Chandigarh, April 23, 2017: Blood on the Green, Punjab's Tryst with Terror authored by former senior journalist PPS Gill will be formally released on April 25 at UT Guest House, Chandigarh.
Punjab Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal will be the chief guest at the book release function.
This book is a recollection of rear-view mirror- images’ reflections and remembrances of the author’s journalistic adventures, particularly, during his crucial posting at Amritsar [1983-1990], when militancy was at its peak; and Punjab was burning, bruised and bleeding.
The writer represented Chandigarh-based daily, The Tribune, with Amritsar and Gurdaspur, the two volatile and sensitive border districts, as his beat. He reported extensively, as much on the fear psychosis that gripped the people, as their spirit of resilience, hopes and despairs; on the gun-toting militants; and on the politico-religious up and down swings at the epicenter of Punjab turmoil: SGPC [Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee]-cum-Golden Temple complex.
Essentially, the book is a product of journalist’s brush with men who mattered then: Sants [Harchand Singh Longowal and Jarnail Singh Bhinderanwale] and a beehive of political leaders, a procession of Governors and bureaucrats [civil and police]. It is also a firsthand account of key events – Operation Bluestar, Operation Black Thunder-I and II: all at the Golden Temple; Operation Woodrose in the border districts’ countryside.
In a journalistic style, he presents a kind of rough draft of transition of Punjab from a progressive state to a problem state, the whys and how’s of a man-made tragedy, beginning in the mid-1980s to the present times. He shares, in the form of memoirs, his interpretation of the unexpected, unanticipated, and unbelievable, perhaps, even unpardonable unfolding of events, including unfulfilled demands that Akalis have been hawking for 50 years; and some behind the scene development that he was privy to.
As part of his official assignments, as also private adventures, the writer gives a bird’s eye-view of his week-long sojourns and experiences in Pakistan, vignettes of his travels and travails at home and abroad in the US, Canada and Europe, besides glimpses of his pre-destined entry into journalism, beginning his innings with his first posting in Punjab’s backwaters, Bathinda in 1975; and his dramatic exit from The Tribune in 2004. What he reported for three decades was, perhaps, only half- the- story, the book has some off- the- record narration that failed to find its way into the print.
The journalist in him compels him to comment on Machiavellian politics, on cunning and conniving politicians and their internecine wars; on SGPC, then a ‘caged parrot’ among the hawks and doves; on compromising Sikh clergy; on the Sikh institutions that have remained at the crossroads; and on killings fields in Punjab, recalling and recapitulating the gory scenes; the nefarious role of the security forces, the hapless and helpless bureaucracy; why and how of the youth going astray; law obstructing justice etc. He broadly attempts to present an update on some select, key emotive and religious issues, as Punjab inches close to next round of Assembly elections; and, admits that last word can never be ever said or written on any issue.