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1984 pogrom and the Nanawati exertions
WSN Network
 The forbearance with which the Sikhs absorbed the 1984 tragedy
should be a lesson to all warring groups in the country. Barring the
first burst of anger, they have contained their pain for two
decades. Their resurrected rage shows the power of information, of
the printed word and of images. The Nanavati report generated an
overdue media catharsis. Not a single newspaper dismissed the report
as the work of a commission appointed by an unfriendly government.
Every commission is appointed by some government and if its report
should suffer a crisis of credibility for that reason, all reports
must be consigned to the dust bin. The country luckily had no
satellite TV in 1984 and the newspapers remained above the pulls of
communalism/secularism. Otherwise, the country would have had
another minority problem on its hands.
There is hardly a newspaper that tried to politicize 1984. Yet, they
demanded prosecution of individuals named in the report.
Can we as a country afford to bury and forget the terrifying
messages that last year's massacres in Gujarat carry? The 1984
massacre did not take place in some remote hamlet, it occurred in
the national capital, under the glare of parliamentarians, judges,
bureaucrats, journalists of at least a few dozen newspapers, and a
few million citizens. Did nobody see anything? The massacres did not
just touch ordinary Sikhs; the flames embraced bureaucrats and top
businessmen, too. Do all of their ilk now suffer from amnesia?
Not one of those who masterminded or spearheaded this carnage has
had to face punishment and that it would remain an affront to the
nation; an unfinished business that mocks the government’s
democratic pretensions. The Action Taken Report on Nanawati's
efforts is evidence, if any was needed, of the UPA government’s
utter despair in rushing to clutch technicalities to save face. In
that it was not successful. The government failed to show its human
face when it was critically needed.
Will the Indian state and its people also look the other way if the
Nanavati-Shah commission in Gujarat were to come up with a similarly
caveated indictment against Mr Modi as Nanawati had done in case of
the 1984 pogrom?
The failure of the government to take action against those the
commission identified as having played a role in the riots shows how
fictional is the line between secularism and communalism.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had last year tried to reclaim some
political ground by offering an apology to the nation. Does the
government need a video-clipping to convince it about the guilt of
these leaders who were seen leading murderous mobs following the
assassination of Indira Gandhi?
The Nanavati commission was the last of nine such commissions asked
to probe the 1984 riots and to identify the guilty. These nine are
only a miniscule fraction of the hundreds of commissions appointed
to mollify the Opposition and cheat hapless victims of the riots.
People have lost faith in these knee- jerk exercises. Neither for
the Akali Dal in Punjab is the pogrom of 1984 an issue nor for any
other party. So much for our quest for justice.
25 October 2006
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