Image Courtesy: AFP

All I knew was that the kids go door to door on this day and ask for candies. This is no different than Lohri – a festival of bonfire celebrated in January each year in Punjab. The children go home to home asking for treats. Cool!

As our first Halloween came that year my curiosity grew seeing madness for scary costumes. I did some research and found that it was one way of warding off evil spirits that come to the earth at that time and children dress themselves up like monsters to keep them away so that they consider them as one of their own. Obviously, this is all superstitious, but it has a complete different meaning for someone like me. It’s mainly because of an unforgettable and ill-fated date of October 31 that coincides with something more horrific done to my people 35 years ago.

On this day in 1984, then-Prime Minister of Indira Gandhi was assassinated at her official residence in New Delhi by her Sikh bodyguards who were outraged at the military invasion on their holiest place, the Golden Temple Complex in Amritsar. The controversial army operation was ordered by Gandhi in June that year to deal with handful of Sikh militants who could have been otherwise forced to surrender by using other means. Accusing the extremists of committing violence and taking refuge in the shrine, the government of India used its military might to suppress Sikh movement for autonomy of Punjab and equal rights for the minority community. The intent was to polarize the Hindu majority in the name of national unity in the impending general election.

The ill-conceived military attack left many pilgrims dead and historically important buildings inside the complex heavily destroyed. This had enraged the Sikhs all over the world and resulted into the death of Gandhi.

As soon as the news of Gandhi’s murder spread, the violent mobs started organizing against the Sikhs. The members of the slain leader’s ruling Congress party instigated Hindus to avenge her death by targeting innocent Sikhs. As a result, in the national capital of New Delhi alone, close to 3,000 Sikhs were slaughtered. Their women were gang raped. The Sikhs were also murdered in other parts of India under the watch of police. Years have passed, but there is hardly any justice done, barring the conviction of lone former Congress MP Sajjan Kumar and that too in 2018.

The accountability of Indira’s son Rajeev Gandhi – who later took over as the next Prime Minister, was never established, although all signs indicate that he was directly complicit in the genocide that actually helped him to win the December 1984 election with a brute majority on the slogan of national unity and by demonizing the Sikh community.  

The bloodshed of the Sikhs had begun while people in Canada were celebrating Halloween. Those who were dressed up like monsters to ward off evil spirits had no realization what was going on in another part of the world. The evil spirits had actually come alive to go after Sikhs. The international community largely remained indifferent to the massacre. It was seen as a natural reaction to the death of a towering leader, whereas it was not. A state sponsored act of terror was completely overlooked, leave aside the question of slapping sanctions against India.

The issue is relevant even more today as the fight for justice continues, while the massacre has set a culture of impunity in the world’s so called largest democracy. This had encouraged the current Prime Minister Narendra Modi to use a similar experiment against Muslims in Gujarat in 2002. Modi who is the leader of right wing Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) was the Chief Minister of the state back then. He is widely blamed for the violence that followed the burning of a train carrying Hindu pilgrims. Over 50 passengers had died in the incident that was instantly blamed on Muslims by the BJP following which large scale violence was orchestrated against the community across Gujarat. This paid electoral dividends to Modi in the next assembly election.  

Fast forward to 2019. Early this year, a suicide attack by a Kashmiri militant had left close to 40 soldiers dead in Pulwama following which the BJP and its supporters started harassing Kashmiris all across India. The attack was blamed on Kashmir based political extremists who have been fighting for right to self-determination. BJP that is known for its hawkish position on Kashmir used every tool in its toolbox to turn Hindus against Kashmiri Muslims in the wake of Pulwama episode. And despite poor performance of Modi government on many fronts since he first became the Prime Minister in 2014, he won another majority in the May 2019 election. Much like 1984 and 2002, Pulwama episode gave breather to those in power.

Emboldened by the mandate given to him by the Indian voters, Modi government arbitrarily abrogated special status given to Kashmir in August 5 and turned the entire state into an open jail. The lockdown continues even though three months have passed.

On this Halloween while we enjoy our treats and have fun with our families and children, it’s necessary to take a moment to remember those claimed by evil spirited politicians 35 years ago and later on. This is the least we can do to first educate ourselves about this dark chapter of the history and pressure our elected officials here to stand up for the minorities who are being persecuted in India with no fear of the outside world. It’s a shame that Canada that claims to be a human rights leader in the world has remained silent over what is going on in Kashmir and growing attacks on religious minorities under Modi. This silence needs to be broken and we all know Halloween fireworks can’t do this. We all need to raise our voices to make this happen. 

