Justice is not 1984 Sikh pogrom versus Godhra riots

In the middle of the Bihar election, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal distributed cheques of `5 lakh to the kin of 1,300 people killed in the anti-Sikh violence of 1984.

The amount was the enhanced compensation announced by the Centre last year but which it had been tardy in distributing. At the ceremony, Kejriwal declared that incidents like Gujarat and Dadri would not have happened had the guilty of 1984 been punished. He argued that because this demonstrated that killers and rioters could get away scot-free, people participated in subsequent riots and pogroms with impunity. Is this claim valid?

Communalism

Because it makes a headline point and also since Kejriwal has the advantage of not being in power either in Gujarat or Uttar Pradesh, he can afford to make such an assertion with aplomb. But believing the accusation would demonstrate poor understanding of the complex problem of communalism. People participated in the anti-Sikh violence in 1984 and in the Gujarat riots because of active state and political patronage which harnessed the communal sentiment.

This viewpoint itself is the result of political parties propagating prejudice against specific communities. Such parties have an ideological basis in majority or minority sectarianism and spread hatred against targeted communities. Communalism must be contested politically and not by just administrative firmness or effective pursuit of judicial processes. However, Kejriwal’s statement and his government’s decision to take the lead and distribute the cheques despite the Centre not releasing the funds required — Rs 130 crore for the enhanced amount to be given to almost 2,600 families — has focussed attention again on an issue that refuses to fade.

Sadly for more than a decade, the anti-Sikh violence has been made an issue of national debate in an extremely despicable manner. After the Gujarat riots, as criticism against Narendra Modi mounted, the Bharatiya Janata Party argued that a party responsible for 1984 and not punishing the guilty had no right to launch a broadside against Modi. It was argued that media and civil society were unfair in pillorying Modi while being indulgent of the Congress. While accusations against the Congress are best left to the political terrain, the BJP and its leaders demonstrate either poor memory or are wilfully distorting the role of civil society and media during 1984 and subsequently.

It is common knowledge that the horrors of Trilokpuri and those witnessed in other colonies would have remained unknown for a long period had it not been for the alacrity of journalists. Even after the violence — so well documented by scribes and photographers — the media never failed and when Congress leaders influenced witnesses in the ongoing court case, journalists exposed these attempts.

Similarly, the role of the civil society in the aftermath of the violence was exemplary. Not only did ordinary middle class people in colonies spontaneously come out to defend their neighbours but after the violence subsided, citizens’ groups were established.

These groups, the largest of these was named Nagrik Ekta Manch, attracted a cross-section of the society ranging from philanthropic industrialists, members of the intelligentsia comprising artists, writers, filmmakers and academics besides students, human rights activists and even ordinary housewives.

Intelligentsia

In an example of perfect synergy between civil society, members of the media and civil liberties activists, the momentous booklet — Who Are The Guilty — was published by PUCL and PUDR within weeks. I devoted an entire chapter to these initiatives and this renders untruthful the claim that the intelligentsia has unfairly blamed Modi and given Gujarat a bad name for 2002 while being complicit in 1984.

Arguments that the crime for the 2002 riots is less criminal than the atrocity of 1984 must be firmly discarded. State complicity is not a detergent cake that can be allowed a sales line like — Uski kameez meri kameez se zyada safed.

Crossfire

Frequently it is asked if people will ever get justice for 1984. Justice means differently to dissimilar people. Among survivors, for some justice means just more compensation. But for others among them, nothing will allow ghosts to rest in peace unless the ‘big fish’ among those accused are pronounced guilty and punished. Justice, however, is not the right of solely victims or survivors. Indian society on the whole has to be provided with a sense of deliverance and relief.

Even after more than three decades the political class wastes no opportunity to shift blame on society’s door by arguing that people provided justification for violence against Sikhs because of violent strikes by a handful of them in the late 1970s and the early 1980s.

It is time for the political class to collectively display shame for the events of 1984. When Kejriwal distributes the next lot of cheques, he could go one better and seek pardon of people for an act which was neither his nor his party’s. This would also be poetic for people who suffered after being caught in the crossfire awar that was not theirs!