Kids Corner

1984

Who Are The Guilty?
Eyewitness

NANDITA HAKSAR

 

 

 



A woman who saw the atrocities and the government complicity first hand. And yet, she wonders why a public apology (?) from Sonia Gandhi has not been enough to assuage the wounds of 1984!

The author is the daughter of Parmeshwar Narayan Haksar, a Kashmiri Pandit best known for his six-year stint as Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's principal secretary and a key architect of many of her projects.





I

The moment I heard that Indira Gandhi had been assassinated, I hoped the assassin was not a Sikh. My parents said that when they first heard the news that Mohandas Gandhi had been assassinated, they hoped that the assassin was not a Muslim. We live in a strange country; when our leaders are assassinated, we hope the assassin is not from the minority community. At least those of us who want India to belong to all communities.

II

The next morning I saw the Guru Harkrishan Public School opposite my home in Munirka burning. A small crowd from our colony stood looking at it and someone said: “There may be children inside.”

Then a young man standing next to me said: “Aunty, let’s go.” I do not know who the other five men were but we ran across the open field to the school. A jeep load of policemen were there. I felt relieved to see them.

The moment we arrived they turned away leaving the school burning and the Sikhs trapped inside a classroom. And a violent mob coming towards us from the Munirka village.

III

I told the Sikh men hiding inside the room to come out and we would take them to safety. One man told me to give him the key of my house and he would take them. I gave him the key and told him my flat number was 56 and he left with the school teachers.

In one room an old man sat in a wheelchair and his granddaughter with her husband. I asked the young couple to leave but they said they would not leave her grandfather.

I left them. As I was rushing back, a young woman came and handed me her baby. She said she needed to look after the school.

I arrived back in my flat carrying the baby. The Sikhs were well settled in my flat.

I do not know the name of the man or the young woman whose baby I carried home.

IV

A young man who was not from our colony soon brought the grandfather on his two-wheeler and the young couple joined us.

Another young man had gone to the residence of the Principal who was trapped inside his home. The door was locked so the young man broke the glass with his bare hands and saw the Principal charge down at him with a sword.

Both the Principal and his rescuer joined us.

V

A man in the uniform of the Indian Army came to me and shouted: “You have put the colony in danger by bringing the Sikhs.”

I told him he could burn my flat along with all the Sikhs if he thought that was his patriotic duty.

We asked the people in the colony to give shelter to one family. Women were more willing; but the men said they would take in only the women and children.

We put the Sikhs in the back of a car, covered them with a blanket and took them into the JN University where they were given shelter.

But there were some families who did take in the Sikhs even in our colony. One Brahman family from Karanataka took one family. The mother even cut the Sikh man’s hair when it went against her own caste rules. She was the mother of a future judge of the Delhi High Court. The future judge was one of the five who had come on our rescue mission.

VI

I got a call from an agitated Sumanto Banerjee, a fellow member of the People’s Union for Democratic Rights. He told me to come down to Panchsheel Enclave where they were meeting other activists.

“But, Sumanto, there is curfew.”

“How can curfew stop you from anything?”

I managed to reach the house. This was the small group of activists who soon called themselves the Nagrik Ekta Manch.

Everyone felt that we should get to the Opposition leaders who could perhaps help send the Army to stop the massacre of the Sikhs.

Sumanto had himself seen Sikhs burnt alive.

VII

Five of us got into a car and landed at the Vithal Bhai Patel Bhavan and found the leaders of the Opposition huddled together wondering what they could do.

Sumanto and the others (I forget names) told them we should go to the PM’s house and demand that the Army be sent. Otherwise we should stop the funeral. He was deadly serious.

One leader, I think it was Dandavateji, came into our car. Sumanto insisted I sit in the front and get us through the security.

My father had been the Secretary to Indira Gandhi. At the time he and my mother were away in China on a secret mission.