The post Bloody Halloween: When evil spirits came to life on the streets of India appeared first on SabrangIndia.

I still feel, however, that those times were a tad better than today because we did not have these goons who threaten people from their newsrooms and instigate violence against them. Can you imagine, what would have been the role of this (today’s) media under a powerful government of Rajiv Gandhi?

Doordarshan kept showing the dead body of Mrs Gandhi for several days as people were shouting slogan : Khoon Ka Badla Khoon se lenge..

Indiraji had brought the colour TV revolution to India, people watched the entire drama unfold on their TV screens: they were being fed all the sarkaari reports minute by minute. It was perhaps the first 24×7 ‘spectacle’ for the TV media in India. It extended for some days. Newspaper sales increased and in smaller cities, copies of editions of newspapers would be sold off in minutes of arrival at the outlets. 
 
Doordarshan and All India Radio did their “duty” by the government of the dat. Absent were the screaming voices of “party spokespersons” inside the studios like we are witnessing today. Today, there would have been a direct campaign launched against the Sikhs. The media at the time was silently just “doing its duty as per government orders”.  Doordarshan-Akashwani would stop all regular programmes and we would have repeated news on Indira Gandhi’s Assassination. We depended on external sources like the BBC which had declared by 10 am that she had been shot dead but there was no official word about it. Though she was shot at her home in the morning time around 9 am, the official announcement of her death came at 6 pm on radio and television simultaneously. When I imagine what would have happened if Indira ji’s Assassination  tool place today, during commercial 24X7 TV channels, I shudder… 
Violence erupted or was made to erupt by the goons of the Congress party but it was not merely an issue of Congress. In her death, Indira Gandhi had become or was projected as a Great Hindu leader killed by the Sikhs. So in the subsequent days, we saw, a manifestation  of ‘Hindu’ outrage, though we conveniently called it only Congress goons but it was not so. Congress had become the Hindu party, a party of the Hindu sentiments, whose leader was called and Rajiv Gandhi called her Bharat Mata in his first broad-caste to the nation.

The violence or pogrom whatever we call as the state of India completely abdicated its duty. The goons whether Congress Party or any other sympathizer, whether Hindus or not, had complete protection from the administration and its police. It was like a ‘national’ ‘resolve’ to ‘teach’ Sikh a lesson. Innocent children lost their parents. We never saw such brutality since partition of India. Butchering of families. The Home Minister P V Narsimha Rao sat silently allowing the goons to do all the things and police remaining quiet. All over the country, there was a pattern, whisper campaign against Sikhs as if they killed Mrs Gandhi. This is a serious question to ponder over.

Why did we blame the entire community if some crime is committed under their name. Muslims have been punished for that, Dalits, too and Sikhs got their “punishment” because the murderer of Indira Gandhi happened to be Sikh. But the murderers of Rajiv Gandhi were Hindus while that of Gandhi ji was a Brahmin but we never saw that kind of isolation and condemnation of that community. It means, that the dominant define the discourse: who to vilify and who to glorify. That is why, Gandhi’s murderers are still being glorified and nothing has, metamorphically,  happened to them.
Today when we moan the brutal murder of Indira Gandhi anx remember her legacy, we can not keep our eyes shut at the massacre in her death. that  Sikhs were butchered and murdered in the aftermath of her assassination were a complete abdication of the state Rajdharma. It was a project of the Hindu Rashtra, this time under Rajiv’s Congress where Sikhs were vilified and Rajiv became symbol of Hindu Asmita.

If we are today living in these terrible time when the Indian state apparatus has turned brahmanical then the project started since the return of Indira Gandhi in 1980. It got strengthened in her unfortunate assassination in 1984. 

India is paying a heavy price today for the games that the Congress played during this period in the absence of fighting the issue ideologically, it tried to sail through the same boat of communal polarisation which resulted in massive mandate for Rajiv Gandhi but victory of the Hindu Rashtra. Subsequently, Rajiv’s flirtation and Congress’s complete ideological bankruptcy paved the way for the Hindutva forces whose cherished dream to rule India was realised in May 2014 and second mandate of 2019, they have further strengthened their position.

Today is the day to not merely remember Mrs Gandhi and her contribution to our polity but also the Congress’es failure to fight communal forces ideologically by virtually becoming the B team of Hindutva, resulting in the legitimacy and ascendancy of hate mongers in the power structure of the state.

The post Congress used Hindu card to consolidate politically without fighting the hatred ideologically: Indira Gandhi assassination appeared first on SabrangIndia.

