This will be a 40th anniversary any decent Indian would think was not marked. But it is such a grisly anniversary, and the atavistic savagery it unleashed will remain one of the most shameful episodes in post-independence Indian history.
It has become fashionable to use the word “genocide” at the drop of a hat; so much so that the cottage industry of activists has undermined, degraded, and devalued the gravity of the term.
Yet, if there is one instance of genocide in modern India, this qualifies for it, apart from the wholesale slaughter of an entire village of Muslims in Nellie in Assam in 1983.
The authors are talking about the genocide of Sikhs that followed the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards on 31 October 1984.
While many cities were witness to this, the epicentre of the horror was in Delhi.
A Brief Recap
In a previous column published in this series in June 2023 that talked about Operation Blue Star, the authors had already attempted to analyse the factors that eventually resulted in Khalistani terrorism becoming such a menace for India, its sovereignty, and its soul. So, we will not repeat that here.
This time, history matters because Indian institutions don’t seem to have learned too many useful lessons from the horrific events that traumatised India 40 years ago.
With the outside chance that some readers may not be familiar with this dark chapter (actually most young Indians addicted to a life of smartphone living are not aware except for something they heard their parents or other elders talk about talk about), here is a brief summary of what happened.
That Khalistani terrorism had become a serious threat to India became crystal clear on 25 April 1983, when Punjab Police DIG A S Atwal, a devout Sikh, was shot dead by a supporter of radical Sikh spiritual leader turned full-fledged terrorist Jarnail Singh Bhindrawale just outside the Golden Temple in Amritsar.
Before and after this, Khalistani terrorists demanding a sovereign state for the Sikhs were indiscriminately killing Hindus and Sikhs who opposed their malevolent agenda. Bhindrawale and his heavily armed “troops” had taken over the Golden Temple, murdering people at random inside the holy shrine.
When things got out of control, the then prime minister Indira Gandhi ordered the Indian Army to flush out the terrorists camping there. Hundreds of soldiers and terrorists as well as innocent pilgrims died.
The Akal Takht was virtually destroyed. Sikhs were outraged at the desecration of their holiest shrine. On 31 October 1984, when Indira Gandhi was to interact with filmmaker Richard Attenborough for a documentary, she walked across the lawns of her house and was riddled with bullets.
This in itself would have been terrible tragedy. But what followed was far worse.
Her son Rajiv Gandhi was hurriedly sworn in as the prime minister by President Giani Zail Singh in those chaotic hours. But even as that was happening, Congress leaders in Delhi were gathering frenzied crowds in Delhi, baying for the blood of Sikhs and egging them on to burn, pillage, rape, and kill at will.
There is little doubt that the monstrous violence unleashed by mobs led by Congress leaders was deliberate. And there was absolutely no remorse, not even a token statement of grief.
In fact, the new prime minister Rajiv Gandhi addressed a public meeting soon after the horrors, and the exact words used were: “We must remember Indiraji. We must remember why her assassination happened. We must remember who could be the people behind this. When Indira's assassination happened, there were riots in the country. We know that the hearts of the Indian people were full of anger and that for a few days, people felt India was shaking. When a big tree falls, the earth shakes."
The Brutality of the Carnage
By the night, mobs had started attacking neighbourhoods where Sikhs lived or even just random Sikhs going about their work and lives. It was easy for the bloodthirsty mobs to identify Sikhs because of their turbans. The co-author has interacted with scores of Delhi residents whose family members, relatives, friends, neighbours, and acquaintances chopped off their hair and removed the turbans to escape this medieval savagery.
But for most, there was no escape.
One of the brutal methods used by the murderous mob was to tie a tyre around the neck of a Sikh and burn him or her alive. These barbaric atrocities continued unchecked for three days before the “revenge” was deemed to be complete.
The most horrible and gruesome factoid about this is that not a single member of the mob that massacred the Sikhs in Delhi was shot dead by the police in an attempt to stop the mass murder.
Can you imagine a scenario where large groups of slogan-chanting thugs are roaming around the capital city of a country in broad daylight and the police in the city have simply disappeared? There was not even a semblance of an effort to protect the hapless Sikhs. While sentencing former Lok Sabha MP Sajjan Kumar to a life term in December 2018, the Delhi High Court had categorically stated that the slaughter could not have happened “without political patronage”.
Sajjan Kumar is an exception.
