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One Day In November 1984

Last week, I looked bemusedly at pictures of Sonia Gandhi taking part in celebrations of Guru Nanak's birthday: solemnly contemplating a sword presented to her, sitting flower-like in the middle of a gathering of Sikhs with Guru Nanak's portrait behind her. I looked, and strangely enough my thoughts were of a man who topped the rankings in my college, who later completed a Ph D from one of the premier engineering institutions in the USA. A brilliant, gentle, thoughtful man: my friend Gurindar Singh Sohi.

I haven't seen Guri in 12 years, and there's a reason for that. In 1984, we were both living in the USA. He was on his way to his Ph D; I was in Texas, trying to cope with my first job. One day in November that year, soon after thousands of Indians had been slaughtered in India solely because they were Sikh, Guri called me.

"I feel completely betrayed by India," he told me. "I will never go back there again." I tried. But I found I had simply nothing to say. No comfort, no argument, no explanation, no rationalisation, nothing. Guri was unable to comprehend how the land that had given him birth, that had nurtured him and his talents, could have turned against him so utterly. Through those chilly, chilling days, he was struggling to come to terms with the thought that had he been in Delhi instead of the USA, he would have been murdered. That day, I could feel his anguish pour through the phone. Yet I could offer him nothing.

When I remember that conversation, when I know that such a horrific crime has seen so little justice, and now when I watch Sonia Gandhi participating in Gurparab celebrations, bemusement is really a charitable word for what I feel.

Perhaps it is unfair to visit the sins of relatives and colleagues on Sonia. Still, consider what we know about those bloody days in November 1984. A Congress government was in power then, even if its chief had just been gunned down. Its home minister, directly responsible for the failure to protect thousands of lives lost, was one P V Narasimha Rao. Sonia's own husband, one Rajiv Gandhi, explained away the killing of 3,000 Sikhs with words to turn your stomach, words to this effect: "When a mighty tree falls, the earth shakes."

After the slaughter, various inquiry commissions picked out senior Congress politicians like H K L Bhagat and Sajjan Kumar for their roles in the killing: the commissions found that these men instigated and directed looting, murdering mobs. Cases against Bhagat and Kumar, filed by brave women widowed in the killing, are still trying to find the light of day, still being stalled by the pernicious efforts of the very men they seek to bring to justice.

And in recounting all this, I have not yet mentioned the role of that gunned-down chief. It was Indira Gandhi's own murky double-dealing that landed India with the stomach-ache of Sikh resentment and separatism, that led inexorably to her own death. It was her death, on October 31 that year, that was used as a trigger for the wholesale massacre of Sikhs.

In the 14 years since the massacre -- for me, the worst crime in our 51 years -- the Congress strongmen I mentioned above have not faced anything approximating punishment for their deeds. Whether under Rajiv, Rao, Kesri or Sonia, the Congress itself has shown no inclination to punish them. Not even to the laughable extent of ostracising them from the party. Bhagat's lugubrious jowls, in particular, are still a fixture at Delhi Congress events. And there is a more frightful travesty of justice still. That is that all of us, including the families of Sikhs murdered in 1984, pay to surround these men with the highest possible levels of security. We pay to protect the lives of men who should be on trial, at the very least, for incitement to murder.

Some days ago, S S Ahluwalia of the Congress wrote a letter to Sonia Gandhi. In it, he protested the appointment to the Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee of men accused of crimes in the 1984 massacre: Bhagat, Kumar, Jagdish Tytler and Dharam Das Shastri. Yes, the party has denied them tickets for the upcoming Delhi elections. But as Ahluwalia pointed out, "[N]ot being given tickets means nothing. If you are on the campaign committee [of the DPCC], you are a spokesperson for the party."

How did the Congress react to Ahluwalia's letter? About the way you might have expected. It issued a notice to Ahluwalia asking him why he should not be punished for his insubordination. Party workers held a rally outside his home to denounce him. Congress officials swung into action to try to smear him. One told the press: "Take it from me, he will join the Samata Party in a few days."

Meanwhile the men Ahluwalia named remain in the DPCC because, says Sheila Dixit, the head of the DPCC who wants to be chief minister of Delhi, they are "Congressmen of long standing." Which is a phrase almost as nauseating as Rajiv Gandhi's was, back in 1984. You may be accused of major crimes, but as long as you are a "Congressman of long standing", you will escape even minimal justice.

That's how depraved this party has become that once guided us to freedom.

I often give thanks that I have no idea how politics works. Because with this entire perversion of justice on my mind, I cannot help finding something faintly repellent in the sight of Sonia Gandhi celebrating the birthday of the foremost Sikh Guru. "Bemusement", as I said, is a charitable word.

In November 1984, India lost so much more than a brilliant academic called Gurindar Singh Sohi. That loss is compounded with every year, every day, that passes without justice for those slaughtered Indians.

Fourteen years later, we know well one of the fruits of that compounding.

Riots that kill hundreds of Indians -- take those in Bombay in 1992-93 -- are considered no more than part of the landscape. Just as the men who dreamed up and led the 1984 massacre have eluded the weak tentacles of justice, the men who instigated slaughter in Bombay six years ago are free and unpunished. Just as one set of men remain powerful figures given top-grade security, the other set of men remain powerful figures given top-grade security. Just as the Congress sidesteps the issue of trying and punishing the guilty from 1984, the BJP and Shiv Sena sidestep the issue of trying and punishing the guilty from 1992-93. If Congress workers stage a rally to denounce Ahluwalia, the Shiv Sena's Manohar Joshi threatens to take to the streets if there is any move to make Bal Thackeray face the law.

On and on the parallels go, and in the end these parties are no more than mirror images of each other. Criminals dominate politics everywhere you look, whatever party you pick. They are there because they know, as Bhagat and company know, that politics will protect them from their crimes.

That our own, your own, particular partisan leanings will help them stay protected.

And even so, even with all that to bemoan, the saddest thing for me is the profound betrayal I knew my friend Guri felt, that day in 1984.

Dilip D'Souza