When we arrived at the PM’s residence the security allowed us through. They must have thought I had come to express my condolences. I saw Arun Nehru.

“Mr Nehru, I am Nandita Haksar. If you don’t sent the Army into West Delhi we will try to stop the funeral.”

Arun Nehru said he would send in the Army. [EDITOR: The army was not only NOT sent but was actually ordered to stay in their barracks and do nothing. And all Sikh soldiers, rank and file, had their arms taken away.]

None of us questioned how a mere MP had the power to do this. But the Army was sent by the time we reached Trilokpuri.

VIII

We drove to the Farsh Bazar Police Station. It was the only Police Station which did serious rescue and relief work. There was a relief camp there.

Someone suggested we make hot sweet tea for the Sikhs who were under shock.

I do not remember who I went with, but a woman who drove to South Extension where she knew a tentwala who opened his shop and gave us a dekchi; then she bought batasas since we could not find a ration shop selling sugar. And milk.

I found myself making the tea. The water was boiling and I wondered how much tea powder to put into the pot. Before I could empty the packet of tea a Sardar ji said: “How are you going to strain it?”

They told me to get a dupatta and put the tea leaf into it. A tea bag! Then I asked how much milk?

One young man asked with a twinkle in his eye: “What you have made is a cup of tea, not for two hundred people. Just pour two buckets.”

I could not believe that these young men could laugh and tease just an hour after being rescued from a ghastly death. It was my first glimpse into the celebrated spirit of the Sikh community.

IX

The activists of the various NGOs told us, human rights activists, to leave the relief work for them and do fact-finding. There were three fact-finding teams.

Ours was a joint team of the People’s Union for Democratic Rights (represented by Sumanto Banerjee and myself) and the People’s Union of Civil Rights (represented by Dinesh Mohan and Smitu Kothari).

We split into two and I went along with Dinesh Mohan from the IIT. As we started our fact-finding we discovered the extent to which the city had been burnt. This arson required skill and access to kerosene or sulphur which was not available because all shops were closed.

People told us that they had seen Congress leaders with registers identifying the homes of the Sikhs. That is how even in posh South Delhi colonies huge concrete structures were set ablaze. Gurdwaras were also the target of mobs led by senior Congress leaders.

We met Inder Gujral in his New Friends Colony home. When I asked him whether it could possibly be true that this massacre and arson could be done with the approval of the top leadership, he looked so sad that it was answer enough.

X

That night the entire PUDR team sat in Sumanto Banerjee’s home in Press Enclave. There was a heated debate on whether we should publish the names of the Congress leaders named by the people we interviewed.

Some members felt by naming them we would endanger the life of our President, Govind Mukhoty. Already his car had mysteriously caught fire. The local leader in Munirka Tokas had set men to follow me.

Then there was the other consideration. Would the Sikhs use our report to make a hit-list? But then the Sikhs themselves had given us the names.

In the end we decided to publish the names. The whole night the names were checked and crossed-checked against various testimonies. The list was made and the report was written.

Our report was entitled: ‘Who Are the Guilty?’

It was banned. The police raided our printer. He was subject to a lot of harassment.

The Sikh organisations reprinted the report in defiance of the ban and without our consent and it was vastly circulated. It was translated into Punjabi.

Many Sikhs told me when I went to Punjab that it was because of that report they still felt loyalty to India. It reassured them that there were Indians who stood by them when it mattered most.

XI

On the basis of the material we collected during our fact-finding I drafted a writ petition and filed it in the Delhi High Court.

The case came up before Justice Rajindar Sachar, who later became the Chief Justice. He issued notice to the police. We asked that FIRs be filed against the leaders named in the affidavits of the victims.

When the case came up again it had been removed from the court of Rajindar Sachar and brought before the court of two other judges.

Those judges made disparaging remarks in open court about the veracity of the facts. One of them even asked why the victim had not gone to the police. He was reading from the affidavit of a woman who had watched her daughter being raped. The affidavit named the rapists.

