Political Crimes need political trial and punishment!
Twenty five years have passed since the gruesome state-organised massacre of Sikhs in Delhi and other places in India, following the assassination of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on 1st November, 1984. The massacre of 1984 continues to be called a riot in the official records, which is a travesty of justice and a gross
Political Crimes need political trial and punishment!
Twenty five years have passed since the gruesome state-organised massacre of Sikhs in Delhi and other places in India, following the assassination of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on 1st November, 1984. The massacre of 1984 continues to be called a riot in the official records, which is a travesty of justice and a gross misrepresentation of facts.
Most of the victims who took refuge in the relief camps run by the Gurudwaras (Sikh places of worship) in Delhi repeated the same charge. They said the Hukumat (ruling authority) is to blame, not the people of Hindu faith. Those who attacked them had been provided with voter lists and names of Sikh families identified. They had the backing of prominent political leaders and the police, who either looked the other way or arrested Sikhs in the name of preventing a backlash.
The assassination of Indira Gandhi and the genocide of Sikhs served to spread hatred and hysteria against Sikh fundamentalism, and created a wave of sympathy for the Gandhi family. The Congress Party swept to power in the Lok Sabha elections in 1985, headed by Rajiv Gandhi whose main slogan was, “Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan!” This was Act One of the drama that has unfolded over the past 25 years, a period when state terrorism and the criminalization of dissent have been institutionalized as preferred methods of rule.
The present Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress President Sonia Gandhi have made one symbolic gesture each, to convey that they are sorry about what happened in 1984. They are now singing the tune that people must forgive and forget about it.
Let the truth remain hidden, let it be recorded as a riot, let those who organized the genocide not be punished, let no leader be convicted, let us just get along with life! This is the message that is being conveyed to the people by the present day rulers of India.
This is not the first time that the people of India are being asked to forgive and forget, and those in power are promising that “it shall not happen again”. This is what Jawaharlal Nehru told the people after the bloody Partition in 1947-48. It shall not happen again! But it has happened again. Not once but again and again, in Assam, Delhi, Ayodhya, Gujarat and elsewhere. There is no guarantee that it will not happen again, until and unless the truth is established and the guilty are tried and punished.
Organising violence directed at people of a particular faith, whipping up hatred and frenzy, and then pretending to be for harmony and peace, is a method of dividing and ruling over the people that emerged under colonialism. It has been further perfected by the Indian ruling bourgeois class and its principal political parties since 1947.
Experience of the past 25 years shows how political crimes are covered up in the existing judicial system. The legal machinery has reduced the entire issue to whether eye witnesses are there to give evidence of individual acts of rape and murder. Those who attempt to give evidence are terrorized or bribed to tell lies. The judges are also bribed by powerful politicians who have much to hide and do not want the truth to come out.
In the context of organized genocide by those in power, the accused are not merely the thugs who carried out the gruesome acts on various individual victims. The accused is the organizer, the mastermind, the party or group that made the calculation that an organized massacre will fetch a political advantage. Political crimes require a political trial. A genocide cannot be treated like a collection of individual murder cases.
When those who are supposed to protect the law and security of life of citizens look the other way as people get killed on the streets, those in power are answerable. This is called Command Responsibility. The leaders of the responsible party must be put on trial, not merely some underling who carried out the orders received from above.
The Communist Ghadar Party of India calls on all communists, revolutionaries, democrats and defenders of human rights to unite and raise their voices against the injustice of covering up the truth about the 1984 genocide. Communists must be in the forefront of the struggle for justice. Truth cannot remain hidden forever. Criminals cannot and must not be allowed to rule India forever!