Author: Jaya Jaitly
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: April 12, 2002
Introduction: Eighteen years later,
who's been nailed, who's been punished?
The Vigyan Bhavan premises are host
to the Justice Venkataswami Commission inquiring into the issues arising
out of the Tehelka Tapes and the Justice Nanavati Commission seeking the
truth about what happened to Sikhs in October 1984 following Indira Gandhi's
assassination.
The former arouses more interest
in certain political circles even though it is looking into matters of
procedure and allegations of corruption arising out of videotapes whose
veracity is still uncertain.
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 Gandhi '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, "Who are the guilty?", 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 "riots" 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 "action taken", 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 Mishra'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. - 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 Gandhi's funeral was
over.
The three days "to teach them a
lesson", 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 "neighbours"
and "taxi drivers" and questioned Sikh patriotism by asking people whether
they wanted the country's borders at their doorsteps.
Political analyst Rajni Kothari
wrote in the December 23 issue: "Rajiv Gandhi's government was inaugurated
in Delhi through massive killing, arson and incitement to crime by influential
politicians accompanied by a total breakdown of civil authority... There
is considerable evidence to suggest that the neglect was planned neglect."
The greatest beneficiary of all
this was Sonia Gandhi's late husband whose party won more than 400 seats
to the BJP's two in the ensuing Lok Sabha election.
He had declared at the Boat Club
rally to commemorate his late mother's birth anniversary that "when a great
tree falls, the earth will shake", 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 Congress' 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.