I know how careful we had been when making these affidavits. She had spoken in Punjabi, it was translated into Hindi and the affidavit written in English. Then it was read out to her paragraph by paragraph before she signed it.

The High Court judge turned to the page and laughed at the affidavit.

The petition mysteriously turned up before the Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court. Govind Mukhoty was not available. I appeared.

Justice A. N. Sen was presiding. He looked down from the Bench and smiled and asked me gently, persuasively:

“Kindly withdraw this petition in national interest.”

I refused. The petition was dismissed. Those words ring in my ears and I feel a burning shame to this day.

XII

The Nagrik Ekta Manch did excellent relief work. But there were most stimulating discussions and debates on the politics of relief. Each camp was run by activists with varying ideologies: Socialists, Naxals, social workers, and feminists.

The discussions did not come in the way of all of us working together.

When the government announced the setting up of the Ranganath Mihra Commission of Enquiry into the causes of the violence, the Nagrik Ekta Manch asked me to represent them. I appeared before Justice Rangnath Mishra. At every stage his bias against the Sikh victims was obvious. It was decided that the Nagrik Ekta Manch would boycott the Commission and I withdrew and wrote a long article why we had taken that decision. The article was published.

Earlier, when Rangnath Misra was a sitting judge of the Supreme Court, I had noticed his bias against the Muslims when I filed the case relating to the Meerut violence. In that case the PAC had shot 33 Muslims and dumped them in the canal.

Rangnath Misra should have taken action against a junior advocate who accused him in a published article.

Justice Rangnath Misra became the Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission.

XIII

Soon after there was another violence. This time the Muslims were the targets in the Walled City. There was no citizens committee. Nirula, which had sent food for the volunteers, did not come to old Delhi. I went for the fact-finding and the PUDR brought out a report but there was not that kind of empathy or anger.

It was then that I realised that the Nagrik Ekta Manch activists were mostly Punjabis and all of them had friends who belonged to the Sikh community.

Later when I interviewed the activists it came through that only Sumanto and I did not have friends among the Sikhs; and we had links with the Muslims.

XIV

Uma Chakravarty, my history teacher in Miranda House, Delhi University, asked me to help her conduct interviews of the victims. It was a moment in history when a community had turned into a minority.

Then we interviewed the non-Sikh neighbours and activists.

The interviews showed the complex reasons behind the violence apart from the immediate causes. In many places, such as Munirka there was resentment when village land was taken away. The Guru Harkrishan Public School, it was wildly claimed, was built on land which once "belonged" to the Jats of Munirka village.

Before the school was being built the villagers had come and used the ground for their morning shit. Now they set the school on fire as a revenge. [Their personal grievance, it appears, had made them easy recruits for the Congressmen looking for ready and willing murderers.]

There were heart-warming stories of people protecting their Sikh neighbours; and the best were the wrestlers from traditional akharas who had protected the Sikhs because the akhara admitted all communities.

The book was published. It was called: “Delhi Riots: Three Days in the Life of a Nation.

XV

The victims of the 1984 carnage are still fighting for justice. They are not supported by enthusiastic volunteers; the activists, many of them, used the experience to get themselves nice projects; some lawyers made careers from this experience.

Never again did citizens of Delhi come together for any cause.

The groups have come together to remember the events of 1984 and to condemn the Congress party. Yes, the Congress party should be condemned. But did Sonia Gandhi not make a public apology?

The parties and organisations gathering together to condemn the Congress party have not done anything to help the Sikhs get justice or to stop the issue from being taken over by Hindu and Sikh communal forces; now the struggle for justice for the victims is a part of sectarian politics.

Could not this anniversary have been made into an opportunity to come together again not only to fight for the victims of 1984 but also to unite in the fight for another vision of India?

