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Satyindra Singh
The 1984 killings (why do we call them riots?) were the largest since
the massive obscenity of the 1947 religious slaughter and comparable to
the holocausts by invaders centuries earlier. Jawaharlal Nehru said, in
one of his letters to Lord Mountbatten dated 22 June, 1947, [quoted in
one of the volumes of ‘Transfer of Power’ published by the British
Government] that "Human beings have an amazing capacity to endure
misfortune. They can bear calamity after calamity, but it is very
difficult to have to bear something which can apparently be avoided....
It is curious that when tragedy affects an individual we feel its full
force but when multiplied a thousand-fold, our senses are dulled and we
become insensitive". Fifteen years later, there is little or no mention
in the media of the 1984 holocaust; it is all forgotten and the
suffering victims and their progeny will apparently live unhappily ever
after! And when the history of the period is written who knows, whether
this carnage will even find a few lines in our constantly ‘re-written’
history.
The nation is aware of the savagery indulged in the wake of the
assassination of Indira Gandhi. Thousands of helpless men, women and
children were pulled out of running trains - including 26 Armed Forces
personnel - and butchered by rampaging mobs. We have had a number of
committees, commissions and judges making recommendations to render
justice handing out the severest strictures on a partisan and
criminalised police force and many politicians; but little or no
implementation. Throughout the carnage, Delhi’s policemen either made
themselves scarce, or stood by while mobs set fire to defenceless human
beings. Some participated in the orgy of violence. In Trilokpuri scores
of witnesses have testified that policemen were seen supplying diesel
oil and petrol to arsonists. These are but a few examples of the
perversity of those in majority - and in power.
Sikh educational institutions and several large and many small houses
were burnt. Movable property, cash and jewellery were stolen or
destroyed. Factories and business premises together with their machinery
and stock in trade, were looted, damaged or destroyed. A disturbing
feature of this is - according to the report of the Citizens Commission
headed by former Chief Justice of India S.M. Sikri - that, for the first
time in the history of mob violence in India, a systematic attack was
made on places of worship. Of about 400 Gurdwaras in Delhi some three
quarters were damaged, desecrated or destroyed (including the one in my
colony).
There are a few lines in William Dalrymple’s volume ‘City of Djinns - A
year in Delhi’ which warrant mention here. He said: ‘When the outside
world first discovered the Trilokpuri massacre, long after the rioters
had disappeared, it was Block 32 that dominated the headlines. Dogs were
found fighting over piles of purple human entrails. Charred and roasted
bodies lay in great heaps in the gullies, kerosene fumes still hung
heavy in the air. Piles of hair, cut from the Sikhs before they were
burnt alive lay on the verandahs; hacked off limbs clogged the gutters’.
Khushwant Singh in Volume II of his latest edition of the History of the
Sikhs states : ‘The general election in December 1984 was fought by the
Congress Party on the issue of the integrity of the country. A massive
propaganda campaign (expenditure estimated over Rs.300 crores) was
launched to convince the electorate that those who had killed Mrs.
Gandhi meant to destroy India’s unity. Huge colour posters depicting her
body on a bier draped in a saffron saree were splashed all over the
country; some showed Sikhs in uniform shooting at her. Other posters
showed rolls of barbed wire alongside a slogan: "Will the country’s
border finally be moved to your door step?" And beneath it was another
slogan: "India could be your vote away from unity or separatism". Less
subtle was one posed in the form of a question: "Why should you feel
uncomfortable riding in a taxi driven by a taxi driver who belongs to
another state"? If these slogans did not convey the message, those
shouted by Rajiv Gandhi’s supporters in his constituency against his
Sikh sister-in-law Menaka (the widow of Sanjay Gandhi) were blunt and to
the point: ‘Beti hai Sardar ki, Kaum hai ghaddar ki’ (She is the
daughter of Sikh, she belongs to a race of traitors). No wonder the
party won 401 out of the 508 seats contested.
The well known author Gita Mehta, in her recently published book, titled
‘Snakes and Ladders’ mentions about her experience and perception of the
massacre. She says "I accompanied a Sikh woman to the Delhi suburb of
Trilokpuri... mistaking me for a member of the dead Prime Minister’s
family, people sidled up to me and proudly boasted how many defenceless
Sikh families they had killed in their homes ‘how did you know where
they lived’? ‘We were given lists with their addresses. And cans of
kerosene’. ‘By whom’? ‘You know. Everybody knows’.
They could not understand my rage. They certainly would not have
understood the rage of the Indians flooding into a privately run relief
camp with food and clothing for the wounded women and children who had
survived the killings, where priests of every faith were trying to
comfort the bereaved families, people of every religion trying to
alleviate their anguish. All around me I heard the incandescent fury of
ordinary Indians that the Ruling Party had kept the Army in barracks,
claiming the massacre was a spontaneous outpouring of enraged grief. The
treatment given to criminals is the index of morality. A society which
shows leniency to criminals - in this context, apparently a designed
leniency - becomes a slave of criminals. |