A brief timeline of 1984 Anti-Sikh riots. How Punjab insurgency reached its peak and then the tree fell and the earth shook.
The presentation summarizes all the aspects related to the sad incident
2. Background
Punjab was traditionally ruled by Misl (sovereign
Sikh states),then unified by Maharaja Ranjit Singh
as Sikh Empire
Following the Anglo-Sikh war ,the region was
ceded to British Empire
In 1940s, when the Muslim league demanded a
separate country via Lahore resolution, the Sikhs
feared the loss of their homeland
3. After partition, majority of Sikhs migrated from Pak province
to Indian province.
They put forward the idea of Khalistan as a theocratic state
covering a small part of the greater Punjab region.
Concerned that creating a Punjabi-majority state would
effectively mean creating a Sikh-majority state, the Indian
government initially rejected the demand.
Ater series of protest and after Indo-Pak war 1965 that the
Punjab region was partitioned creating 3 states : Punjab,
Haryana, Himanchal Pradesh .
Subsequently, the Sikh leaders started demanding more
autonomy for the states, alleging that the Central
government was discriminating against Punjab
4. RISE OF MILITANCY
Introduction of Anandpur sahib resolution
Put forward by Shiromani Akali dal in
1973
Demand of special status for Punjab and
Sikhs
Two main demands by militant groups:-
Creation of independent state- Khalistan
led by Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale
Demand of autonomous state within India
as per Anandpur sahib resolution
5. Event trace back to 1977, SAD came back to power after defeating the
Congress in assembly elections
Gyani Zail Singh, the defeated chief minister, was unhappy on loss of power
and also due to Gurdayal singh commission that found him guilty on misuse of
power
Sanjay Gandhi (infamous for his “extra-constitutional” means) suggested
some “Sant” should be put to challenge the Akali govt. They provided
Bhindranwale with money but didn’t realise that provided resources, he can
leverage the crowd for his own purposes
In 1970s and 80s, the security in Punjab started to worsen leading to
imposition of president rule in 1983
Role of Politics
6. Bhindranwale, with his single point program of strict
adherence to Sikh symbols, campaigned against trimming of
hair and shaving off beard.
He found a groundswell of support among the Sikh masses
and enforced his thinking with ruthless force.
His violent methods brought him into direct conflict with the
State and soon militancy reached to its peak when the
militants took refuge in Golden Temple
Many other international organizations lent support to
militants, major was Babbar Khalsa considered the most
dangerous, well-armed, and puritanical ,strictly compliant to
rules of Khalsa
7. OPERATION BLUE STAR
(3-8 June ‘84)
Violence of the militant groups was directed
at government officials and army.
After increasing call for action, the then PM
Indira Gandhi launched military operation
against Bhindranwale and his supporters
who had taken shelter inside Golden
temple,the centre of Sikh Religion.
This act of retaliation by the Government
against these groups is known as “Operation
BlueStar”
8. Operation BlueStar was conducted in three stages:-
Operation Metal – Confined to Harmandir Sahib complex
Operation Shop - Raiding of countryside Punjab looking for
possible suspects
Operation Woodrose - Sikh protestors carrying weapons
were targeted
Huge destruction in temple complex, total seizure and
encounter of militants
Many Sikh soldiers mutinied, resigned or returned awards
and honors
9. Assassination
Enraged by operation blue star, Sikhs all
over the country sought revenge which
led to the assassination of the then PM
Indira Gandhi
Indira Gandhi was assasinated at her
residence by her Sikh bodyguards,
Satwant singh and Beant Singh on 31st
October 1984
Justice Thakkar commission of enquiry
recommended a separate probe for
conspiracy angle behind the
assassination
10. Role of state media
Doordarshan while broadcasting the news , specifically
mentioned that those who assassinated the PM were Sikhs
Everybody who was watching Doordarshan was a witness to how
he (Amitabh Bachchan) provoked the anti-Sikh rioters. Amitabh’s
slogan added fuel to the fire and took the lives of thousands of
innocent Sikh men and women. (By Jagdish Kaur,witness)
Now, All the evidences of broadcast pertaining to that period
were destroyed .
