Bhim Singh, the man who knew Saddam, Arafat & Castro
When Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was facing trial in 2005 for committing crimes against humanity, he wanted Jammu and Kashmir leader Bhim Singh to be one of the 11 lawyers on his defence team. After the United States blocked him from travelling to Baghdad, Singh, the founder of the Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party (JKNPP), said with a degree of foresight, “A dead Saddam can be more dangerous than a living Saddam for the US and the UK … The execution may take a moment, but its consequences will be dangerous and long-term.”
Singh, who died on Tuesday morning at the age of 80, had built connections with international figures such as Saddam, Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat, and Cuban leader Fidel Castro throughout his political life of over five decades. He was a man of many shades and talents — a journalist, a writer and globetrotter, a documentary film-maker, a lawyer, and a politician, all rolled into one. Former Chief Justice of India P N Bhagwati once described Singh as “an indomitable crusader for truth and justice possessing rare courage and determination’’.
In 1967, Singh set out on a world tour on his motorcycle to spread the message of world peace. With no money or support, he travelled across Iran and Afghanistan, and survived a road accident while crossing the western Sahara. He reached the United Kingdom after 11 months, and by 1973 was said to have travelled to 150 countries. In these journeys, among other things, he met a young Arafat in West Asia in 1968; Castro in Cuba in 1971 (he admired the Cuban leader but had also criticised his iron-fist rule on the island); visited Hiroshima in 1972 to meet the survivors of the US nuclear bombing; is said to have come face to face with Chilean president Salvador Allende who was killed in a US-backed coup in 1973; and travelled to Syria that year in support of Arafat and the PLO in connection with a dispute over the Golan Heights.
Singh’s commitment to the Palestinian cause was a life-long one. During Arafat’s exile in Tunis, Singh visited him in 1992 and a few years later went to Ramallah to again meet him. Back in India, Singh served as the chairperson of the Indo-Palestine Friendship Society and campaigned for the recognition of the sovereignty of Palestine. In 2000, the outfit staged a hunger strike in front of the Israeli embassy in New Delhi, demanding the latter to give up occupied territories and adhere to United Nations (UN) resolutions.
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In 1986, as the chairman of the Afro-Asian Solidarity Council, Singh appealed to the UN Security Council to intervene and stop US air attacks on Libya.
Cross-border peace
Apart from his internationalism, one of Singh’s lasting legacies will be the “Heart to Heart Talks” that he helped conduct in 2005 and 2007 between people living on both sides of the Line of Control (LoC). The first conference in New Delhi was attended, among others, by Pakistan-occupied Kashmir’s former Prime Minister Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan.
The resolutions passed at these conferences later formed the basis for the opening of the cross-LoC trade and travel by people on the Poonch-Rawalakote and Uri-Muzaffarabad roads as part of confidence-building measures.
Through his party’s State Legal Aid Committee, Singh filed writ petitions in the Supreme Court and secured the release of almost 300 Pakistani prisoners who had languished in Indian jails for decades. His efforts had an impact across the border, with the Lawyers’ Congress in Pakistan starting to take up cases of Indians lodged in jails there and securing their release.
Following his return from the world tour in 1973, Singh became the president of the J&K Youth Congress and rose to the position of the organisation’s all-India general secretary. But, in 1982, he left Congress over differences on a resettlement Bill and formed the JKNPP. National Conference (NC) leader Abdul Rahim Rather had introduced the Bill in the Assembly with the backing of then Chief Minister Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah. The Bill provided the legal framework for the resettlement and permanent return of the Kashmiris who had migrated to Pakistan between March 1, 1947, and May 14, 1954, and their descendants. After the Bill was passed, Singh even moved the Supreme Court to challenge the legislation.
His efforts to move the Supreme Court and the Election Commission in 1996 are believed to be instrumental in conducting the Assembly elections that year. The elections were held after a nine-year gap.
But despite the intensity of his political causes and legal battles, Singh never lost his wit and sense of humour. Once Sheikh Abdullah, in an oblique reference to the formation of the JKNPP, asked Singh on the floor of the Assembly why he, a nice human being, wanted to be associated with an animal. Singh responded by saying that the Panther had come to save human beings from the lion, referring to the Sher-e-Kashmir (Lion of Kashmir) title bestowed upon Abdullah.