India is now entering an era of inclusion, not untouchability and ideological blackballing. Coalition leaders that bind themselves in ideological shackles in such divided parliaments will be made to pay severely for that political bankruptcy.

Almost a quarter century ago, I was covering the crisis in Punjab. Sant Bhindranwale was the extremist, and Sant Longowal the moderate. One openly spoke against the Hindus, the other nuanced it by cursing the “Dilli durbar” instead. But the entire separatist idea was based on the Hindu-Sikh divide. That is why Hindus were systematically pulled out of buses and massacred. But in the villages and the cities of Punjab, the two communities kept their counsel. There were strains but never a fight. That was the Khalistan campaign’s essential failure.

Then came Operation Bluestar, the assassination of Indira Gandhi and the massacres of the Sikhs in Delhi and elsewhere, killings of the kind India had — and has still — not seen since Partition. Many of us, who walked the badlands of Punjab and now smelled the burning human flesh in Delhi, thought this was the end. That there would be no reconciliation now, how could Hindus and Sikhs, whose relationship in Punjabi folklore was as inseparable as “nails and fingers”, now live together? I met Sant Longowal, then detained in Udaipur, incognito, and he said he wished for peace to return, but it would never happen in his lifetime, not when the “corpses of thousands of Sikhs are hanging on trees along the highway from Amritsar to Delhi”.

... contd.