11. Democide around AIIMS
On 31 October, the crowd around the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, began
shouting for vengeance with slogans such as "Blood for blood!" and turned into an unruly
mob.
At 17:20, President Zail Singh arrived at the hospital and the mob outside stoned his car.
The mob began assaulting Sikhs by stopping cars and buses to pull Sikhs out of them and
burn them.
The violence on 31 October was restricted to the area around the AIIMS and did result in
many Sikh deaths. People in other parts of Delhi reported their neighbourhood were
peaceful.
12. Orchestrated savagery by congress leaders
Throughout the night of 31 October and morning of 1 November,
Congress leaders met with local supporters to distribute money
and weapons.
Congress party MP Sajjan Kumar and trade union leader Lalit
makeen handed out money and liquor to the assailants .
On the morning of 1st Nov various rallies were being held in
different sikh localities , assailants were given iron rods and
instructed by Sajjan Kumar to kill sikhs , loot them and bury their
properties .
Incentives were given to the assailants in form of money to
slaughter sikh community.
13. Use of
voter lists
by the
Congress
Party
On 31 October, Congress party officials provided assailants
with voter lists , school registration forms, and ration lists.
The lists were used to find the location of Sikh homes and
business, an otherwise impossible task because they were
located in unmarked and diverse neighbourhoods.
On the night of 31 October, the night before the massacres
began, assailants used the lists to mark the houses of Sikhs with
letter "S". In addition, because most of the mobs were illiterate,
Congress Party officials provided help in reading the lists and
leading the mobs to Sikh homes and businesses in the other
neighbourhood. By using the lists the mobs were able to pinpoint
the locations of Sikhs they otherwise would have missed.
14. Eyewitness account
The casual slaughter of some 350 Sikhs,
including women and children in the trans-
Yamuna Trilokpuri resettlement colony, was
without doubt the most brutal.
The massacre took place in two narrow
alleyways not more than 150 yards long, both
lanes were littered with bodies with body parts
and hair brutally hacked off, forcing people to
walk on tiptoe entire area was awash with blood,
the blood did not flow down the drains, as they
too were now choked with human body parts.
A quasiconscious half-burnt Sikh man came from
punjab to visit relatives in trilokpuri told a
rampaging mob armed with lathis and machetes
had killed his hosts and set him on fire after
dousing his body with kerosene.
15. Role of
police and
army
The army had officially been summoned a day after Mrs
Gandhi’s killing to maintain order, it was merely an order as
army was not given shoot-to-kill permission to quell the blood
thirsty mobs till Mrs. Gandhi funeral.
No police complaint or FIR was filed by the officials giving
wage reasons “Saheb duty pai nahi hai jab who ayenge tab
ana”.
By the time they got there, there was nothing to protect. And
no one.
18. Aftermath
A few days following the massacre, many surviving Sikh youth in Delhi
had retaliated by either joining or creating Sikh militant groups.
This led to series of more violence in the Punjab, where several
assassinations of senior Congress party members took place.
The Khalistan Commando Force and Khalistan Liberation Force took
responsibility of the targeted hits in retaliation. An underground network
had also been established between the victims of the genocide and Sikh
extremists.
19. From 31 October 1984 to 10 November 1984, human rights group
People's Union for Democratic Rights conducted an inquiry into the riots
by interviewing victims, police officers, neighbours of the victims, army
personnel and political leaders.
In their joint report, entitled Who Are The Guilty?, they concluded:
The attacks on members of the Sikh Community in Delhi and its suburbs
during the period, far from being a spontaneous expression of "madness"
and of popular "grief and anger" at Mrs. Gandhi's assassination as made out
to be by the authorities, were the outcome of a well organised plan marked
by acts of both deliberate commissions and omissions by important
politicians of the Congress at the top and by authorities in the administration
20. A Human Rights Watch report published in 1991 on violence between
Sikh separatists and the Government of India traces part of the problem
back to the government response to the violence.