XVI

The first novels are being written by Sikhs about 1984. One of them is by Amandeep Singh Sandhu. His novel is called “Roll of Honour“. It was nominated for a Literary Award 2013 by ‘The Hindu‘ Newspaper.

They see the events of 1984 within the context of the wider politics in Punjab. They do not draw inspiration from narrow sectarian politics or from false prophets. They do not align themselves with any political party but then it also seems they do not align themselves with any political vision.

I met Amandeep at a Literary Festival in Goa.

He is enthusiastic about meeting me. He says he has heard what I did in 1984. He gifts me his book.

Amandeep ends the book with these words:

“It is a chance that I was born into a certain family, or a community, a society, or a nation. But when I parade the dictates I inherited at birth -- colour, religion, place, language, family, and the other markers of identity -- my birth becomes a joke, drawn out through my life. I wonder who laughs at it. For when I live like that or am willing to die for them, I feel I am a caricature of what I could be.

“... facing life has taken a bit long, more than two-and-a-half decades. But I have finally stood up. I have finally created a space where I feel safe from myself, from the world around me. It is a space where free birds come to feed every morning.”

While we fight for the rights of the victims for justice, the victims must also fight for a space to free themselves from the prison of hate and revenge. I would not have dared to say so, but Amandeep has shown the way; so I dedicate this article to the children of the victims of 1984 or perhaps the grandchildren.


The author is a human rights lawyer and writer.

[Courtesy: Mainstream Weekly. Edited for sikhchic.com]
November 3, 2014

 

Conversation about this article

1: Kaala Singh (Punjab), November 03, 2014, 12:12 PM.

As I have written in one of my earlier posts and which is also corroborated in this article, most of the killings in outer Delhi bordering Haryana were carried out by the Hindu Jats of Haryana who dominate this area and are Congress supporters. The killings in East Delhi were the handiwork of the Hindu Gujjars and scheduled castes commonly called "Bhangis" in local parlance who are also Congress supporters. These Bhangis have settlements all over Delhi. Also criminals from the neighbouring states of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh were brought in to carry out the carnage. It is important to mention here that these Jats, Gujjars and Bhangis are criminal tribes that earn their living through crime. So for the benefit of those who still live in those areas, please try to get out of these areas as soon as you can. Meanwhile, take some precautions. Next time you see your friendly milkman, you should know that he is a Gujjar, never let him in your house, he may be surveying your house, so be very careful. Also, the next time you see a "humble" sweeper cleaning the streets of your locality, he is most probably a Bhangi, be very careful. Next time you land at the Delhi Airport or go to areas in outer Delhi, your taxi driver is most probably a Hindu Jat, again be very careful.

2: G C Singh (USA), November 03, 2014, 1:37 PM.

The first hand narrative of 1984 events by Nandita Haksar proves beyond any doubt that the Indian judiciary has been complicit in the of genocide of the Sikhs. While the Indian courts have gone out of the way to save well-known and well-documented mass murderers of Sikhs, they have always upheld various draconian laws under which tens of thousands of innocent Sikhs in Punjab were mercilessly tortured and killed in fake encounters. The Supreme Court's order the hanging of Bhai Kehar Singh for alleged conspiracy to murder Indira Gandhi has been described by most independent experts as judicial murder. Similarly, the upholding of the death sentence in the case of Professor Devinder Pal Singh on flimsy grounds clearly proves that there is absolutely no justice for Sikhs in India. Hundreds of Sikh prisoners are still being held in Indian dungeons even after they have already completed their unjust sentences that were imposed by the Indian judiciary.

3: Sunny Grewal (Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada), November 03, 2014, 1:48 PM.

There is a record of affidavits that victims filled out immediately after the pogrom, specifically naming individuals. There was also a report compiled by human rights groups that was immediately banned by the government, I cannot recall its name. I wish somebody would make a list of the suspects named therein and their current addresses using these reports. I think it would be very helpful to bring them to justice by throwing bell, book and candle at them.

