Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Sikh Riots -1984 - Aftermath


In New Delhi in 1984 when Indira Gandhi was killed and goons were set upon Sikhs. 3000 of them met a worse fate. To date, to best of my knowledge, nobody has been punished for that carnage. So certainly Long Live Indian Democracy !"Unquote

I cannot resist responding to the comments - Re
Sikh Riots. The breast beating, myopic, jholawalas / intellectuals have forgotten the context and events leading upto the October 84.
The crowds, those "set upon"
Sikhs that day were recalling the excesses of the Sikhs and resulting pain in the preceding 4 years in Punjab and elsewhere.
Many equally innocent Hindus and
Sikhs and not to forget Policemen, were killed in Punjab by the Bhidrawale goons. Many girls (Sikh and Hindu – all Indians!) were abducted for the ""use" by Bhindrawale; shall we call them "hordes" or goons. It was 'war".

 The crowds - common people - are not easy to excite for a task of this scale; by Congress or any one in History- for such spontaneous combustion. Crowds go berserk and then motivated persons -political or otherwise – take advantage. Politically un-savvy managers like us closed our offices and factories at 2:00 PM that day : All our staff was told to take care of their Sikh colleagues.
It is not my case that Congress Leaders then - later in the evening – did not add fuel to the fire. They did. And won the next election riding on the animal emotions so generated !!!

Same as Modi did in Godhra !!! And won the subsequent election riidng on the animal emotions so generated.!!! Go back to the context of Godhra.
What were Muslims of Godhra thinking/ doing burning the bogeis of returning Hindu pilgrims?
There is lot of merit in having Modi as PM; but he will come along with the rabid VHP and Bajrang Dal "hordes"
That is the "cost" or eventuality India has to brace itself for. Congress has become "leaderless;.

Only hope is that the rapid economic growth of India will ensure lesser number of people/ corwds being excited by; Congress Or Modi/ BJP or VHP and Bajrang Dal, or Bhindrawales of India, Or SIMI or IM, to commit incidents on the scale of Sikh riots, Godhra or Bhiwandi.

Smaller ones will always happen. Law and Justice system will only follow, far behind. But must .
 
When we talk of some one "going scot free"it is in the realm of Law and Judicial system. There were thousands who shouted maaro saalo ko, in those 3 or 4 days, all over the country. Most certainly, Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar and HKL Bhagat and many Cogressmen were among them. And most certainly "Jab bada ped girta hai to dharti kaampti hai" is also
in the same genre.
All of them got away thru the definitional loopholes in the Law and its enforcement system
So what is the way forward ?
A more robust Judicial System - which has an SLA with the society: Abhishek Sanghavi wrote an excellent article deatiling 9 legislative, admin and Juricprudential steps India needs to take.

The conundrum is - Would we have Justice system the way as is OR based on Mob-justice. And what should the society do about an issue that lingers on 30 years later - why and what are the motives (politics, again) ???

Both have their plus and minus sides. Judicial justice often does injustice. Sometimes mob justice can do justice with on the spot adjudication. So the answers are never really there. On the other end, the formal system is yet to deliver justice to the
perpetrators even as it has had 30 years to do the job.


 

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