1984 Delhi Genocide - Political Collusion

It is a political fashion to set up commissions of inquiry whenever large-scale riots take place.

This is a useful practice, since it provides opportunities of employment for superannuated judges, who then routinely express their gratitude, first by taking an inordinately long time to arrive at their 'findings', and then by submitting ambiguously worded reports that can lend themselves to convenient political interpretation, without necessitating any unequivocal course of action.

These are immediately grabbed by opportunistic political parties who use them to beat up their opponents on a partisan political agenda that has nothing to do with securing justice.

Currently, the game is running somewhat in balance between the country's two leading political formations. The Congress has selective leaks from the same Justice GT Nanavati's Commission of Inquiry into the Gujarat riots, with which it periodically attempts to beat up the bjp; the bjp now has the learned Justice's report on the Sikh pogrom to attack the Congress.

But this is just shadow boxing. Nobody politically significant ever gets hurt. As for the families of those who were murdered, and the many who survive, maimed and scarred by the hideous violence, India has a long tradition of simply forgetting about these.

"No riot that lasts beyond 24 hours is possible without explicit political collusion."

2,733 Sikhs were killed in the orchestrated massacres of 1984; and the Congress clearly has the 'better score' over the bjp here — the Gujarat riots had 1,044 dead, 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus.

These are hideous blots on India's record, a shame and a disgrace that can only partially be mitigated by bringing the guilty to the harshest justice. But the farcical nature of the 'Commission of Inquiry' into the riots is more than evident in the record.

Nine such commissions have 'investigated' the 1984 riots till date, and at the end of this interminable process we have just eight convictions for this enormous and politically managed outrage.

No politician has been punished for the obvious part so many played in organising these atrocities; no officials have been brought to book for their abject and manifest failure to do their sworn duty.

Unfortunately, this is anything but the exception. The Mumbai riots of 1993 had 1,788 dead — there are no convictions; the Bhagalpur riots had over a thousand dead — they have yielded just 10 convictions; the Meerut riots of 1987 had 350 dead — there have been no convictions.

Even in the rare cases where convictions are secured, these are against inconsequential thugs. No politician has ever been convicted since Partition.

It is, moreover, a firm conviction that no major riot, indeed, no riot that lasts beyond 24 hours in India, is even possible without explicit political and administrative collusion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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