Statement of the Central Committee of the Communist Ghadar Party of India, 25 October 2024
Forty years ago, beginning on 1 November 1984 and continuing for three full days, over ten thousand Sikhs were mercilessly murdered on the streets of Delhi, Kanpur, Bokaro and other places.
What took place 40 years ago is referred to as “anti-Sikh riot” in official records. Acting Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi sought to justify it by saying, “When a big tree falls the earth will shake”. What he meant by that was that the mass killings were a spontaneous reaction of people to the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. However, all available facts have exposed this official narrative to be completely false.
With voter lists in their hands to identify the homes and shops of Sikhs, top leaders of the Congress Party led the murderous gangs. The police forces were instructed to disarm Sikhs and assist the killer gangs.
A Prime Minister being shot dead indicates the hand of some powerful interest. Without investigating who was the mastermind behind this assassination, those in power started spreading the word that “Sikhs have killed our beloved Prime Minister”. The fact that the two bodyguards alleged to have shot her were Sikhs was used to target all Sikhs. The call to take revenge on Sikhs was issued by senior Congress leaders.
What took place was not a spontaneous outburst. It was meticulously planned and organised by the party in charge of the central government.
While innocent people were being massacred, numerous appeals were made by concerned citizens, including retired generals and air marshals, judges, journalists, IAS and IFS officers. They appealed to the President of India and the Home Minister, begging them to stop the mass killings. Their appeals went unheeded.
The only real protection that the Sikhs had during those days was their own collective self-defence, and the assistance provided by people in the neighbourhood. There were numerous cases of people of different religious faiths protecting their Sikh neighbours.
The people of Sikh faith have faced untold suffering, not only during those three days but throughout the past 40 years. Thousands of families have been deprived of their primary income earning members. Justice has been denied to the victims of the genocide.
The demand to punish the guilty has been repeatedly raised by the people during the past four decades. However, while one political party has replaced another in New Delhi, those who organised the genocide in November 1984 have not been punished. The official commissions of enquiry and court judgments have all treated the genocide as if it is a collection of numerous acts of murder. There has been no investigation of what was going on at the top, such as in the Cabinet and in the Home Ministry, during those dark days of 1st to 3rd November. The truth has been covered up, that it was a monstrous crime committed by the party in charge of executive power, on behalf of the ruling class and with the involvement of the entire state machinery.
The events of 1984 and all the political developments since then have exposed the lying propaganda that the Indian state has secular foundations, that it defends the lives and rights of all citizens without exception. No, this state does not protect the right to conscience or the right to life as universal and inviolable rights of every member of society. It is an organ of rule of the bourgeoisie, which organises and benefits from communal violence.
The existing state is not an organ for uniting Indian people or for harmonising the interests of different classes or sections of society. On the contrary, it is an organ for suppressing the workers, peasants and other working people, and for preventing them from uniting against their common exploiters and oppressors.
State terrorism has been developed as an integral part of the method of rule of the bourgeoisie. Demonising people of a particular religious faith, portraying them as a threat to the unity and integrity of India and making them the target of physical attacks, has served to spread terror among the people and to divide and rule over them.
Throughout the decade of the 1980s, people of Sikh faith were portrayed as being anti-national and posing a threat to national unity and territorial integrity of India. Many terrorist acts were carried out by central intelligence agencies and portrayed as crimes committed by “Sikh terrorists”. Thousands of innocent Sikh youth were branded as terrorists and kept in jail, or murdered in fake encounters.
The fact that the organisers of the genocide in 1984 were not punished paved the way for similar crimes to be committed again and again. Babri Masjid was demolished in December 1992 and large-scale communal violence was unleashed under the supervision of the Congress government at the center and the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh. The BJP government in Gujarat supervised the massacre of Muslims in February 2002. In recent years, Muslims have been regularly lynched by gangs which have the backing of the state machinery. Youth who opposed the communal and divisive Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) continue to be incarcerated in the jails under UAPA. Earlier this month, the government of Uttar Pradesh has unleashed large scale communal violence and terror to smash the unity of the people.
We must reject the lying propaganda that only BJP is communal while the Congress Party is not. Historical experience has shown that both these parties are guilty of having used the state machinery to unleash communal violence. Over the past few months, in Himachal Pradesh, a state governed by the Congress Party, armed mobs have been attacking Muslims, forcing them to shut their shops, and to flee the state.
Over the past year, evidence has come to light that the intelligence agencies of the Indian state have been using criminal gangs to carry out assassinations of political activists in Punjab, Canada, Britain, US and other countries. These blatant terrorist acts are being justified in the name of defending the national unity and territorial integrity of India. A climate is once again being created in our country to justify the unleashing of communal violence against Sikhs, in addition to the attacks on Muslims.
The struggle against communal violence and all forms of state terrorism must be carried forward by relying on the unity of workers, peasants and all the oppressed, against the ruling capitalist class. We must oppose every attack on the people of any particular religion, as an attack on the entire people and our unity. We must not accept the call of those who preach that “we must forgive and forget” such crimes against any section of our people. We have to persist with our demand that those in charge of the people’s security must be held responsible and punished for every act of mass violence on any section of the people.
State terrorism and state-organised communal violence are weapons of the bourgeoisie, to terrorise people, keep them divided and continue their exploitative rule. Thus the source of communal violence and all forms of state terrorism lies in the rule of the capitalist class. In order to create a society where people of varied beliefs can live in harmony and the right of every human being will be protected, it is necessary to dethrone the capitalist class and establish the rule of the working class, allied with all other working and oppressed people.
The Indian people need a state that ensures the right to life, the right to conscience, and all other human rights of every member of society. The Communist Ghadar Party of India calls upon all those fighting against state terrorism, against communalism and communal violence, to wage this struggle with the revolutionary perspective of establishing a workers’ and peasants’ state — a state that will be duty bound to ensure prosperity and protection to all.