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GRANT at least the ‘virtue’ of consistency to the Congress Party. Ever since those horrifying days of end October-early November 1984 following the assassination of Indira Gandhi, the party has remained steadfast in its state of denial, refusing to accept ‘responsibility’ for the massacre of innocent Sikhs. Be it Rajiv Gandhi’s infamous trite observation of how the ground shakes when a big tree falls or the most recent white-washing exercise evident in the Action Taken Report on the Nanavati Commission, what is undeniable is that the party has behaved true to form. Everybody puts on a sombre face and bemoans the tragedy; they also act righteous and say that ‘the guilty should be brought to book’, and end by pleading helplessness since ‘the law must be permitted to follow its own course.’ And finally, there is the appeal to ‘move forward’, how a traumatised society should not remain mired in its trauma, even how we should remember to forget.

Twenty-one years, nine commission of enquiry and innumerable investigations later, are we surprised that the citizens take none of these protestations seriously? For whether or not there was a ‘conspiracy’ to teach the ‘errant Sikhs’ a lesson they would not easily forget, with senior party leaders issuing instructions to the foot-soldiers to indulge in mayhem, should not someone high enough in the hierarchy be held accountable for the complete collapse as also the blatant partisanship of the state machinery? Or are we like Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh in the wake of the recent floods in Mumbai and western Maharashtra, or Gujarat CM Narendra Modi during the post-Godhra carnage of Muslims, subsequently to explain away the gross failure of governance as an ‘act of god’? Pleading helplessness in the face of an ‘unprecedented’ challenge needs to be recognized for what it is – a cop-out.

Of course the politics needs to be fixed, starting with the lower fry who may need to be sacrificed. So we can talk of local leaders, sections of the administration and so on who failed in their duty. A few get convicted, some others transferred, possibly a few politicians are asked to pay – lose their ministerial position (a Jagdish Tytler), not get a party ticket in the next election (possibly a Sajjan Kumar) – and there the matter is supposed to end. Fortunately, it does not. Those who suffered cannot be asked to forget; their claims to justice cannot be brushed under. And the more the political class continues to filibuster, the greater is the sense of hurt, and anger.

The Sikh massacres of 1984 marked a new low in Indian politics. It is not that we had not seen ethnic killing before. Nor were we unfamiliar with the blatant partisanship of the administration and the political class. And yet, to experience killing and savagery at the scale we did in the national capital, came for all those born after Partition as a grim reminder of what we, and our rulers, can be capable of. Even more distressing was the aftermath. The story of relief, compensation, rehabilitation of the affected – just visit Tilak Vihar in Delhi – should be sufficient to disabuse us of our claims as a great and caring people.

In all the targeting of the Congress Party and its leadership, there has been insufficient attention given to the other political forces. Other than scoring political points against the Congress, what did the others do? Who, after all, stopped them from providing relief and rehabilitation, ensure jobs for affected families, start schools for children and so on? Why, they might have even shamed the then administration into acting with greater concern. Or is it that the victims were truly orphans – not the concern of even the Akali parties and the SGPC. Why? Because they were not enough of a vote bank? Or because they were not high caste Sikhs from Punjab but migrants from Rajasthan? Clearly what we saw in 1984 and subsequently was more than the failure of the state; it was a precursor to what is likely to happen in the other high-profile case of ethnic cleansing with state complicity if not sponsorship, Gujarat. In their thinking and action, there is today little to choose between the Congress and the BJP, the ‘secular’ parties and their ‘other’.

People will, as they must, move on. But if that is all that is made available to them, a recourse to the politics of memory rather than justice, then not only is there no reconciliation, there is also a heightened cynicism about the state and rule of law. Even as our political class scurries to save its own skin, it’s worth considering whether, at this rate, there will be much to save.

Harsh Sethi