BANGALORE - The 25th anniversaries of two events, both defining moments in
India's recent history, have been observed over the past few days. One is the
assassination of prime minister Indira Gandhi by her bodyguards on October 31,
1984. The other is the violence targeting Sikhs that began within hours of that
assassination and engulfed Delhi and other cities for at least three days.
The two events are closely connected. The assassination led to the massacres.
What sets them apart is the way the Indian state responded to them.
It was swift in delivering justice in the case of Indira's assassination.
Satwant Singh, the lone surviving assassin (Beant Singh, the other assassin,
was shot dead soon after the assassination while he was allegedly trying to
escape) and Kehar
Singh, a conspirator, were tried and hanged within four years.
But those who orchestrated the killing of around 2,733 Sikhs in Delhi - the
Citizens Justice Committee submitted 3,870 names to an enquiry commission -
still roam free. A quarter of a century later, justice is yet to be done.
The year 1984 is one that few Indians will forget. It was the year when a gas
leak in a factory owned by Union Carbide in Bhopal killed over 2,000 people and
maimed several others for life. It was also the year India's secular
foundations were shaken like never before.
In June 1984, the Indian army stormed the Sikhs' holiest shrine, the Golden
Temple in Amritsar, to flush out Sikh militants holed in there. They had turned
it into a fortress and were waging war against the Indian state. "Operation
Bluestar" was a military success in that it eliminated hundreds of militants
including the dreaded Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. But at a very heavy cost. It
was a political disaster. The Akal Takht was reduced to rubble and hundreds of
Sikh pilgrims were killed in the course of the operations. Bluestar wounded the
Sikh psyche, deeply alienating the community from the Indian state. It fueled
the Sikh militancy and kept it alive for another decade at least.
Revenge came swiftly. Barely five months later, Indira was assassinated. Her
assassins were Sikhs.
The response to her killing came even more swiftly. Within hours of her death,
stray incidents of violence targeting Sikhs began trickling in from various
parts of Delhi.
The violence peaked on November 1. Mobs carrying iron rods, knives and kerosene
went on a rampage, killing Sikhs, looting and setting alight their homes,
business establishments and places of worship. Sikh cab drivers were lynched or
burned alive in their cabs. Those fleeing Delhi were dragged out of trains and
buses and slaughtered.
The orgy of violence unleashed on Sikhs following Indira's assassination is
often referred to as a riot as though it was a spontaneous outpouring of anger.
It was not. It was an organized massacre, a pogrom.
There is a mountain of evidence to prove that politicians belonging to the
ruling Congress Party incited and directed the pogrom in collusion with the
police. Even as mobs led by Congressmen burned, looted, raped and murdered the
government did nothing to quell the violence.
Police made some arrests during the violence; ironically most of the arrests
were of Sikhs defending their families against the killers.
Days after the pogrom, Rajiv Gandhi, Indira's son and successor, indirectly
justified the violence. "When a mighty tree falls, it is only natural that the
earth around it does shake a little," he said.
As shocking as the state's involvement in the violence was its failure to
ensure justice thereafter.
Ten commissions and committees have probed the pogrom so far with little impact
on bringing the guilty to book. One commission of inquiry headed by a sitting
Supreme Court judge, Ranganath Mishra, found no lapses on the part of the
government and assigned no culpability to the ruling establishment. For his
whitewashing of the Congress' role, Mishra was rewarded. He went on to head the
National Human Rights Commission and also became a member of India's upper
house of parliament.
During and after the massacres, police refused to register complaints. Of those
which were registered, only a few made it to the courts. “Of the ones that
reached the courts, the majority resulted in acquittal of the accused as the
police never made an attempt to find evidence against them. As a result, the
conviction rate has been extremely poor," says Harvinder Singh Phoolka, a
senior advocate in the Supreme Court who has been fighting for justice on
behalf of the victims.
"Out of 2,733 officially admitted murders, only nine cases led to convictions.
Just over 20 accused have been convicted in 25 years - a conviction rate of
less than 1%,” he says.
The massacre of the Sikhs took place in front of thousands of witnesses. The
identity of those who carried out the violence was evident from the start. A
report brought out by civil rights groups in November 1984 carried an annexure
listing the names of people alleged to have carried out the violence. It
included 198 local Congress activists and others, 15 Congress leaders and 143
police officials.
Of the top Congress politicians who were known to have orchestrated the
violence, Sikh militants assassinated two within months of the massacres.
Others like Jagdish Tytler and H K L Bhagat went on to have successful
political careers, even holding cabinet posts.
In 2005, the Nanavati Commission said it found “credible evidence” against
Tytler, Bhagat and another Congress leader Sajjan Kumar saying they "very
probably" had a hand in organizing the attacks. While Bhagat died in 2005, the
Central Bureau of Investigation gave Tytler a clean chit earlier this year and
the court is yet to decide whether or not to initiate a fresh probe.
Sikh alienation from the Indian state and their anger with the Congress has
subsided significantly over the years. The movement for a separate Sikh state
is dead. And Punjab has voted the Congress to power twice since the 1984 riots.
Some have suggested that the Congress' efforts to reach out to the Sikhs has
helped in building bridges. In 1998 Congress president Sonia Gandhi expressed
her "anguish" over the 1984 riots. "I feel your pain," she said. That she is a
victim of terrorist violence herself and the daughter-in-law of Indira and
widow of Rajiv Gandhi, who was prime minister when the riots took place helped
to heal wounds to some extent. That was taken further by Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh, India's first Sikh prime minister who apologized to the Sikhs
in parliament.
That and the fact that the Congress made a Sikh a premier, say Congress
leaders, has won the party the hearts of Sikhs. But not all Sikhs have been
appeased by the conciliatory words. They want justice.
While admitting that the Congress' conciliatory gestures have "been like a balm
on the community", Phoolka says, "The Congress wants us to forget it; view it
as an aberration. When they made Manmohan Singh prime minister, they stepped up
this rhetoric; saying, 'forget it now, at least we have apologized and now made
your man the prime minister. Our answer has been that the apology came 21 years
late and under the Indian legal system an apology is not a substitute for
punishment for murder. We want justice."
It is not just to heal Sikh wounds that justice is essential.
India's failure to bring to justice those who masterminded the 1984 anti-Sikh
massacres must be blamed for subsequent massacres in the country. It has sent
out a message that parties and politicians in power can expect to go unpunished
even if they unleashed violence on thousands of people.
In December 1992-January 1993, 900 people, mainly Muslims, were killed in
Mumbai in violence by mobs led by the Hindu right-wing Shiv Sena and the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Those who orchestrated that violence roam free.
In 2002, Muslims were massacred in the state of Gujarat by mobs aided and
abetted by politicians in the ruling BJP. The Gujarat government not only did
not do enough to stop the killings, but, even worse, it actively participated
in them.
The culture of impunity that surrounds mass killings orchestrated by those in
power must end if massacres such as those in 1984, 1992 and 2002 should not
recur.
Victims of the 1984 violence are marking the 25th anniversary of the pogrom
through what Phoolka describes as "a life affirming gesture". They are planting
25,000 saplings in Delhi to pay tribute to those who were killed in the 1984
violence.
The felling of a "tree" (Indira) was followed by a massacre of innocent Sikhs
25 years ago. Sikhs are using the planting of trees to teach India a lesson
now.
"The 1984 killings were meant to teach a lesson to the Sikh community," says
Phoolka. "The lesson we seek to impart in turn is to respond to hate with love,
death with life. We trust the trees we have planted will not only help us
remember the victims of 1984 but also prevent the recurrence of such a terrible
crime on any community."
Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in
Bangalore.
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