Date: 8/10/2005
At least Manmohan can dump Tytler, can't he?/// http://www.samachar.com/features/100805-editorial.html /// 10th Aug 2005 /// As a rule politicians in India do not pay for their crimes. Whether it is corruption or plain murder, the bitter truth is that as a class law-makers are above the law. Do you recall a single politician since the founding of the Republic who might have been made to do time in jail for having made tonnes of money through bribes and underhand deals? /// Or, for that matter, can you name just one politician who has been convicted for the cold-blooded murder of nearly three thousand Sikhs in the capital city of India back in October November 1984? In fact, far from paying for the gruesome murders of wholly innocent men, women and children in the dark days following the assassination of Indira Gandhi, the ring leaders of those killer mobs were rewarded by the Congress Party with ministerships and tickets to State and central legislatures. /// And none other than Rajiv Gandhi himself had sought to justify the killings by asserting publicly that `when a big tree falls, the earth is bound to shake." /// Shake it did but in a manner which had left a permanent blot on the polity. The complete paralysis of the State for nearly three days when armed thugs took over the national capital only to perpetrate a murderous mayhem with few parallels in free India challenges the notion that we are a civilised nation capable of considered and balanced responses even in times of grave provocation. /// Without doubt, Indira Gandhi's murder was a heinous crime. But the manner in which the Congress Party responded to that tragic murder exposed its own lack of commitment to human values. After all only barbarians can go around burning alive innocent and wholly defenceless men, women and children by pouring petrol and kerosene over them and then setting them alight. /// Wild animals are known to conduct themselves better than the Congressmen did in their murderous frenzy to avenge the killing of their leader at the hands of her Sikh bodyguards. The official State-controlled audio-visual media egged them on when it repeatedly depicted images of the party faithful shouting slogans. "Khoon Ka Badla Khoon". /// There was no doubt that their killer mission had the sanction of their leaders. Otherwise, they would not have taken three long days to summon the army. Being the national capital with a huge cantonment, the army could have been out on the streets within an hour or so of it being ordered to bring calm to the capital. /// As the then Lt. Governor of Delhi, P. S. Gavai, has disclosed both the then newly-inaugurated Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, and the then Army Chief, General Vaidya, were not in a hurry to press in the army, asking him not to panic as these things took their own time settling down. /// The short point is that without the complicity of the central Congress administration, killer mobs would not have had a free run of the capital for three long days. Most zealously they compare Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi to Hitler and worse, but the same people put Rajiv Gandhi on a huge pedestal, renaming streets, airports and even the historic Connaught Place in the national capital after him. /// Modi may well be guilty of dereliction of duty as Chief Minister to protect the life and liberty of a section of the people after the mind-numbing provocation at Godhra railway station in which scores of Hindu devotees of Lord Rama were burnt alive. But it is noteworthy that at least two hundred Hindus too were among the 2,000 odd dead in the riots that followed in the wake of the Godhra carnage. The anti-Sikh pogrom in 1984 was wholly one-sided. /// Neither the authorities sought to put down the killers nor did the victims fight back in their defence. Yes, if Modi can be punished under the law for his failure to quell the communal riots, it must be done. But what happened in the capital in 1984 was not a riot but a plain and simple case of cold-blooded pogroms against a single community. For that reason alone, Rajiv Gandhi ought to forfeit any right to posthumous greatness being thrust on him by a government controlled by his widow. /// That the Congress Party is in no mood to atone for its huge crime is written all over in the so-called action taken report presented to Parliament on the findings of the Nanavati Commission. Of course, the Commission too flinched from saying the obvious. But even then, its indictment of Sajjan Kumar, the Congress MP from Outer Delhi, and the Union Minister, Jagdish Tytler, ought to persuade the Congress leadership to expel them from the party. /// The refusal of the Prime Minister to insist on the resignation of Tytler from his government will bolster further the impression that he is a mere puppet in the hands of Sonia Gandhi. The Opposition stalled the proceedings in the two Houses on Tuesday. /// Unless good sense prevails, there could be further confrontation between the Congress Party and the Opposition with the allies of the Congress secretly sympathising with the latter. /// Send in your comments on this article to samachareditor@sify.com ...........................000000000
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