DELHI

Sophie James Josephees 

 Sophie James Joseph died at St Stephen’s Hospital in Delhi two years ago of asthma. She had herself been a nurse in a Delhi hospital, and knew that asthma could kill. She had lived for the years of her retirement with her ailment, her racking cough often keeping her awake late into the night. You cannot dream, nor have nightmares, lying awake in bed on the third floor of a DDA flat in Lawrence Road in the highly industrialised West Delhi. But you can occasionally have total recall. She would sometimes tell me of her memories. Of the more recent ones I myself was a part.

Sophie, daughter of South Indian parents who worked in the Railways had lived in Delhi since the late thirties. She was my aunt. The deepest memories were, of course, of the Partition. If you were a Christian and did not roam about the streets too often, you had a ring side and comparatively safe view of the Partition from your terrace in your small house near the Delhi University, where Jawahar Nagar now stands as a middle class slum. 

This area was designed for major tragedy. It population was a mix of poor and rich Muslims and arrogant and strong rustics of the north, not fanatics or Hindutvawadis as we would now use terms, but extremely clannish, thinking and acting not as individual persons, but as a single organism with a single mind thinking for all of them, identical adrenaline flowing through their collective veins. Not too far away were three Railway stations — the Old Delhi Main, famous for its red British Castle battlements, another called Subzi Mandi and the third at Kishan Gunj. 

In the days before meter gauge and the population explosion in the now posh South Delhi, these stations were almost the only entry points to the national capital, particularly for people coming in from the East, the North, and the West. This is where the trains passed through from Lucknow and Allahabad and Bihar Sharief, full of Muslims fleeing the divided India. This is where the trains came in from Lahore, filled sometimes with decapitated and mutilated bodies of Hindus, and sometimes with greater pathos, women wailing in pain from their ravaged bodies, gang raped and stabbed as they were caught on some wayside station. 

These were the saltpetre and the tinder which set fire to this benign part of Old Delhi. Within hours, Sophie remembers, of the first news of carnage, the area itself had erupted in massive explosion of violence, of terror the likes of which she had never heard even in a city whose collective memory goes back to the sacking of the town by Ghaznavi. What she could not see from her balconies, she heard from her brother–in–law, part of a contingent of a southern regiment rushed to the capital as a neutral force to quell the violence. 

Men like her brother–in–law, and the man from the same army formation who would later wed her, hardened soldiers barely out of the Second World War, would come home with tears in their eyes at the sight they had seen. Men slaughtered on the run, young boys turned butchers. Of children snatched from their brother and thrown up into the air, only to be impaled on swords and ballams, the rural lances, that many kept in their homes. 

Sophie did not tell me stories of the women. She could not bear to. The kindest thing that could happen to Muslim women in Delhi — and perhaps to their counterparts across the border, too — was to be abducted by some young or middle aged man who had the physical strength and courage to keep her safe from others, and the financial wherewithal to keep her as his woman, eventually his wife in the common–law marriages that then took place as convenience and succour. Sophie would also tell stories of heroism, and greed. 

Many Hindus saved lives, in return for all the cash they could carry, or for rights over the house that would soon be vacated. Others saved their neighbours out of love. Many lived to cross the borders not because the army men protected them, but because the neighbours risked their lives to save them from other marauding neighbours. 

Sophie, then in her teens, remembered all this. She was no heroine and her lower middle class family was not the stuff of which role models are made, but they were happy they connived in the saving of lives. That lives could be saved if there was courage of conviction was a lesson she learnt. Her lesson would come in handy almost thirty five years later, save many more lives of other neighbours. 

She was now living in the DDA colony at Lawrence, recently re-christened Kesavapuram. She was the only Christian in her block, A–1. Ironically, almost all her neighbours were refugees from Pakistan, who had come into the city in 1947 and 1948, shattered, their souls wounded, and had rebuild comfortable lives for themselves. For years, Sophie thought she was the only member of a minority community in the block. Her neighbours also thought she was the only minority member. Exotic, as a matter of fact. 

When she decorated her home for Christmas, children from other blocks would come to see the nativity tableau. One day the block woke up to the realisation that there was another minority community living amongst them. On 31 October 1984, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was shot dead. Within hours, Delhi was on fire; or rather Sikh shops were on fire. In another hour, 3,500 Sikhs, young men and old but mostly men, were dragged down from buses, pushed off their motorcycles, cycles and scooters, doused. In Lawrence road, the frenzy was as much. Rumours flew as thick as the smoke from the burning, living bodies.

