Remember 1984

If one reason is that 1984 is best forgotten for some people, the recent events in Gujarat make it imperative to recall the past and learn a few lessons.

Hundreds who are still active in politics, voluntary organisations and the media, including this writer, were eye-witnesses to the targeted attack on every Sikh person, establishment, dwelling and taxi stand for four days from the late afternoon of October 31, 1984. Khoon ka badla khoon se was the refrain which emanated from Safdarjang Road, where Mrs Gandhi8217;s body lay; it reverberated over Doordarshan and found echoes across Delhi, Gurgaon, Kanpur, Bokaro, Indore and in trains.

Sikhs desperately cutting off their hair and removing their turbans to escape identification were attacked with iron rods, trapped in burning tyres or in their flaming shops and homes. Even Sikh army officers in uniform were pulled out of trains and killed.

The police went around on motorcycles shouting encouragement to the mobs while Congress leaders were seen instigating those beholden to them in the vast slum clusters.

All this has been documented in the thousands of heartrending affidavits filed by the victims and in the PUCL report, 8220;Who are the guilty?8221;, termed the job of a kangaroo court by the Congress.

The government belatedly put the death count at 425 but Atal Bihari Vajpayee asked the BJP to compile an accurate list which was released at the end of November 1984. This put the toll at 2,500. Both Madanlal Khurana and V.K. Malhotra have deposed before the Nanavati Commission, recounting how the Congress had raised a hue and cry calling the BJP anti-national for quoting such a high figure.

But the official figure compiled by the Justice Ahuja Committee as late as 1987 confirmed 2,733 deaths. No government has provided a consolidated figure for the rest of India.

Despite such unprecedented horror in the capital of a supposedly civilised India, the Congress government headed by Rajiv Gandhi chose not to institute a commission of inquiry immediately. Human rights groups filed a writ, but the government took the stand that the court had no powers to institute a commission of inquiry. However, in April 1985, when the Rajiv-Longowal accord was to be signed, Longowal listed a commission as one of the pre-conditions. So came the Justice Ranganath Mishra Commission, more as a political sop than out of duty.

Mishra, who is today a Congress member of the Rajya Sabha, stated in his report that a number of Congress workers participated in the 8220;riots8221; but that the Congress party was not involved. The report also said that if the army had been called in time, 2,000 lives could have been saved.

It did not go into who was responsible for all this since that had been conveniently left out of the terms of reference.

The report was submitted in August 1986 but the government took six months to lay it before Parliament. To demonstrate 8220;action taken8221;, it appointed retired justices for i the Jain-Banerji Committee to go into why a large number of cases were not registered at all or were not registered properly; ii the Kapoor-Mittal Committee to inquire into the role of the police; and iii the Ahuja Committee to determine the number of deaths.

On Mishra8217;s crucial finding that the delay in army deployment resulted in 2,000 deaths, the government was totally silent. No one shouted for the resignation of the prime minister or the home minister. Little or no action was taken on the reports submitted by these committees.

The deployment of the army in 1984 was in sharp contrast to recent deployment in Gujarat. Army trucks were helplessly lost in the tree-lined avenues of New Delhi as killings went on unabated in faraway Palam and Trilokpuri. At 5 p.m. on the evening of the assassination the car of none less than the president of India, Giani Zail Singh, a Sikh, was stoned near the All India Institute of Medical Sciences. Large-scale violence had begun. This should have been enough to call the army out but even on November 1, as killings went on in east and west Delhi, Palam area and the south districts, curfew was not imposed till 4 p.m. 8212; and that too only in central and south Delhi. In the east it led to 1,026 Sikhs being killed. Only at 8 p.m. on the night of November 1 was curfew imposed throughout Delhi.

The army was called at 2.30 p.m. on November 1 but when the general officer commanding went to meet the lieutenant governor, he was kept waiting for one hour. Was this swift action compared to Gujarat?

The army reached south and central Delhi at 6 p.m. and east and west Delhi only in the afternoon of November 2. No magistrates to give permission to fire or navigators were provided, rendering the army virtually ineffective until Mrs Gandhi8217;s funeral was over.

The three days 8220;to teach them a lesson8221;, as the message went, were finally over as her funeral pyre died down.

After this, the Congress unleashed a highly inflammatory election campaign with bit advertisements in all newspapers. These are well-documented in the January 13, 1985, issue of the now closed Illustrated Weekly of India.

It spread fear about 8220;neighbours8221; and 8220;taxi drivers8221; and questioned Sikh patriotism by asking people whether they wanted the country8217;s borders at their doorsteps.

Political analyst Rajni Kothari wrote in the December 23 issue: 8220;Rajiv Gandhi8217;s government was inaugurated in Delhi through massive killing, arson and incitement to crime by influential politicians accompanied by a total breakdown of civil authority8230; There is considerable evidence to suggest that the neglect was planned neglect.8221;

The greatest beneficiary of all this was Sonia Gandhi8217;s late husband whose party won more than 400 seats to the BJP8217;s two in the ensuing Lok Sabha election.

He had declared at the Boat Club rally to commemorate his late mother8217;s birth anniversary that 8220;when a great tree falls, the earth will shake8221;, clearly approbation for those who committed genocide in the name of spontaneous anger.

Today she fears the BJP government in Gujarat will have learned the lessons that her party taught and turn the tables, to the detriment of the Congress.

It is clear that the Congress8217; rantings on the recent events in Gujarat stand on hypocrisy and amnesia, but Narendra Modi should not succumb to the temptation of imitation and attempt to benefit electorally out of violence and mayhem. In the meanwhile, let not the existence of the Justice Nanavati Commission be allowed to fade from public view.