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Statement By The Communist Ghadar Party Of India,
1999
Fifteen years ago, on November 1-3, 1984, the rulers of India carried
out the cold blooded slaughter of thousands of innocent people belonging
to the Sikh faith, in Delhi, Kanpur and other places, following the
assassination of Indira Gandhi. Well known leaders of the then ruling
Congress Party led armed gangs to loot and plunder the property of the
Sikhs, with the backing of the police, for three full days. They burnt
men alive, raped and mutilated women. And this inhuman crime was
justified by the then new Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi who said:
"When a big tree falls, the earth will shake"
Justice Denied
For full fifteen years, the people have been demanding justice - that
the guilty of November 1984 must be punished. When the BJP assumed power
in the Delhi administration, it was expected that they would punish
those leaders of the Congress Party who were clearly identified in the
eyes of the people as the criminals who organised the communal violence.
But nobody was convicted. Today the BJP has again assumed the position
of supreme power at the head of the Central Government, but still the
guilty of November 1984 are not only free, they continue to contest
elections as the "representatives" of the people! Why is this the case?
Why has not a single guilty neta been punished so far?
The answer to this question was revealed by the veteran politician and
ex-Prime Minister Chandrasekhar during a parliamentary debate last year.
He advised all the parliamentarians to quietly bury this issue for the
sake of "stability". If the issue of punishing the guilty of November
1984 is pursued, then the issue of punishing the guilty of December 1992
and January 1993, those responsible for the communal violence following
the destruction of Babri Masjid, will also have to be addressed. If both
the major parties in parliament get exposed for their communal and
criminal acts and their leaders get convicted, then the rule of the
bourgeoisie will not be safe. "So let us all agree to forget about
November 1984". This was the advice which Chandrasekhar offered and
which Vajpayee accepted in the Parliament.
Maybe Mr. Vajpayee can forget but the Indian people cannot forget those
black days of November 1984. Those who lost their near and dear ones,
killed brutally in front of their eyes, cannot forget. Those who were
reduced to abysmal poverty overnight with the loss of all earning
members of the family will obviously never forget that event. Nor can
the broad masses of workers, peasants, women and youth of India afford
to forget the lessons of this gruesome experience.
Lessons Of November 1984
The first lesson, which the people drew right at the time it happened,
is that it is the rulers who are responsible for communal violence, not
the people or their religious beliefs. The victims, those members of the
affected families who took shelter in various gurudwaras and makeshift
camps, squarely laid the blame on the ruling party and the State. "We do
not blame Hindus, we blame the Sarkar", they all said without exception.
Second, although the Constitution declares India to be a "secular"
Republic, the Indian State permits political parties to organise
communal violence and the police acts to facilitate such criminal acts.
The Indian Republic is a communal state. In other words, the
"secularism" of the Indian State is a fig leaf, a fraudulent mask that
hides the communal face of this State inherited from the colonisers.
Third, the fact that not a single individual leader, not to speak of the
party as a whole, has been convicted for his crimes has confirmed that
there is no justice under the existing political system. The rulers can
commit the most monstrous crimes against the people and the people have
no power to stop them, nor even to punish them after the crime has been
committed. Far from being convicted or punished, the leading organisers
of communal violence can continue to contest elections and become
"people’s representatives". What exists in the name of the "rule of law"
is in fact the rule of arbitrariness, a system where power is
concentrated exclusively in the hands of a small minority in society
which enjoys unlimited powers to do what it pleases.
Fourth, the developments over the past 15 years have shown that what
took place in 1984 was the beginning of an epoch in the history of India
in which state terrorism, including state-organised violence, became the
preferred policy of the ruling class to suppress, divert and divide the
opposition to its rule. The policy that had been followed in Kashmir,
Manipur and Nagaland for many decades, which had become the policy in
Punjab, was now to become the preferred policy of dealing with dissent
all over the country. In Uttar Pradesh as well as in Andhra Pradesh and
Tamil Nadu, and all over the country, people have been slaughtered in
the name of "law and order" or in the name of "anti-terrorism" or in the
name of defending "unity and integrity". Mr. Vajpayee speaks about
protecting the life of every citizen of India, but what is the meaning
of protection when the Sarkar itself is the biggest threat to the
personal security of the majority of citizens? |