39th
ANNIVERSARY OF 1984 SIKH MASSACRE: KILLERS-RAPISTS YET TO BE IDENTIFIED &
PUNISHED!
Inssan abhee
tak
zindaa hae,
Zindaa hone
per sharminda hae!
Human
beings are still alive;
They
are ashamed to be alive!
[Renowned
cultural-political-human rights activist of Pakistan, Shahid Nadeem's Urdu
couplet on the silence of the civil society on attacks on minorities in
Pakistan. He received forty lashes for writing and singing these lines by the
Zia regime in Pakistan. It would be no different in present day India ruled by
RSS-BJP.]
For almost last 3
decades, on every anniversary of the horrific 1984 massacre of Sikhs in India,
this author has been reminding the Nation how Indian State and judiciary did
not bother to punish the perpetrators of this horrendous mass killing of the
innocents of the second largest religious minority of our country. On every
anniversary the author hoped that now justice would be done and he would not
have to write the painful story once again as a reminder. It has not happened
in year 2022 also; the saga of the criminal betrayal by the Indian Republic has
no end and author like the victims continues to cry before a deaf and dumb
Indian State. However, the shameless
Indian State with the 39th anniversary approaching made noises as if
it was working for getting justice to the victims, like in the past! The
National Minority Commission was kind enough to issue notices on October 30,
2021 to Delhi, Jharkhand, Orissa, West Bengal, Bihar, Haryana, Jammu and
Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh “to file reports with the Commission detailing the
victims, compensation paid so far and arrests and action taken against the
accused in these cases”.
Earlier, in January
2021, the UP government told the nation that a “Special Investigation Team
(SIT) set up by the Yogi Adityanath government to probe cases related to the
1984 anti-Sikh riots in Kanpur has claimed to have collected evidence of murder
and arson from a house in the district’s Naubasta area where two people were
killed and set ablaze [in 1984]”.
It took Indian State
only 38 years to achieve these two goals in search for the killers of 1984.
TWO KINDS OF JUSTICE
Whenever the country witnesses
large-scale violence against the minorities and Dalits, the search for
perpetrators continues endlessly and the criminals are rarely identified or punished.
Major incidents of violence against minorities like Nellie massacre (1983),
Sikh massacre (1984), Hashimpura custodial massacre of Muslim youth (1987),
pre/post- Ayodhya mosque demolition violence against Muslims (1990-92), Gujarat
carnage (2002) and Kandhmal cleansing of Christians (2008) and continuing
blood-bath of Kuki Tribals (who are mostly Christians) in Manipur are testimony to this reality.
But when the victims are Dalits
or minorities no such urgency is shown. In such cases Indian State is fond of
playing commission-commission. Enquiry Commissions after commissions would be
constituted to see that the heinous crimes disappear from the public memory.
The horrendous massacre of Sikhs in different parts of India in 1984 is a
living testimony of this criminal attitude of the Indian justice system with
the motto in Sanskrit:
‘Yato Dharma Tato Jaya’ [Where there is righteousness and dharma,
there is victory].
Judiciary must explain what it means by Dharma. Does it include religions of
minorities and right of Dalits also?
The scenario of the anti-Dalit
violence is no different. The major incidents of persecution and massacre of
Dalits; 1968 Kilvenmani massacre, 1997 Melavalavu massacre, 2013 Marakkanam
anti-Dalit violence, 2012 Dharmapuri anti- Dalit violence (all in Tamil Nadu),
1985 Karamchedu massacre, 1991 Tsundur massacre (all in AP), 1996 Bathani Tola
Massacre, 1997 Laxmanpur Bathe massacre (all in Bihar), 1997 Ramabai killings,
Mumbai, 2006 Khairlanji massacre, 2014 Javkheda Hatyakand, (all in
Maharashtra), 2000 Caste persecution in (Karnataka), 5 Dalits beaten/burnt to
death for skinning a dead cow 2006, 2011 killings of Dalits in Mirchpur (all in Haryana),
2015
anti-Dalit violence in Dangawas
(Rajasthan) are some of the thousands of incidents of the Dalit persecution. In
almost all these cases perpetrators are yet to be identified. Even if
identified the prosecution rate never exceeded
20%.
