A mass rally was organised by Lok Raj Sangathan, along with several other organisations, at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi, on 2 November, 2024. It was organised to mark 40 years of the gruesome genocide of Sikhs in Delhi and other places in November 1984, following the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
“Down with the politics of communal division of our people!”, “Advance the struggle for unity and peace!”, “An attack on one is an attack on all!” – these were the slogans on the main banner that formed the backdrop of the meeting. Banners with slogans that boldly proclaimed the message of the rally: “The Guilty of the 1984 massacre must be punished!”, “Down with the politics of divide and rule!”, “Let us unite to put an end to state organized communal violence and state terror!”, “State terrorism, down, down!”, “Indian state is communal!”, “Unite to end state terrorism!”, and so on were mounted all around the venue of the meeting.
The rally was jointly organised by Lok Raj Sangathan, Jamaat E Islami Hind, Communist Ghadar Party of India, Welfare Party of India, Social Democratic Party of India, The Sikh Forum, Lok Paksh, Mazdoor Ekta Committee, Purogami Mahila Sangathan, Hind Naujawan Ekta Sabha, Citizens for Democracy, Student Islamic Organisation, CPIML (New Proletarian), APCR and others.
Representatives of the participating organisations who addressed the rally included S Raghavan from Lok Raj Sangathan, Mohammed Salim Engineer from Jamat-e-Islami Hind, Ravindar from Lok Paksh, Birju Nayak from Communist Ghadar Party of India, Artist Arpana Caur, Hashim Malik from SDPI and Siddhant from IFTU Sarvahara.
Highlighting the significance of the rally, they pointed out that what happened in November 1984 was not a spontaneous outburst, but was carefully planned and organised by the party then in power at the centre. Those guilty of organising the genocide, the top leaders of the Congress Party and state officials at the highest levels, have remained unpunished. The victims of the genocide have suffered untold hardships over the past 40 years, and have been systematically denied justice.
Over the past four decades, the demand to punish the guilty has been repeatedly raised by all justice-loving people and their organisations, the speakers said. However, while one political party has replaced another in the central government, each one has covered up the truth that it was a monstrous crime committed by the party in power, on behalf of the ruling class and with the involvement of the entire state machinery. This exposes the false belief that only the BJP is communal while the Congress Party is not, they clarified.
Highlighting the repeated incidences of state organised communal violence and state terror, the speakers gave examples of the large-scale communal violence overseen by the Congress Party at the centre and the BJP government in UP following the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 under the supervision of the BJP government, the frequent lynching of Muslims by state-backed gangs, the continued incarceration under UAPA of youth who opposed the communal and divisive CAA, the communal violence unleashed in East Delhi in 2020 and the most recent instance of the communal violence organised in Bahraich in UP just two weeks earlier. They expressed the view that 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.
The repeated incidences of state organised communal violence prove that the Indian state does not protect the lives and rights of all citizens, including the right to conscience. The state is an organ of the rule of the bourgeoisie, which organises communal violence as its preferred weapon, to smash the unity of our people against our common exploiters and oppressors.
The rally concluded with the resolution to strengthen our unity and carry forward the struggle against state organised communal violence and state terror. We must demand that all those guilty of such monstrous crimes against our people be tried and punished, irrespective of their position in the state machinery. We must advance our struggle with the aim of ushering in a new kind of democracy, in which the masses of people will be able to hold those in power accountable for their crimes, and ensure the strictest punishment for those who violate the right to life, the right to conscience and all other basic rights of our people.