No escape

The UPA government’s reluctance to table the Nanavati Commission report in Parliament is palpable. It is also disgraceful. Consider this tortured timeline. More than two decades have passed since Delhi imploded with mob violence against its Sikh community in the wake of a prime minister’s tragic assassination. The Nanavati Commission, set up in 2000 to belatedly probe the crimes of 1984, submitted its report after nearly five long years in February, 2005. The UPA government is yet to table the Commission’s report, along with the Action Taken Report (ATR), in Parliament. Now, with less than a week left before it is legally bound to do so — the six month statutory period expires on August 8 — the government is still scrambling for an explanation when confronted by hostile Opposition MPs in Parliament and queasy allies outside it.

Is the government led by the Congress party still unabashedly protecting its own? Is that why it stubbornly resisted the calls to table the Nanavati report in Parliament even earlier this year, in the Budget session? And then, can a Congress party that must be so obviously pushed and prodded by statutory deadlines into coming clean on hate crimes which occurred when a government led by it was in power, rail against the absence of justice in Gujarat? Does it have the credibility, or moral authority to do so? These are not merely rhetorical questions. The UPA government may — hopefully — soon have in its hands the report of the inquiry, also conducted by Justice Nanavati, into the shameful violence of Gujarat 2002. The lack of alacrity it shows now on shining the light on events in 1984 will come back to haunt it then.

But this isn’t just about anticipating future discomforts. The Congress party and the UPA has much at stake in being sincere, and appearing to be sincere, about bringing some kind of closure to the tragedy of Delhi 1984. This is a government that came to power swearing by secular principles. A government held together by the professed antipathies of all its disparate parts to the divisive ideology and violent politics of communalism. This government took oath in the penumbra of Sonia Gandhi’s halo, much dented since. If the sinking feeling — that there are double standards in dealing with communal violence — is allowed to settle into a widely-held conviction, the UPA government loses legitimacy in deep and irretrievable ways.