years of
service as an employee.

Sick pay is 90 per cent of earnings, for the first six
weeks of illness. From the seventh week, up to 18
months, it varies between 50 and 90 per cent of earnings,
and depends on individual circumstances, e.g., the
number of children. Industrial accident insurance gives.
100 per cent coverage, with certain limitations.

All this was explained to me by a member of the ~
national executive of the FDGB, Herbert Puschel, who
is administrative director of social insurance for the
union. He urged me to see for myself the various preven-
tive and curative facilities provided in the GDR, and
which are backed by the social insurance system.

8 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JUNE 20, 1984