On the other hand, the Dalit,
working class and minority 'perpetrators' of violence are efficiently put on
trial by constituting special investigation teams and punished by fast track
courts. In order to meet the end of 'justice', 'national security' and 'wish of
the society' they are hanged and jailed. The over-all reality is that whenever
victims are minorities, working class and Dalits the State and judiciary go
into coma.
BETRAYAL BY
GOVERNMENTS TILL 2014
After giving
free run to the killer
gangs the government
appointed one man Marwah
Commission to find out the perpetrators of the 1984 'riots'. As this exercise
was proving inconvenient, it was asked to disband itself within short period of its existence and a sitting Supreme Court
Judge Ranga Nath Mishra was asked to conduct inquiry into 1984 'riots' who
submitted his report in 1987. Shockingly, this fact finding (or fact-hiding)
commission headed by Misra observed that
"riots which had a
spontaneous origin later attained a channelized method at the hands of
gangsters".
The massacre was reduced to
'riots' as if Sikhs equally participated in the violence. It was a brazen lie.
The 'apostle of justice', Mishra, champion of the theory of spontaneity was
not, naturally, able to find out from where these gangsters came! According to
Jarnail Singh author of the book I
Accuse: The Anti-Sikh Violence of 1984 for this service to the State he was
awarded a berth in Rajya Sabha.
Next two decades, not less
than nine commissions of inquiry were instituted. For Indian State it became a
routine to announce constitution of some new commission or some more
compensation to the families of victims in order to deflect the mounting anger
at the times of elections. Highlighting the anti-minority bias of such
commissions, H. S. Phoolka, a renowned lawyer, commented that instead of
getting convicted many of the political perpetrators get promoted as rulers.
In the latest development Supreme
Court of India on August 16, 2017 ordered the constitution of a panel
comprising two of its former judges to examine the justification for closing
241 anti-Sikh riot cases probed by SIT in next 3 months; these three months are yet to be over!
BETRAYAL BY THE
PRESENT RSS/BJP RULERS
RSS
claims to have always stood for Hindu-Sikh unity. It
occasionally expresses its
gratitude to Sikhism for saving Hinduism from the Muslim aggression. It may not
be irrelevant to note here that RSS does not treat Sikhism as independent
religion, which discarded Casteism and Brahmanical hegemony, but part of
Hinduism. The RSS/BJP leaders blamed Congress for anti-Sikh violence Modi while
addressing a public rally during last parliamentary elections at Jhansi, UP
(October 25, 2013) asked Congress leaders to explain who "killed thousands
of Sikhs in 1984" and "has anyone been convicted for the Sikh
genocide so far". Modi during Punjab elections and 2014 general elections
kept on referring to 'qatl-e-aam' or genocide of Sikhs.
Modi after becoming PM in a
message (October 31, 2014) said that anti-Sikh riots in the aftermath of Indira
Gandhi's assassination were like a,
"dagger that pierced through
India's chest…Our own people were murdered, the attack was not on a particular
community but on the entire nation."
Hindutva icon, RSS whole-timer
and PM Modi lamented the fact that culprits were yet to be booked and tried for
this massacre. However, Modi did not tell the nation what NDA governments which
ruled this country from 1998 to
2004 did to persecute the
culprits. Modi also forgot to share the fact that as per the autobiography of
LK Advani (page 430); it was his Party which forced Indira Gandhi to go for
army action infamously named as Operation
Blue Star which killed large number of Sikh pilgrims.
Renowned
journalist Manoj Mitta, author of the book When
a Tree Shook Delhi: The 1984 Carnage and Its Aftermath straight forwardly
tells that
"Despite the BJP rule, there has hardly been any will to
enforce accountability for the massacres that took place under the Congress.
It’s as if there is a tacit deal
between the sponsors of 1984 and 2002".