In Block A–1, tiny Bobby was unaware of the momentous event, that a Big Tree Had Fallen and Shaken the Ground. As he played in the house of Sophie, noises were heard outside the Block. There was a mob from another block, from nearby A–2 or from the slums of Trinagar, also close by. They were looking for Sikh families, to burn. These were the days before they built the steel barricades in colonies. 

The mob was already inside A–1 when HS Chaddha, Bobby’s father realised he was the only Sikh in the block, and the crowds were after him. Chaddha, too, had a corner flat on the third floor. It was a coveted flat, with extra space which the DDA brochure called a Lucky House. HS Chaddha had paid a little more than Sophie had for his house, but he was suddenly glad he was on the same floor, just across the landing of the staircase from the Christian house. 

Sophie came out and called Bobby’s mother. Come in, she said. The Chaddha clan trooped in, in tears and afraid, mumbling their prayers. Sophie calmed them down, and took them to her own bedroom. They were safe, she said. Her husband was a former army officer. Her nephew knew all the big shots in Delhi, particularly the police commissioner. They were safe, Mother Sophie said. She would guard them with her life. She did. She chided the neighbours, tried to din some courage into them. She scolded them, and she remained extremely quite on who were inside her house. Chaddha and other similar families from the neighbourhood. Safe from the mobs as long as Sophie lived. 

The crowds looked at her, and turned away. Not daring her any further, not daring to test if she meant what she said. Not entering her house. Her courage infused a sense of community in the block. They were bound to a conspiracy of silence at least. A section of police jawans came to her block a day later, and stood guard, on and off. It was days before Bobby and his parents went back to their home. No thanks were needed. No formal thanks were said. The eyes said it all. 

Years later, Bobby was a young handsome Sikh, with a curly beard. He was in tears at a prayer meeting held on the roof top terrace of Block A–1 for someone who had died the previous day, and had been buried that evening. As the prayers hummed low, someone spoke of Sophie, witness to 1947, a small heroine of 1984. That is how they remembered the old nurse. As Mother Courage. 

Archived from Communalism Combat, September 2001,  Anniversary Issue (8th) Year 8  No. 71, Cover Story 2

The post Mother Courage appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Tarkunde celebrated his 90th birthday on July 3, 1999. Few men could have led so full a life, a life so rich in achievement, a life devoted without a break for what is right, what is fair and just.

Having become a barrister, he started practising law, first in Pune, then in Bombay. From the very beginning, he devoted a large part of his life to social work. Social work for Tarkunde meant hard and uncomfortable work in the villages which he was fully qualified to do as he had a degree in agricultural economics. He did not do such work for publicity and self–advancement, but because he thought it right to do it. After he shifted to Bombay, social work meant assisting the trade union movement. He was also involved in the freedom movement.

He was appointed a judge of the Bombay High Court and proved to be an outstanding judge with a passion for justice. For Tarkunde, the very object of law was to bring about justice. He analysed the underlying principle behind the law and to the extent possible decided in a manner that was fair and just. He was a judge for 12 years during which he delivered a number of judgements of distinction in the field of administrative and other branches of law.

On retiring, he started practising in the Supreme Court. He soon had a flourishing practice. He was always, however, available to appear for an impecunious client or a worthy cause. Many lawyers have done such work but few have done it so extensively. And, unlike most lawyers, Tarkunde did such work whenever required, not only when convenient so as not to disturb the flow of flourishing and paying work. Tarkunde in fact gave priority to such work and there were weeks when he did nothing else.

He was always in great demand for such work as he devoted all his energy and formidable legal ability to such work. But that was not all. He did not merely appear in court for good causes. That is easy. He also attended conferences and conventions all over the country, participated in demonstrations and protests. He travelled to small towns, staying in inconvenient and uncomfortable places. He was not afraid, and on at least one occasion, he was in a silent procession which was ruthlessly dispersed by the police, with Tarkunde himself being beaten up.

It is not even possible to list his many activities. He was at the fore–front of the campaign to end police atrocities against the Naxalites. After the vicious anti–Sikh pogrom in Delhi which followed the assassination of Mrs. Gandhi, he took the lead in exposing the involvement of the Congress leadership and the higher police authorities in the pogrom. He supported the Bohra reformists in exposing the policies of the Bohra priesthood in suppressing all kinds of dissent. When the Khalistan movement was at its height, he had the courage to condemn the way in which the police and the para–military authorities had functioned. He did the same when Kashmir was racked by militancy later.

Unlike some activists, he condemned all acts of violence and atrocities, whether committed by the police or by the militants. He had the courage to do so in Srinagar when he was attending a militant rally!

Tarkunde is not a Gandhian in the formal sense; he does not wear khadi, and he enjoyed his game of golf. But if being Gandhian means a devotion to truth and principle, he is a great Gandhian.

