Time for a National Audit

Much of this has been recorded in the thousands of recorded statements by those fleeing from their homes who certainly had no time to ‘‘manufacture evidence’’. The names of those who were perceived to be behind the attacks — often perpetrated by poorer communities in their own neighbourhood — Dharamdas Shastri, H.K.L. Bhagat, Lalit Maken, Jagdish Tytler, Sajjan Kumar, and many others, were already common knowledge and surfaced in statement after statement. I have personally recorded hundreds of testimonies from broken and distraught women who had seen sons, husbands, brothers and fathers hacked, burned alive or tortured before their eyes. It is these images that come back today to haunt us all.

Nagrik Ekta Manch, a people’s initiative, was born spontaneously, as much out of the enormous outpouring of outrage at the genocidal killings, as of a desire to provide some form of succour and relief. NEM became the hub of one of the most amazing, well organized, non-governmental relief and rehabilitation efforts in recent times. For three years, the quest to unravel the truth about 1984, bringing the guilty to justice, and securing basic relief and rehabilitation and justice to the victims, crowded out all else.

In my capacity as coordinator at Nanaksar Relief Camp, I testified before the Justice Ranganath Mishra Commission — and foolishly hoped that justice would be done. Young and old alike put their lives on hold for varying periods of time. Clearly we were no match for the staying power of the State — and one by one — we too fell by the way side, and went on to deal with ongoing work and newer crises of which there was no dearth. But we bore direct witness to the communalization of politics.

I was living in one of the colonies of Lutyens Imperial city — Lodi Estate — across the road from the India International Centre, and home to senior serving officers from the top civil and military echelons in the country. My husband — then a serving Admiral in the Indian Navy, was based in Visakhapanam, where he was commanding the Eastern Fleet. We knew we had his support for using our home as the impromptu camp office to a motley group of us — academics, activists, housewives, students and others, who would spend the days at Nanaksar, Farsh Bazaar and other far flung locations where the initial relief camps were set up. Returning home late, we would spend most of the night systematically documenting and tabulating the data gathered during the day. Similar scenes were enacted in several parts of the city. It was the syntheses of all our reports and eyewitness accounts which went to make up one of the seminal reports on the 1984 massacres (they cannot be termed riots) — entitled Who are the Guilty?

When we were not in the camps — we were either rescuing friends from mobs in far away places — or taking out Peace Marches in areas where vulnerable Sikhs cowered in their homes — terrified to come out and be seen. It was during the ‘‘Peace March’’ through Bhogal that we came face to face with the already organized shape of militant Hindutva — a mob of youngsters — all male who were ready to use their trishuls and iron rods against us. It was a close call indeed — with us women and a saffron robed swami to the rescue.

In my own neighbourhood — yes, the posh locality where the genteel folks lived — we were the main links to the outside world — and for providing daily necessities to an Army general, a Navy Commander and their families, who dared not stir out of their homes. Thanks to sympathetic individuals and a service jeep, I was able to rescue another friend, a Sikh Naval officer and his family from their trans Yamuna home, hidden under a camouflage of gunny sacks and razais.

Door to door appeals for medicines and clothing, were more often than not greeted with the words ‘they deserved it’ and doors slammed in the faces of the kids who volunteered to go around collecting.

We were all in a state of shock. Could this really be happening in the capital city of ‘‘free, democratic and secular’’ India? What had happened to all the constitutional assurances, our vision and dreams of a plural, diverse, tolerant society? All that was dealt a mortal blow in November 1984 and the script was already being written for Godhra, Gujarat. Criminalisation and communalization increasingly became the warp and weft of our political structure used to good effect in both 1984 and in 2002 to turn neighbours against each other.

It is time for a rigorous national audit — of our institutions, our structures, our educational, political, judicial and other systems. The collapse of Mumbai in the recent rains, was just one dramatic instance of the many fronts on which governments have failed to deliver. This is the challenge we face — it is time for ‘‘we the people’’ of India to stand up and be counted. Our failure to do so at this time can carry serious consequences for our common futures.

Lalita Ramdas lives and works out of a village near Alibag in the Konkan