It was no over-sight that
2019 parliamentary elections 1984 massacre was totally forgotten. This is not
what outsiders or critics of the RSS have been telling. The perusal of the
contemporary RSS documents show that major focus was on condemning the Sikh
extremism, eulogizing Indira Gandhi and welcoming the crowning of Rajiv Gandhi
as new prime minister.
RSS IDEOLOGUE NANA DESHMUKH'S DEHUMANIZED
ATTITUDE TOWARDS SIKH MASSACRE
The most important proof of
such a dehumanized attitude towards the massacre of Sikhs is a document
circulated by Nana Deshmukh, a prominent whole timer and ideologue of the RSS
[now deceased]. This document titled as 'MOMENTS
OF SOUL SEARCHING' was circulated by Deshmukh on November 8, 1984, may help
in unmasking the whole lot of criminals involved in the massacre of innocent Sikhs who had nothing to do with
the killing of Indira Gandhi.
This document may also throw light on where the cadres came from, who
meticulously organized the killing of Sikhs. Nana Deshmukh in this document is
seen outlining the justification of the massacre of the Sikh community in 1984.
This document also shows the
true degenerated and fascist attitude of the RSS towards all the minorities of
India. The RSS has been arguing that they are against Muslims and Christians
because they are the followers of foreign religions. Here we find them
justifying the butchering of Sikhs who according to their own categorization
happened to be the followers of an indigenous religion. In this document we
will hear from the horse's mouth that the RSS like the then Congress leadership
believed that the massacre of the innocent Sikhs was unavoidable.
This document was published in
the Hindi Weekly Pratipaksh edited by George
Fernandes, who later became Defence Minister of India in the NDA regime, in
its edition of November 25, 1984 titled 'Indira Congress- RSS collusion' with
the following editorial comment:
“The author of the following
document is known as an ideologue and policy formulator of the RSS. After the
killing of Prime Minister (Indira Gandhi) he distributed this document among
prominent politicians. It has a historical significance
that is why we have decided to publish it, violating policy of our Weekly. This
document highlights the new affinities
developing between the Indira Congress and the RSS. We produce here the Hindi
translation of the document.”
The original pages of the
Hindi Weekly Pratipaksh edited by George
Fernandes reproduced.
Deshmukh in his document 'MOMENTS OF SOUL
SEARCHING' is seen outlining the justification of the massacre of
the Sikh community in 1984. His defence of the carnage can be summed up as in
the following:
1. The
massacre of Sikhs was not the handiwork of any group or anti-social elements
but the result of a genuine feeling of anger.
2. Deshmukh
did not distinguish the action of the two security personnel of Indira Gandhi,
who happened to be Sikhs, from that of the whole Sikh community. According to
his document the killers of Indira Gandhi were working under some kind of mandate of their community.
3. Sikhs
themselves invited these attacks, thus advancing the Congress theory of
justifying the massacre of the Sikhs.
4.
He glorified the Operation Blue Star and described any opposition to it as anti-
national. When Sikhs were being killed in thousands he was warning the country
of Sikh extremism, thus offering
ideological defense of those killings.
5. Sikh community as a whole was responsible for violence in Punjab.
6. Sikhs
should have done nothing in self-defence but showed patience and tolerance
against the killer mobs.
7. These
were Sikh intellectuals and not killer mobs which were responsible for the
massacre. They had turned Sikhs into a militant community, cutting them off
from their Hindu roots, thus inviting attacks from the nationalist Indians.
Moreover, he treated all Sikhs as part of the same gang and described attacks
on them as a reaction of the nationalist Hindus.
8. He
described Indira Gandhi as the only leader who
could keep the country united and
assassination of such a great leader such killings could not be avoided.
9. Rajiv
Gandhi who succeeded Mrs. Gandhi as the PM and justified the nation- wide
killings of Sikhs by saying, “When a huge tree falls there are always tremors
felt”, was lauded and blessed by Nana Deshmukh at the end of the document.
10. Shockingly,
the massacre of Sikhs was being equated with the attacks on the RSS cadres after the killing of Gandhiji
and we find Deshmukh advising Sikhs to suffer silently. Everybody knows that
the killing of Gandhiji was inspired by the RSS and the Hindutva Ideology
whereas the common innocent Sikhs had nothing to do with the murder of Indira Gandhi.