Despite numerous credible eye-witness accounts that identified many
of those involved in the violence, including police and politicians, in the
months following the killings, the government sought no prosecutions or
indictments of any persons, including officials, accused in any case of
murder and arson.
Time reported the riots only led to minor arrests and that no major
politician or police officer had been convicted and quotes Ensaaf, a
human rights organisation, as saying the government worked to destroy
evidence of involvement by refusing to record First Information Reports
(FIR)
21. Convictions
In Delhi, 442 of the rioters were convicted by the courts. Fourty nine of these
were sentenced to the life imprisonment, and another three to imprisonment of
more than 10 years. Six Delhi Police officers were punished for lapses during the
riots.
In April 2013, the district court in Delhi convicted some people – Balwan
Khokkar (former councillor), Mahender Yadav (former MLA) ,being two of them for
inciting a mob against the Sikhs in the Delhi Cantonment area. It acquitted the
Congress leader Sajjan Kumar in the same case, leading to protests
23. • Thirty years later, those who survived
the violence have yet to receive any
semblance of justice.
• Most perpetrators have yet to be
charged and held accountable for their
crimes, and many of the affected
families continue to live in poverty.
• After this, things were never the same
between Sikhs and Indian government.
A sense of division was created among
Hindus and Sikhs
24. THE INVESTIGATION
At least 10 inquiry commissions and committees were formed to examine
various aspects of the 1984 massacre, including the role of police officers, to
recommend measures for compensation and rehabilitation, and to determine
the number of deaths.
The Delhi police had filed only 587 First Information Reports (FIRs), official complaints
against the violence. Out of these, 241 cases were closed by the police, citing lack of
evidence.
In February 2015, the Indian government constituted a three-member Special
Investigation team to reinvestigate closed cases in the 1984 riots.
Out of the 75 cases that were to be reopened, 22 have been short-listed as it was felt
that those cases had more ground for investigation.After even 2 years no justice is
deliverd.
25. In terms of monetary compensation, India’s cabinet created a rehabilitation
package for victims, which provides for a payment of about $2500 in US
dollars to each victim.
Unfortunately, many of the victims and their families have been unable to
obtain compensation for what many consider to be trivial reasons.
For example, in the State of Punjab, 22,000 individuals have been
identified as eligible for compensation, but only 12,000 have thus far
been compensated.
Perhaps more importantly, there are those who feel that monetary
compensation is not the answer. These individuals believe that a
truth commission, similar to South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation
Commission, is necessary to heal the wounds
26. If the country truly wishes to join the nations of the
free world, it must open up the events of 1984 to
independent scrutiny. Recognize Operation
Bluestar was a major blunder ending in a massacre
of mostly innocent pilgrims, which in turn alienated
an otherwise proud and patriotic community.
We should also, without any hesitation, condemn
any acts of violence against innocents, including
attacks on Punjabi Hindus and atrocities such as
the bombing of Air India flight 182. Those behind
such attacks should be brought to justice.
The Indian government, 30 years on from the
November1984 massacres, must realize the
enormity of the events, and cease from describing it
as a ‘Riot’ instead, recognize it as a Genocide.
27.
28. One can say that those events shouldn’t had happened if Indian
authorities had controlled the situation timely and efficiently. But what if,
this whole pity politics was played by our own politicians just to seek
power or votes. What if even after 1984, 1992 and 2002 also happened,
are we safe. Innocent lives are being gambled in the name of religion.
No large-scale violence happens in India without the patronage of people
in power.
Those who are guilty roam free with the blood of innocent on their hands
but pockets full of money. Families of fallen continue to ask-’Is justice
really this blind’?
