1984
The 1984 Massacres: The Mob Took Time Off For Meals
by SUHAS MUNSHI
The horror of those 72 hours, when frenzied mobs butchered thousands of Sikhs in 1984, has not left senior journalists Rahul Bedi and Joseph Malliakan, who covered the massacres, to this day.
"To visualise that time close your eyes and imagine that there's no state. The police remain inert while rabid mobs attack you minute after minute with military precision. The administrators look the other way with complete indifference and the situation seems never to abate," Bedi, who covered the massacre in Trilokpuri's Block-32, says.
The massacre in the small colony in east Delhi was planned, he found out. Nearly 320 Sikhs - men, women and children - were killed over two days, in this neighbourhod alone.
On reaching the spot on November 1 evening, a day after Gandhi's assassination, Bedi and Malliakan were chased away by a mob. But the journalists persevered and made it to the spot on the following morning, where they saw "meticulous slaughter of Sikhs while policemen nearby watched, bothering not even to call for reinforcements".
"The massacre continued for two long days in houses on either side of a bylane. The killers were so exact and meticulous that they did not even hurry with their job, just took their time to rape, murder and torture them between meals," Bedi says.
Malliakan, now editor of JEM magazine, says he still cries on recalling those four days.
"I saw a Sikh along with his wife dragged out of his tenement, doused with kerosene and set on fire. Those scenes have not left me. There is no closure to it," he says.
He recounts the day when the police and the army infiltrated the area and brought out the victims. That was the time when reporters first had access to the area. "I first discovered what a bonfire of human flesh is like," Malliakan breaks down and takes a long pause, "I first touched a child who was ashen in colour and had not eaten anything in 30 hours. When the area's Assistant Commissioner of Police came, I was quivering with anger and told him to shoot himself if he had any regard for his uniform," he says.
[Courtesy: India Today]
November 5, 2011
Conversation about this article
1: Kanwarjeet Singh (Franklin Park, New Jersey, U.S.A.), November 05, 2011, 11:44 PM.
As strange as this may sound - I am sick of listening to such reporters. Were they so paralyzed by their shock that they could not snap some pictures of or write out descriptions of a few killers? Why is it so difficult for them not report in detail what they saw? I can understand that in the 1980s and 1990s the media was limited to state-controlled reporting, but three decades have gone by, for heaven's sake! - go out and write a detailed blog. I am tired of waiting for some justice - we should have taken law and order in our own hands. As the great Indian Hero Bhagat Singh said: "We need to make some loud noise so the deaf can hear!" And may I add: "So they know we exist and we are not powerless!" We got justice for June 1984 within six months, we should have done the same with November 1984. For all those who condemn this line of thought, please remember that the reason Pakistan fears India and does not attack her is since Pakistan knows that India has an arsenal to attack back. Offense is the best form of defence. Time to get rid of all the current leadership and get some spine in there.
2: Harpreet Singh (Delhi, India), November 06, 2011, 8:43 AM.
In case any government or administration is not doing any thing to stop such crimes , or is actually participating in it (like not sending help, etc.) as has happened many times, is it not possible that world bodies like United Nations, etc. intervene in a timely fashion and forcefully to protect the life of innocents. Otherwise, do they exist only to do meetings and conferences? I remember the famous idiom: "Violence anywhere is a threat to peace everywhere."
3: N. Singh (Canada), November 07, 2011, 2:57 PM.
Harpreet Singh ji: Organizations like the UN will intervene in places like Libya where they know there is something for them to gain with the change of leadership. In Libya's case, the West gains access to Libya's oil and a government which will open its doors to foreign investment and foreign debt. They will not intervene in places like the Rwanda where despite the fact that they knew that the genocide was going to happen - they had been warned by Lt. General Romeo Dallaire who was in charge of a meagre UN force in Rwanda - but they refused to send in reinforcements because the only thing Rwanda had to offer was 'human beings'. There is an actual quote from a UN official to that effect in the book, "Shake Hands with the Devil", but I don't have access to it right now. After the fact, yes, the UN made a lot of noise about it with the International Criminal Court proceedings but the fact remains that they LET IT HAPPEN! Do not expect anything from them unless we have the wealth of the Jews, in which case they will broker whatever deal we want from them.