4: Kulvinder Jit Kaur (Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada), November 04, 2014, 7:34 AM.

#3 - I agree we lack in record keeping. Very essential and also very easy to maintain with the help of modern technology. I hope some agency, individual or group of individuals take on this task seriously and maintain records of every incident and the people involved. Any case without a proper record is weak. We are more into taking out 'protest marches' through the streets, holding 'morchas,' observing 'dharnas' and 'fasts unto death' to bring home our case. All these are outdated and ineffective ways. They have never succeeded in bringing about the desired results. The odds seem to be stacked against us. However we have to do our due diligence and keep detailed records of every attack on us and the perpetrators. Under a different political set up, with different circumstances, we will have all our records to back us up.

5: Mohan Singh (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), November 04, 2014, 10:43 AM.

"Who Are The Guilty?" A Report of a joint inquiry into the causes and impact of the Riots in Delhi from 31 October to 10 November 1984, Published by People's Union for Democratic Rights (Gobinda Mukhoty) and People's Union for Civil Liberties (Rajni Kothari) contains in-depth details with names of 189 persons involved from Police, Administration, Army, Congress (I), Media, Opposition and the public. Printed at Sunny Graphics, Rohtas Nagar, Shahadara, Delhi, November 1984. The original English publication I still have; it also lists a chronology of events with time and dates, and is very informative.

6: Mohan Singh (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), November 04, 2014, 5:01 PM.

The booklet "Who Are The Guilty?" is available online. Here is the link. http://www.unipune.ac.in/snc/cssh/HumanRights/04%20COMMUNAL%20RIOTS/B%20-%20ANTI%20-%20SIKH%20RIOTS/01%20-%20DELHI/a.pdf

7: Kulvinder Jit Kaur (Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada), November 04, 2014, 5:53 PM.

#4 S. Mohan Singh ji: Is it possible to scan the whole book, the original English publication and put it on the Internet? ... a free webpage for all Sikhs to read and educate themselves. It will expose and publicize the names (lists) of the perpetrators. Thousands will have access to this information and whenever one needs to refer to facts and figures, it will be so handy. It will be a great tool in the hands of anyone interested in supporting the case of the victims. This will be a great service.

8: Sunny Grewal (Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada), November 06, 2014, 2:43 AM.

I went through the booklet that was linked in a previous comment. It was very distressing to read the names of the perpetrators, even harder to read the names of the people that they killed. There is something very chilling however from some of the names of the murderers, some of them seem to be Sikh. I understand that there are overlapping names in regards to Hindus and Sikh, jutts of all hues, etc, but a name like Satbir Singh seems to imply that a person is a Sikh. I hope I am very very wrong. Also, I noticed the names of lots of Muslims.

9: Tinku (Punjab), November 06, 2014, 9:05 AM.

#8 - Why are you surprised with lots of Muslim names? Congress was and is still their favorite party. Notice how after Indiro was executed, whole of Srinagar was out on the streets mourning and wearing black flags. I always say for people doing all the wonderful charity work for other communities to first do it for our own. We should not be in Iraq or some other Middle East country distributing medicines and clothes when our own are living below poverty line in Delhi because of the genocide.

10: Kaala Singh (Punjab), November 06, 2014, 11:53 AM.

#8: Sikh and Hindu jutts (peasants) and even Hindu Gujjars have many common names. Satbir Singh is a common name even among the Hindu peasants who played a major role in the massacre.

11: Sunny Grewal (Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada), November 07, 2014, 12:41 AM.

I think the little bit of sympathy that I had for Muslims in India, which wasn't much, mind you, has disappeared in an instant. Unlike Sikhs, they are stuck in India. They are stuck with the poverty that blights their community, and for the Muslims in UP especially, the same thugs who killed Sikhs, the threat of Hindu violence will always loom over them. I don't want to say that their condition makes me happy, but I don't want to say that I care either.

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Eyewitness"









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