Jagtar Singh
Chandigarh: That the Congress stands indicted in the 3-day
planned carnage of Sikhs in Delhi and several other places in India beginning
November 1, 1984 is no more an electoral issue. More important is the closure
of that colossal tragedy that was the second darkest chapter after Operation
Bluestar in the post partition history of the country. The third in the series
is Gujarat violence of 2002 under the BJP government. Such tragedies should not
be repeated.
Dr. Manmohan Singh stated a fact yesterday quoting Inder
Kumar Gujral, the first Punjabi to become prime minister of India, that the
1984 carnage of Sikhs was avoidable. Home Minister P V Narasimha Rao had
ignored the plea by a delegation of
Punjabis including Gujral to summon the army
to control the dance of madness on the streets of Delhi. The law and
order in Delhi was and continues to be directly under the union home ministry.
Rao remained indifferent.
Delhi witnessed the barbarity following the assassination of
prime minister Indira Gandhi by her two Sikh security personnel. Indira Gandhi
was gunned down to avenge Operation Bluestar, the storming of the Darbar Singh
(Golden Temple) in Amritsar in the first week of June 1984 in which hundreds of
innocent Sikh men, women and children were killed.
The Congress that was responsible for the planned massacre
of the Sikhs a decade later brought in Dr Manmohan Singh, a Sikh, as the prime
minister who completed two full terms.
The government at the centre apologised for the 1984 shame
when Dr Manmohan Singh was the prime minister who on August 11, 2005 said in
Rajya Sabha, “I have no hesitation in apologising to the Sikh community. I
apologise 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”.
The Sikhs in Delhi went back to the Congress after about a
decade although nothing had been done to provide justice for the massacre in
which the leaders of that party were directly involved. Rajiv Gandhi, who had
taken over as the prime minister, went to the extent of justifying the killings
and rape with the statement “when a big tree falls the earth shakes”.
The Congress received the unprecedented mandate in February
2017 Assembly elections in Punjab. Defying the national trend, Punjab did not
vote for the Akali Dal-BJP alliance in the May 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
The Congress is no more untouchable for the Sikhs.
The basic issue is justice and Dr Manmohan Singh has
reopened the debate of the massacre being pre-planned by the Congress. He has
spoken about virtual connivance of the high ups of the people in the government
in Delhi at that time.
The wheels of justice in cases relating to 1984 violence
have been too slow and the Sikh organisations too should share the blame for
the situation. Gujarat witnessed several convictions at the political level.
Dr Manmohan Singh was the prime minister for ten years and
hence he must be knowing everything. However, he has exhibited some courage for
the first and that too by quoting Gujaral.
Earlier commissions that were constituted to probe November
1984 violence have failed to come up with substantive results. The basic issues
relating to that violence have not been touched. The basic issues include the
role of the people at the highest level at that time. The Congress leaders
whose role has been probed so far were only the instruments in that dastardly
design.
Whose design it was? This is the central issue. The public
perception must be reinforced by facts.
Let there be public probe into Operation Bluestar,
assassination of Indira Gandhi and November 1984 massacre as all three are
inter-related.
Raising the issues in bits would not lead to closure.
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