1984
There Was No Gas in the Nazi Gas Chambers?
HARTOSH SINGH BAL
Much has been said about the priorities for the new AAP ('Aam Aadmi Party') government in New Delhi, India, over
the next six months. But commentators have not made much mention of what
remains the greatest stigma on Delhi - the 1984 massacre of Sikhs and
the subsequent response by the Indian state which is the most extreme
case example of our administrative and legal system colluding in a
denial of justice.
This is an issue that figures in the AAP manifesto as a commitment to
'providing justice to victims of 1984 [pogroms]' and 're-opening wrongly
closed cases'. Directly there may seem to be little that the AAP
government in Delhi can do. It probably cannot even announce another
commission of inquiry because public order does not lie under the ambit
of the Delhi government.
But there is nothing to stop the party from setting up a time-bound consultative process with the citizens of Delhi on the steps that need to be taken urgently to ensure justice for 1984. These steps need to go beyond the re-opening of wrongly closed cases, they need to consider cases that were never filed in the first place or punish those indicted by previous commissions which would include many in the senior leadership of the Delhi Police.
These concrete steps,
along with similar proposals for what needs to be done for the victims
of the 2002 killings in Gujarat, must then become part of its manifesto
for the Lok Sabha elections.
Focusing attention on the issue is what is necessary today, at a time
when a great number of Congress supporters who have brought the term
'liberal' into disrepute seek to dismiss the relevance of 1984, at a time
when both Congress and BJP supporters play the
your-killings-were-worse-than-ours game.
The latest to join the fray is Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, who argued that Congress leaders, Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh and Rahul Gandhi, who were fighting elections today, were not the people
responsible for the anti-Sikh pogroms. No one had accused them of that,
whereas Modi was the chief minister when the massacres in Gujarat took place.
Moreover, he said that the anti-Sikh genocide was not something that
fitted into the Congress philosophy. "There is no philosophy of killing
Sikhs in the Congress," he told NDTV in an interview.
Quite apart from the fact that it would come as no great relief to the
families of victims that the deaths of their family members were not
philosophically motivated, this is simply untrue. Since 1984, all those
who collaborated in the violence have systematically been rewarded
within the Congress, a process that has continued even today.
Mass murderer Sajjan Kumar's son was given a ticket (election seat) for the recent Delhi elections and the recently announced chief of the Delhi Congress Arvinder 'Lovely' is the son of a man who distinguished himself in the city by his fervent attempts to ensure that another mass-murderer HKL Bhagat was not blamed for the 1984 killings.
The sins of the fathers must not visit the sons but how can they be
ignored when the sons continue to benefit from the sins? When Amartya
Sen talks of those fighting elections today, he forgets murderer Kamal Nath who headed a mob that burnt two Sikhs to death outside Gurdwara Rakabganj within sight of the nation's Parliament.
What explains such amnesia, or the inability to acquaint himself with
even a semblance of the truth in a scholar such as Amartya Sen?
The same amnesia is evident in a book written by his good friend, the philosopher Martha C Nussbaum, who actually has stated that 'rape and killing-by-incineration were not central elements of the violence' in 1984.
And there was no gas in the Nazi gas chambers, Ms Nussbaum?
From high philosophy to trivial commentary these sentiments abound,
without provoking the outrage they would have if they were made about a
party other than the Congress. In the Business Standard Mihir S Sharma,
whose bias in this matter borders on racial bigotry, actually went on to argue that he would consider 1984 relevant today 'when I see a spate of attacks on Sikhs by Congressmen across north India in 2013'.
This denial of the truth by otherwise respected members of the secular
class in Delhi is understandable. Long years of social commonality
through collegial friendship or interactions that start as professional
linkages between bureaucrats and Congress politicians and then go down
generations have tied together Delhi's secular elite with a certain
section of the Congress leadership.
This is the elite that is often
represented in most of the well-heeled NGOs, in certain TV channels, or
the opinion writing section of the media. This is the elite that can't
tell the difference between being liberal and being supportive of the
Congress. This is also the elite that is paving the way for Narendra
Modi, much as the hollowness of the secular elite in Turkey paved the
way for an autocrat and demagogue such as Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
In such a climate, the AAP must set itself up as a liberal force devoid
of this baggage. And taking up 1984 in well thought out fashion is one
way of beginning to do so. The case for ensuring justice in incidents of
communal violence must begin with 1984. To be able to obtain justice
for the violence of 2002 in Gujarat without addressing 1984 will always
leave us open to charges of selective justice, on the other hand, if
justice for 1984 is ensured, justice for 2002 will have to follow.
This is a cause that goes well beyond electricity bills and the Commonwealth Games scam.
Are you up to the challenge Arvind?
[Courtesy: First Post. Edited for sikhchic.com]
December 24, 2013
Conversation about this article
1: Sunny Grewal (Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada), December 24, 2013, 2:23 PM.
The AAP is receiving support from the Congress party. Nope, there'll be no justice. Yet.
2: Jasvir Kaur (Calgary, Alberta, Canada), December 24, 2013, 6:17 PM.
There is no Remorse in the Indian DNA. Unfortunately, even when the truth is in front of them they are in denial (please don't tell me its because of having being under the British rule). There is no law in India for minorities. There will be no justice for our people. Let's try to help and make what's left of the lives of the 1984 victims comfortable and their children well educated.
3: Bhupinder Singh (New Delhi, India ), December 25, 2013, 1:29 AM.
We Sikhs are also to be blamed for the 1984 victims. We never came together for their rehabilitation. In the recent Muzzafar Nagar riots, many well-to-do Muslims arranged for the reconstruction of the houses/shops for victims and offered them monetary support till they start earning again. We never did that. We kept on begging from the central government which was, in any case, hostile. This was totally unbecoming of our self esteem ... and our values.