11. There
was not a single sentence in the Deshmukh document demanding, from the then
Congress Government at the Centre or the then home minister Narsimha Rao (a
Congress leader dear to the RSS who later silently watched demolition of Babri
masjid by Hindutva goons as PM of India in 1992) remedial measures for
controlling the violence against the minority community. Mind it, that Deshmukh
circulated this document on November 8, 1984, and from October 31 to this date
Sikhs were left alone to face the killing gangs. In fact November 5-10 was the
period when the maximum killings of Sikhs took place. Deshmukh was just not
bothered about all this.
12. It is
generally believed that the Congress cadres were behind this genocide. This may
be true but there were other forces too which actively participated in this
massacre and whose role has never
been investigated. It could be one of the reasons that actual perpetrators
remain unknown. Those who witnessed the genocide were stunned by the swiftness and military precision of the
killer/marauding gangs (later on witnessed during the Babri mosque demolition,
burning alive of Dr. Graham Steins with his two sons, 2002 pogrom of the
Muslims in Gujarat and cleansing of Christians in parts of Orissa) which went
on a burning spree of the innocent Sikhs. This, surely, was beyond the capacity
of the thugs led by many Congress leaders.
13. It is
shocking that Deshmukh presented 1984 massacre of Sikhs as an issue between
Sikhs and Hindus. He wrote: "I feel proud of all those Hindu neighbours
who protected lives and property of troubled Sikh brothers without caring for
their lives. Such things one being heard from all over Delhi. These things have
practically increased the faith in natural goodness of human behavior and
particularly faith in Hindu nature." He remained oblivious to the fact
that these were not only Hindus but Muslims, Jains, Buddhists, Christians,
Atheists, Communists who defended Sikhs' lives and properties.
RSS’ SHAMEFUL ATTITUDE TOWARDS
THE SIKH MASSACRE
Deshmukh document did not happen
in isolation. It represented the real RSS attitude towards Sikh genocide of
1984. It may be relevant to know here that the RSS cadres did not come forward
in defence of the Sikhs. The RSS is very fond of circulating publicity
material, especially photographs of its khaki shorts-clad cadres doing social
work. For the 1984 violence they have none. In
fact, Deshmukh's article
also made no mention of the
RSS cadres going to the rescue of
Sikhs under siege. This shows the real intentions of the RSS during the
genocide.
The RSS English organ, Organizer in its combined issue dated
November 11 & 18, 1984 carried an editorial titled 'Stunning Loss' which
praised Indira Gandhi in the following words:
"It
will always be difficult to believe that the Indira Gandhi is no more. One had got so used to hearing her myriad
voices for so long, that everything looks so blank without her. The violent
manner of her death is the most shocking horror story, giving the nation the
creeps…It is a case of treacherous fanatics stigmatizing the whole nation by
butchering a remarkable specimen of Indian womanhood…She literally served India
to the last drop of her blood according to her own lights." The same
editorial ended with the words supporting newly installed PM, Rajiv Gandhi who
"deserves sympathy and consideration".
Organizer also carried statement of RSS Supremo; Bala Deoras titled
'Balasaheb condemns assassination, Delhi carnage' in a single column. He
mourned and condemned the carnage but not even once referred to the fact that
Sikhs were under attack. For him it was "infighting in the Hindu
Samaj". He also overlooked the fact that it was not only Delhi where Sikhs
were butchered/burnt but in many other parts of India too. According to this
statement "swayamsevaks have been instructed to form or help in forming
Mohalla Suraksha Samitis" for restoring peace and rehabilitation of the
sufferers. However, there are no documents available in the contemporary RSS
archives to
show how these Samitis
functioned. It is a fact that RSS which is fond of displaying photographs of
its cadres doing social work did not publish any visual of the activity of
these Samitis.
In
the same statement Deoras reacting to the assassination of Indira Gandhi
stated,
"It
is shocking beyond words to express the feelings at
the murder of PM Mrs. Indira Gandhi by some fanatic elements. She had been carrying on
almost the entire burden of the country since 1966. She was loved and respected
not only in this country but all over the world. Her passing away at this
critical juncture will create a void in India and also in the world."
