Witches’ Night: October 31

Khushwant Singh, Sikh Review, October 1995

A strange coincidence that had not occurred to me before did while I was turning over the pages of an illustrated book, Feasts and Festivals of England.

I found that October 31 is known to the western world as Halloween - the night of the witches. “Witches, ghosts and goblins are free to infest the darkness,” reads the text.

My mind goes back eleven years to the October 31 of 1984. By a tragic coincidence, we too had our witches’ night following the assassination of Mrs. Gandhi. Not ghosts, not goblins were about to infest the darkness, but beasts in human form took the lives of thousands of innocent people to avenge one dastardly murder.

In Europe and America, they light bonfires to scare evil spirits. In Delhi and other cities of northern India, evil men made a bonfire of the living by dousing them with kerosene and setting them aflame. For us, Halloween was also like the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve, when thousands of Protestants were murdered in cold blood by Catholics.

What happened to the perpetrators of our Halloween massacre? Nothing. It took over a year for a very reluctant government to appoint a commission of enquiry. The presiding judge knew his job; he made some pious statements and appointed two other commissions. They also knew their jobs. They made a few noises, ordered action against a few individuals who were foolish enough to let themselves be photographed while leading mobs on their murderous missions. We can now assume that nothing will be done to the murderers - least of all by the Congress party government because most of the killers belonged to this party.

I have often written - and write again - that crime unpunished breed criminals. I have little doubt in my mind that the chief cause of the sporadic senseless violence in Punjab, Haryana, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh is due to the government’s criminal inability to punish the perpetrators of the pogrom of October-November, 1984.

And why, one may ask, are men charged with serious crimes like an attempt to kill the Prime Minister and hijack a plane not brought to trial after so many years in detention? Is this the way to run the government of a country like India?