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“1984 Massacre, Wounds That Do Not Heal”

Mr. Satyindra Singh

On October 21 1984 Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated; within the next four or five days nearly three thousand Indians were slaughtered by fellow Indians and the vast majority of killings were in the national capital. But whilst Indira Gandhi's assassins have been hanged two years later the killers of the thousands have not only not been punished but the nation continues to honour them by making them ministers and holders of party office with senior positions. Many are also likely lo be given tickets for the forthcoming elections.

These killers have no remorse of any kind fortified as they are by their leadership at the highest level - Prime Minister Narasimha Rao was the Home Minister in 1984. In stark contrast we need to recall the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh on Vaisakhi Day in 1919. Unbelievably in the House of Commons the most uncompromising of Imperialists Winston Churchill stated: “However we may dwell upon the difficulties of General Dyer upon the critical situation in Ihe Punjab upon the danger to the Europeans throughout the provinces - one tremendous fact Stands out I mean the slaughter of nearly 400 persons. That is an episode without parallel in the modern history of the British Empire - we have to make it absolutely clear that this is not the British way of doing business.”

Dyer was removed from his command and not long afterwards was a broken man; only a few days before his death he turned to his wife and said: “I long to meet my God so that I may ask whether I did right or wrong at Amritsar!” One wonders whether the strong man of the Delhi Congress H.K.L. Bhagal and the others involved experience any sense of remorse or will ever be punished.

It needs to be mentioned here that 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 holocaust by some of our invaders centuries ago. Jawahar Lal Nehru said in one of his letters to Mountbatten dated June 22 1947 (quoted he one of the twelve volumes of Transfer of Power, published by Her Majesty's Stationery Office) 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 the full force of it, but when the individual is multiplied a thousand fold, our senses are dulled and we become insensitive.”

The nation is aware, but strangely silent, about the savagery indulged in by her cohorts and the party in power in the wake of the assassination. Thousands of helpless men, women and children, who were pulled out of running trains, were butchered by rampaging mobs. We have had any number of committees, commissions and judges making recommendations to render justice, handing out the severest strictures on a partisan and criminalised police.

Throughout the carnage, Delhi’s policemen either made themselves scarce or stood by while mobs set fire to defenceless human beings, some even participating in the orgy of violence. In the Lajpat Nagar area of Delhi on November 1, when a group of concerned citizens tried to organize a peace march in support of Hindu-Sikh amity, a police jeep blocked the way and the police officials demanded to know if the marchers had official permission. 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 stolen or destroyed. Factories and business premises, together with 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 405 gurdwaras in Delhi, some three-quarters were damaged or destroyed.

The gurdwara in my colony was extensively damaged and much desecrated. And on 1st November there was a murderous mob of about two hundred goons, inspired by the ruling party, in front of my house - many other houses of the same community were similarly targeted - baying for our blood. My family and I were on the rooftop and, militarily speaking, we had a tactical advantages being on high ground. Our ammunition were pieces of broken glass from windows and broken pitcher pieces used in slings (catapults) hastily assembled to give ‘battle’, we also had a toy gun to threaten the mob. However, the mob moved on after shouting obscene slogans and exhibiting obscene gestures. I have always been reminded of the hymn that we used to sing in school, Sacred Heart School, Lahore, over six decades ago - “With sling and stone he slew”, the Biblical story of David and Goliath!

Over the next four days more than 3000 Sikhs died at the hands of these mobs in Delhi. Most died gruesome death - burnt alive or hacked to pieces. The carnage spread lo neighbouring states as well. In Uttar Pradesh, more than a thousand Sikhs were reported killed in cities such as Kanpur, Lucknow and Ghaziabad. In Haryana, the death toll exceeded a hundred. In Bihar, the toll rose to 300. Many Sikhs were also slaughtered by well-armed mobs in Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Himachal Pradesh and Maharashtra. The Congress party ruled in most of these states.

V.N. Narayanan, in his volume, Tryst faith Terror (page 24), also records:

“October 31 to November 3, completed the cycle of tragedy and trauma of 1984. The Indian nation was at its worst in displaying anti-Sikh barbarity and at its best in expressing shock and outrage at the savagery. The Sikhs of Delhi would never forget the farmer and could never stop savouring the latter. It would have brought home an important lesson. It was the Government and the ruling party that let loose the barbarians, but ordinary people were trying to protect the innocent targets...”

There are a few lines in William Dalrymple’s volume, City in Djinns - A Year in Delhi, which warrants mention here. He says: “When the outside world first discovered the Trilokpuri massacres, 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 burned alive lay on the veranda: hacked-off limbs clogged the gutters.”

A social function a couple of months ago, attended by retired judges, retired senior bureaucrats, vice-chancellors and several authors and intellectuals, commenced with a ten-minute kirtan by eight young girls and one boy in their pre-teens. The children’s parents had been slain in Trilokpuri by ‘inspired’ mobs. Some of these children must have been toddlers in 1984 and unaware of the happenings fourteen years ago. They rendered two shabads on this occasion with a stoic but fearless expression. The first was from Guru Gobind Singh’s Epilogue to Chandi Chariter: translated into English it runs thus:

“Grant me this boon O God, from Thy greatness.
May I never refrain from righteous acts.
May I fight without fear all foes in life's battle.
With confident courage claiming victory
May my highest ambition be singing Thy praises.
And Thy glory be grained in my mind
When this moral life reaches its limits,
May I die fighting with limitless courage”

The English translation of the second shabad, which brought many tears, was as follows:

“This world is a transitory place.
Some of our compatriots have already gone,
and some day the rest of us will also have to go.
This world is camly a tempolary abode.”

As someone there remarked after these children had left, this shahad was fraught with humility and fatalism.

And lastly, when a wound is not healed - when basic justice is denied - it festers and when iestcring is not taken care of, gangrene sets in, and then surgery becomes the only remedy. Let us learn from history, for history is a cruel stepmother and when it strikes it stops at nothing! As media reports have revealed. past memories still haunt the victims of the 1984 massacre - and efforts to bring the guilty to hook face stumbling blocks.

The Delhi High Court, fourteen years after the offence was Committed, has upheld the death sentence on Kishori Lal on 16th October, 1998; he was given the sentence two years ago by a lower Court. But there is another coun of appeal and we would be in the next millennium before the final ‘outcome’. Kishori Lal, a butcher by profession, scythed down his terrorised victims with unhurried venom. For him it was apparently just another day at the office. Only, this time his victims were not of the porcine kind!

The treatment given to criminals is the index of morality of a society. A society, which shows leniency to criminals - in this context a very designed leniency - becomes a slave of criminals.

   
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