He is a person who puts the human being first, above all "isms"; what he is devoted to is the freedom and welfare of the man. He abhors dogma and fundamentalism of all kinds.

At the function held to felicitate him on his 90th birthday in Mumbai, he spoke and made a few points which sum up the man, and which deserve to be widely known.

He stressed that he believed in morality which he explained meant doing what was good and right, not to oblige others, not to be thanked or praised, but because doing good should satisfy and please the person who does it. He called this enlightened self–interest. He said that he was a nationalist, but also a democrat; nationalism to him meant not believing in an abstraction called the nation, but working for the welfare, freedom and happiness of the people who constitute the nation. And speaking at the height of the Kargil crisis, he said that he unhesitatingly condemned the action of the militants in torturing and killing some Indian jawans, but reminded the audience not to forget that thousands of Kashmiris who had disappeared without a trace after being arrested by the police. Saying this required courage and this reveals the real Tarkunde, a man of great courage with the highest principles.

Archived from Communalism Combat, July 1999. Year 6  No. 51, Tribute 1

The post Crusader for Human Rights appeared first on SabrangIndia.

THE 23rd of March is observed by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties every year as the J.P. Memorial Day. It was on this day in 1977 that the emergency which had been
declared by Mrs. Indira Gandhi on June 25, 1975, was lifted by the Janata government which came to power by defeating the Congress of Mrs. Indira Gandhi in the 1977 election. Jayaprakash Narayan played a pivotal role in forging unity of the opposition parties and fashioning the electoral defeat of the Indira Congress. March 23, 1977 is rightly regarded as the day of India’s liberation from authoritarianism, and it is very appropriate that the day should be observed to express our regard and gratitude for Jayaprakash Narayan.

The danger of Indian democracy being replaced by personal dictatorship did not altogether disappear with the lifting of the emergency on 23rd March 1977. The danger of authoritarianism re–appeared with the success of Mrs. Gandhi the post–emergency election of 1979–80 and it continued even under the unprincipled regime of Rajiv Gandhi. After Rajiv Gandhi’s tragic death, however, the Gandhi–Nehru family has ceased to be in possession of political power and, the danger of personal dictatorship has receded into the background.

In the meantime, however, a graver and more serious danger to Indian democracy has appeared on the horizon. It is represented by the growing strength of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the power behind it – the R.S.S and the Sangh Parivar consisting of such organisations like the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal. They are giving to the Indian people a heady mixture of aggressive Hindu communalism and an equally aggressive Hindu nationalism. In that process they are promoting animosity between Hindus and Muslims. The events which led to the destruction of the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya on December 6, 1992 show that the forces involved in this communal – nationalist movement have no regard for the rule of law and the institutions of judicial administration.

As I will show later, the movement which is being fostered by these forces contains all the essential characteristics of fascism. By promoting communal animosity the BJP has during a short time of about two years increased its strength in Parliament from

two to 119 members. During this process, more than 2,000 persons have died as a result of communal riots prior to the demolition of the Babri Masjid, and more destructive communal riots have taken place thereafter all over the country. As the Congress (I) is now much weaker than before and the opposition parties are unable to unite to form an anti–communal secular platform, the BJP expects to come to power in the next election. If this happens, secular democracy in India is liable to be replaced by a potentially fascist theocratic State.

I am of the view that the communalist nationalism which is being propagated by the BJP and the sangh parivar represent a far greater danger to Indian democracy than the personal authoritarian rule which Mrs. Indira Gandhi and the Gandhi–Nehru family were likely to impose on the country. A personal authoritarian rule is a lesser danger because it is largely external to the people. Most of the people do not approve of it, although they are usually too afraid to stick out their necks and openly oppose it. It is true that those who are in favour of the status quo are positively in favour of such an authoritarian rule, but they do not form the majority of our people. In the course of time, an increasing number of bold spirits come forward to openly oppose the imposition of individual authoritarianism. That is what happened during the emergency between June 1975 and February 1977.

Communalism, however, particularly when it is the communalism of the majority and can therefore take the form of ardent nationalism as well, can find a positive response in the minds of the people who are still prone to religious blind faith and among whom the humanist values of democracy — the values of liberty, equality, fraternity – are yet to be fully developed. Communalism in such cases is an internal enemy residing in the human mind and it is far more difficult to eradicate than an external enemy like an autocratic ruler.

Archived from Communalism Combat, July 1999. Year 6  No. 51, Tribute 1

The post ‘Beware, the enemy within!’ appeared first on SabrangIndia.