Almost all senior Congress leaders who faced allegations of instigating and or leading murderous mobs went scot-free. Lalit Maken, the brother of Ajay Maken was killed by Khalistani terrorists in 1986 to avenge his public participation in the genocide.
Ajay Maken remains a senior Congress leader. Former MP H K L Bhagat, against whom ample evidence and eyewitness accounts were present, was not properly prosecuted till his death.
Many senior Congress leaders who faced credible allegations of being involved in the massacre like Jagdish Tytler and Kamal Nath became Union Cabinet ministers and chief ministers.
Wilful Institutional Failure
The Sikh genocide of 1984 is a classic case of wilful institutional failure, all along the way involving the administration, the police, the judiciary, and the political class. One can go on and on listing the unpardonable acts of many players involved in this barbarity.
But that would fill up a book. The authors will stick to just one example to show the Sikhs were Ill-treated and shortchanged even as they cried out for justice. This one example also shows how the “ecosystem” takes care of those who are willing to subvert Indian democracy.
There were simply too many eyewitnesses for the regime to brush the genocide under the carpet. And yet nothing happened. There are numerous allegations against the henchmen of Jagdish Tytler harassing and threatening eyewitnesses whose testimony could be crucial to implicate. After almost four decades, the CBI finally filed a chargesheet against Tytler in April 2023. All this while, the Congress has made repeated attempts to “rehabilitate” Tytler.
Besides, too many professionals and independent observers who were not servile to the Congress had called out the brazen manner in which the party had used religion and terrorism as the campaign theme to win a landslide victory in the 1984 Lok Sabha elections held right after this aftermath.
The stench of infamy was too strong. Besides, Rajiv Gandhi offered a new vision as a new-generation prime minister who was ready to sacrifice party interests for the sake of peace. For instance, peace accords in Punjab and Assam did lead to non-Congress governments coming to power.
A Disgraceful Chapter in Modern Indian History
Yet, amidst all this, the “match was fixed” in a manner of speaking.
To appear just and fair in dealing with perpetrators of the Sikh genocide, a Commission of Enquiry was set up under the aegis of a sitting Supreme Court judge named Justice Ranganath Mishra.
Prominent jurists, activists, and intellectuals at the time withdrew their participation from the Commission within a year. Their reason and allegation: the game appeared rigged from the start.
Worse, the witnesses who came forth to describe the horrors inflicted on victims somehow found themselves threatened and coerced by Congress leaders and workers. The Commission eventually submitted its Report indicting a dozen or so small-time Congress workers. Not a single senior Congress leader was indicted.
After murdering even this judicial option of getting justice for Sikhs, as directed by the powers that be, Justice Mishra was suitably rewarded by getting appointed as the Chief Justice of India. Soon after his retirement, he was made the first chairman of the National Human Rights Commission. Soon after that, he was given a ticket by the Congress to contest the Rajya Sabha elections from Odisha. Soon after his Rajya Sabha term was over in 2004, he was given the task of heading the National Commission of Religious & Linguistic Minorities by the UPA regime.
By then, 20 years had passed since the Sikh genocide and most Indians had forgotten. So, very few understood the irony of Justice Mishra heading a committee to give justice to minorities. Anyway, the Commission submitted its report in 2007. By then, Justice Mishra was old and ailing and he passed away in 2012.
But there were brave judges too. One such judge was Delhi Additional Sessions Judge Anuradha Shukla Bharadwaj. In 2009, the CBI had given a clean chit to Jagdish Tytler and a magistrate had accepted the clause report in 2010. When an appeal was filed, Shukla refused to accept the closure report and the clean chit and ordered the CBI to re-open the investigations against Tytler in April. This eventually led to the filing of a CBI chargesheet against Tytler ten years later in 2023.
Almost all the institutions failed. Ordinary human beings became savages. Yet, there stirring tales of Hindus going out of their way to protect the hapless Sikhs.
The late Khushwant Singh is known to have said that perhaps the only organisation that actively sought to protect the Sikhs was the RSS. In what could be a strange phenomenon, the former RSS pracharak Narendra Modi is less popular in Punjab than the son of Rajiv Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi.
In the recent past, the top judiciary seems to have taken some steps to speed up justice delivery for the victims of the Sikh genocide. Former MP Sajjan Kumar was convicted. That’s about it.
Do you think the Indian judiciary has covered itself with glory over this disgraceful chapter in modern Indian history?
You judge.
(Yashwant Deshmukh & Sutanu Guru work with CVoter Foundation. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)
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