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1984

Nothing Has Changed in India:
Modi Was Elected in 2014 On The Strength of a Massacre, Just Like Rajiv in 1984

GUNEET KAUR

 

 

 



Are we to be fooled by the crocodile tears being shed by Narendra Modi and his cohorts on the 30th Anniversary of the 1984 Genocide? He and his government have the power, even at this late juncture, to deliver justice. Will they?

You be the judge … the author spells out Modi’s modus operandi.





I did not witness the violence of June 1984 or November 1984.

I was born in 1990 but I grew up listening to stories of killings, lootings, disappearances and rapes in June and November 1984, and the years that followed. Parents, uncles, aunts and grandparents would often vent out their frustration at injustices meted out to Sikh community, the rampant impunity for perpetrators and the electoral gains that Rajiv Gandhi made because of the pogrom. They would remember relatives and friends who got killed because of the violence.

A part of me refused to believe them because my school textbooks told me about the secular values of our (Indian) Constitution and our nation. The textbooks won’t talk about Bhagalpur, or Nellie or 1984.

Then, 2002 happened.

This was also the time when 24x7 news channels had just entered the Indian media industry. The genocide of Gujarat was playing on screens in our homes and the Chief Minister of the state was clearly facilitating and instigating it.

Those were horrifying days. I was twelve then and the child in me realized that I was lied to. The state’s secular ethos goes for a toss when elections are at stake. It perpetuates violence on its own citizens because they belong to a religion that happens to be in the minority. Its agents are complicit, yet untouchable for mass murders. These agents will eventually be awarded for successfully overseeing the implementation of genocides.

If Rajiv Gandhi was electorally awarded in 1984, then 2014 was no different. It’s peculiar how I keep getting lessons in my own community’s history by watching Gujarat 2002 unfold over the years.

I am not much of a believer but somehow the beginning of June and November every year brings out the Sikh in me through an identity of a shared sorrow. For three decades now, we’ve mourned alone but then some people suddenly remembered what happened in November 1984 because they needed it to counter 2002.

The point wasn’t that genocide was committed on the Sikh population all over the country in 1984 and justice needs to be done. The point was that the nation has allowed it before and it should be allowed again. Genocide perpetrators should lead the nation.

Our loss and tragedy was reduced to a mere political counter-point, a bargaining chip, to justify similar killings years later.

The Prime Minister and his bhakts (hangers-on) made a mockery of our grief.

Their confusion on seeing the number of Sikhs in anti-Modi protests in US and the people’s court organized by “Sikhs4Justice” wasn’t surprising, for we were seen as a minority without any agency.

I had left US by then but I would have participated in those protests had I been there. I wouldn’t have been standing in solidarity or doing a favor to another community. I would have been standing for my own self because Gujarat 2002 was my tragedy too. The perpetrators might change from Rajiv Gandhi and Arun Nehru and Tytler, to Modi and Amit Shah but our fight is not a against few men.

Our fight is against communal hatred and violence. It’s a fight against a system that provides impunity to the perpetrators and awards them.

A fresh round of compensations has been announced for victims of the 1984 pogrom. Victims don’t want compensation. They want justice and justice includes an end to such happenings in future.

The Prime Minister recently tried to show some sympathy to the victims of the ‘84 genocide. This happened while Trilokpuri was still burning after the recent episode of communal violence!

The timing and location of the same only reinforces the belief that communal hatred will continue to be an (un)official policy of the ruling party as has been witnessed from the rise in communal tensions all over the country. Any show of sympathy in such a scenario is a pretence and only deepens the unhealed wounds of communities affected by communal pogroms in India.

1984 is not the only dagger that pierced the heart of India. Every single incident of communal violence since then has wounded the idea of Indian nationhood.

As a Sikh, I would request the Prime Minister and his party members to stop ridiculing our grief by manipulating it for political gains.

Instead, do something to check the rising communal polarization in the country ever since the ruling party has come to power in the center.

The BJP has long opposed the ‘Communal Violence Bill’ on rather communal grounds.

How then does the Prime Minister think he will stop more of such daggers from piercing the heart of India, or does he not want them to stop?


[Guneet Kaur is a legal and research fellow with the Jagdalpur Legal Aid Group. She obtained a BA LLB (Hons) degree from the Hidayatullah National Law University, Raipur, India. Subsequently, she obtained an LLM from the UC Berkeley School of Law in California, USA. She has a rich and diverse experience in the field of transitional justice and has worked as a Research Associate with the Project on Armed Conflict and People’s Rights at Haas School of Business, UC-Berkeley.]

[Courtesy: The Citizen. Edited for sikhchic.com]
November 3, 2014

Conversation about this article

1: Sunny Grewal (Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada), November 03, 2014, 2:26 PM.

I wonder if Hindus scratch their heads and wonder why Sikhs are still talking about 1984. I can assure you that Muslims are not talking about what happened in Gujarat and that was barely a decade ago. The Sikh story will win in the long run, we will keep talking about it while the mass of Hindus will forget it, probably in a few decades. When India goes the way of the Mughals, their history will be determined by our collective experiences which transcends time and space. If people consider the Mughal Empire to be one blotted by religious discrimination, it is because our people stored and shared our view of their actions for centuries even after their empire collapsed. We can point to specific incidents whereas Hindus can only make generalized statements of discrimination, our collective memory is stronger. We will dictate history, the Hindus may not give us justice but I can assure you that history will. That is the strength of our community.

2: Hardev Singh (Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada), November 04, 2014, 1:30 AM.

Guneet Kaur ji, to the question you pose at the beginning, I would say that as long as we have in the younger generation politically focused and astute people like you, there is hope. There is hope that one day the nation will expiate its guilt and the blood on its hands. In the meantime, keep shaming them and do not fall in another trap of proclamations of measly compensation or yet another inquiry.

3: Kaala Singh (Punjab), November 04, 2014, 2:16 AM.

Like the Soviet Union, it is only extreme violence and genocide against the minority nations which is holding the Indian State together. They are destined to go the Soviet way. The Soviet Union was a superpower and had the resources to survive for a long time. India in its short existence of a mere 67 years has perpetrated genocide on every ethnic minority, be it Sikhs, Muslims, Christians, Kashmiris, Naagas, Assamese, Tamils and the list goes on. Add women and children to the list! The Indian State will not change its ways because terrorism against any dissent is the very basis of its existence. The Indian State and its economy will collapse if it was to let go these minority nations.

4: Kaala Singh (Punjab), November 05, 2014, 3:41 AM.

Here is some more information to decode 1984.In 1966 India launched massive attacks and even air strikes in Mizoram in North East India to crush the freedom struggle of Mizos who are Christians and are a distinct ethnic group. Later the same thing happened in Assam, Nagaland, Manipur, Kashmir, Tamil Nadu and finally Punjab. Since the Sikh struggle was the strongest among all these movements they used other ways to crush the Sikhs and hence the genocide of November 1984 happened. Many Sikhs believe that November 1984 would have happened even if Indira Gandhi had not been killed. This was a decision of the State to target and crush the Sikhs and not some random criminal tribes who suddenly decided to start murdering the Sikhs. Balram Jakhar, a senior Congress leader had openly threatened to "wipe out the Sikhs". Another senior Congress leader publicly said that they had "broken the back of the Sikhs". Herein lies another big fact: can anybody imagine a true democracy like the UK bombing Scotland and massacring the Scots living in England, or Canada bombing Quebec and carrying out a mass-murder of the French people living in the rest of Canada? This should tell us us that the so-called world's "biggest democracy" is pure sham.

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Modi Was Elected in 2014 On The Strength of a Massacre, Just Like Rajiv in 1984"









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