Mr Tytler must go

The Manmohan Singh government is best advised not to try and brazen this one out. The uproar that has greeted its tabling of the belated Nanavati Commission report and the sterile Action Taken Report in Parliament resonates with a shared outrage. How can a government use up the entire six months legally permitted to it to consider the report into a longago massacre, only to duck each and every one of its recommendations for action, in full public view? The ATR has promised to ‘‘examine’’ the need for action when it does not reject it outright, as in the case of Union minister Jagdish Tytler. There are moments in a nation’s life when a government seems frightfully out of touch with the people, when it seems to be lurching on ahead dangerously cocooned in insensitivity and arrogance. This could be one such — if the government does not do something immediately.

Minister Jagdish Tytler must be asked to step down so that his role in the anti-Sikh pogrom is impartially investigated. Cases against Congress MP Sajjan Kumar must be pursued fully and honestly. Those weak alibis must be dispensed with — that this implicated police officer is retired since and that culpable politician too infirm. Some purposeful movement must be demonstrated on initiating systemic change. But, in the end, this is about punishing the guilty men of 1984 so that a nation can move on from that terrible moment. The calls to forgive and forget nevertheless, reek of a resignation and cynicism that have no place in a system which promises justice to all its citizens, be they a part of the majority community or in a minority.

In a democracy, if mob violence of the kind that was perpetrated on the Capital’s Sikh community in 1984 is ever allowed to be glossed over, even once, if its memory is routinised — that is the biggest danger. It would be a sad travesty, indeed, if a government that professes a special commitment to India’s pluralism and a more humane face to its policies, should contribute to the undermining of faith in both secularism and justice. It would be tragic, also, if the government were to correct itself as a mere firefighting exercise, because the opposition and its own allies had raised the pitch too high. The UPA government has no time to lose if it wants to salvage some modicum of decency and honour from this quicksand.