According to the above mentioned Organizer "RSS
Sarkyavah, Rajender Singh issued instructions to all the branches in the country to hold a special meeting in Shakha condemning the dastardly murder of the PM and paying homage to the departed soul. He also issued
instructions to cancel all public functions to be held by RSS during the period
of mourning".
Of
course, RSS archives do not contain any instructions from RSS top brass
ordering to mourn the Sikh martyrs.
RSS AGAINST FORMER PM MANMOHAN SINGH'S APPOLOGY FOR 1984 MASSACRE
The RSS continues to downplay
1984 Sikh massacre will be clear by the perusal of charter of demands submitted
to the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) in last
July. The senior RSS ideologue, Dina Nath Batra on behalf
of RSS-affiliated Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas submitted five pages containing list of items to be removed from school text-
books. Batra demanded that any
reference to violence against minorities in the text-books should be removed
which included references to a simple apology tendered by the former PM
Manmohan Singh over 1984 violence. It is to be noted that in an apology in
Parliament on August 12, 2005, Manmohan Singh, the then PM of India stated:
“I have no hesitation in
apologizing to the Sikh community. I apologize not only to the Sikh community,
but to the whole Indian nation because what took place in 1984 is the negation
of the concept of nationhood enshrined in our Constitution.”
So the search for finding the
perpetrators of Sikh massacre of 1984 continues endlessly. The present RSS/BJP
rulers who claim to be co-religionists of Sikhs prove no different from
Congress. The only hope is that those Indians who have stakes in continuation
of democratic-secular Indian polity will come forward to force the Indian State
to identify and punish the killers. The scholars who have been involved in the
study of religious violence are unanimous in the conclusion that if 1984
massacre was not allowed to happen, there would not have been 1992- 93
(violence against Muslims in pre/post Babri mosque demolition period), 2002 (massacre of Muslims in Gujarat),
Kandhmal 2008 (cleansing of Christians) and many other massacre of the
minorities of India. Allowing the 1984 massacre the Indian State, let it be
known to all the majoritarian fascist organizations that in such criminal
happening the former would remain silent!
NANA
DESHMUKH AWARDED 'BHARAT RATNA'
As if it was not enough injustice to the martyrs
and
survivors
of the 1984 massacre, on the eve of the last Republic Day (January 25, 2019)
RSS/BJP rulers of India, bestowed the highest national award BHARAT RATN (gem
of India) on Nanaji Deshmukh. PM Modi praising Deshmukh said, "He [Nana
Deshmukh] personifies humility, compassion, and service to the downtrodden. He
is a Bharat Ratna in the truest sense".
If
anybody wants to understand the exact meaning of the proverb 'to rub salt into
the wound' this Bharat Ratna to Deshmukh is the fittest example!
This photograph is of a street theatre performance titled ‘Sadharan Log
(common people) by Nishant Natya Manch against massacre of Sikhs in 1984. It
was performed at more than two thousand places. Author is also doing a role.
Link of a 2023 interview of the author on the same tragedy:
https://www.academia.edu/107044638/Victims_Will_Never_Forget_The_Violence_Shamsul_Islam_On_1984_Massacre_of_Sikh
Shamsul
Islam
01-11-23
Link for some of S. Islam's writings in English, Hindi, Urdu,
Marathi, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati and video
interviews/debates:
Link for some of S. Islam's writings in English,
Hindi, Urdu, Marathi, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati and video
interviews/debates:
http://du-in.academia.edu/ShamsulIslam Facebook: https://facebook.com/shamsul.islam.332
Twitter: @shamsforjustice http://shamsforpeace.blogspot.com/
Email: notoinjustice@gmail.com
Link for the full English text of the RSS ideologue Nana
Deshmukh's document: https://www.academia.edu/4890979/RSS_IDEOLOGUE_
NANA_DESHMUKH_J
USTIFIED_MASSACRE_OF_SIKHS_IN_1984_From_R
SS_archives_
