REP•RTAGE Barbara Crossette, who has been writing about India since the early 1980s and is the author of several books on South Asia, was the New York Times bureau chief in New Delhi from 1988 to 1991.
India’s Sikhs: Waiting for Justice Barbara Crossette
The Indian political system got two unex- rewritten with Hindu overtones and Mus- pected jolts in May. First the Congress lims were slaughtered in the BJP-led state of Party, led by Sonia Gandhi—widow and Gujarat. Many Indians voted for a renewed daughter-in-law of two assassinated former commitment to minority rights. prime ministers—was swept to power in Sikhs (as well as Muslims) will want national elections against all predictions. more, however. They want justice and repa- A few days later, Gandhi stunned India rations for abuses that were encouraged, if again by refusing the prime ministership not condoned, by politicians and that left and handing the reins of government to thousands dead over two decades. Manmohan Singh, a reluctant politician As few in India need reminding, Sonia who lost the only parliamentary election he Gandhi’s mother-in-law, Prime Minister In- ever contested, in 1999, but a widely her- dira Gandhi, was gunned down in 1984 by alded economic reformer who had been fi- her Sikh bodyguards, an act of vengeance nance minister in the early 1990s. prompted by her ordering the Indian army Singh, however, is not only a financial to attack Sikhdom’s holiest shrine, the whiz with an Oxford education. He is also Golden Temple in Amritsar, in June of that the first Sikh to become prime minister of year. Indira Gandhi made the move to crush India—and his fellow Sikhs have 20 years of a Sikh militant barricaded there whom she grievances to settle with his party and the had earlier encouraged as an instrument Indian government. Can they count on him? to shatter political unity in Punjab, the The new prime minister will have traditional Sikh homeland. It was a fatal plenty of other problems on his list. Con- decision. gress was elected in large part because the In the days that followed her death on poor in India, who vote with courage and October 31, mobs encouraged by Gandhi’s enthusiasm, were not taken in by the previ- Congress Party roamed Sikh neighborhoods, ous Hindu nationalist government’s portray- butchering men and boys with savage bru- al of India as a glittering high-tech nation. tality, setting fire to the still-living and the By World Bank estimates, more than three- dead. Sikhs were hauled from vehicles and quarters of India’s one billion-plus people killed on the roads; they were hacked to were surviving on two dollars a day or less death on trains. About 3,000 Sikhs (the at the turn of this new century. number is still in dispute) were murdered in The Congress Party also garnered votes nothing less than a pogrom, most of them among urban intellectuals and others com- in Delhi. In many neighborhoods, the police mitted to the vision of a secular, tolerant In- were nowhere to be seen. Only when the dia articulated by its first prime minister, army stepped in did the killing and destruc- Jawaharlal Nehru. That image appeared to tion of property stop. be fading fast under the Hindu nationalist “Yesterday we mourned for Indira,” Bharatiya Janata Party, as textbooks were the Indian Express said in an editorial on
70 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL • SUMMER 2004 November 2, 1984. “Today we mourn for tion in New Delhi, concurs with the U.S. India.” commission’s assessment of the political na- This November will mark 20 years ture of attacks on minorities in its 2004 re- since those days of terror and death. Several port, Communal Riots in India: A Chronology reports by Indian human rights groups on (1947–2003). Although the minorities un- the killings and more than half a dozen offi- der siege may be identified by religion, the cial government commissions have come, roots of violence are rarely sectarian, the in- and mostly gone. Yet no Indian politician stitute said. “This chronology reveals that accused of complicity in fomenting the at- communal riots are not caused spontane- tacks has been tried. No one in authority re- ously and also that they are rarely caused by sponsible for the astonishing negligence in religious animosity,” the report concluded. law enforcement has resigned. Indeed, the “They arise due to conflicting political in- federal minister then in charge of home af- terests, which are often linked to economic fairs, P. V. Narasimha Rao, went on to be- interests.” come prime minister seven years later (after Those of us reporting from New Delhi the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, Indira’s in those bloodstained days of November son and another victim of her disastrous 1984 were not infrequently told that the statecraft, this time with respect to Sri Sikhs had it coming. Known for their mar- Lanka). In 1992, it was Prime Minister tial prowess and their skills in agriculture— Narasimha Rao who stood aside once again their farms in Punjab produced India’s when a Hindu mob tore down a sixteenth- Green Revolution—many Sikhs, who num- century mosque in the northern town of ber around 20 million, or about 2 percent of Ayodhya. That outburst, in turn, foreshad- the national population, were prosperous owed the slaughter of about 2,000 Muslims landowners; a few had become rich business in 2002 in the state of Gujarat—ironically, people. In the hooligan pick-up mobs that the birthplace of Mahatma Gandhi. attacked Sikhs in Delhi, reporters noted, In what other mature democracy, Indian there were angry Dalits—untouchables, the human rights activists and newspaper edit- most deprived of all Indians. Indira Gan- orialists ask, would such wholesale, high- dhi’s death was the spark needed by Con- casualty attacks on any minority group go gress Party minions to enlist society’s under- unpunished, and for two decades? Why are dogs in ridding the powerful of a successful Indian law enforcement officials and public and bothersome minority. Sikhs, many of figures never held accountable? whom were well off, if not wealthy, wanted Through these years of violence, the more political and economic control of Pun- United States has often remained strangely jab, the state where most Sikhs in India silent or muted, prepared to give Indian lived. Their differences with the central democracy and its irresponsible politicians a government were not based on sectarian is- sympathetic pass. Only the United States sues. Commission on International Religious Almost as many Sikhs died in a few days Freedom has called attention to the deterio- in India in 1984 than all the deaths and dis- rating Indian record in the treatment of mi- appearances in Chile during the 17-year norities. In early 2004, it listed India as a military rule of Gen. Augusto Pinochet be- “country of concern” because of attacks in tween 1973 and 1990. According to Chile’s recent years on Muslims and Christians. truth and reconciliation commission, which Moreover, it held politicians allied with ex- was set up after Pinochet’s fall to account as tremists responsible for attacks. much as was possible for the dead and miss- The Institute of Peace and Conflict ing, there were 2,095 extralegal executions Studies, an independent research organiza- in those years, and 1,102 people disappeared
India’s Sikhs: Waiting for Justice 71 and were assumed to have been killed. Not Ram Narayan Kumar, an Indian from a re- only Chile, but also Argentina, Peru, Mex- ligious Hindu family who lives in Austria ico, South Africa and Ethiopia, among other with his Austrian wife, says that the book nations, have been addressing atrocities could not have from decades past. India, in refusing to con- been published front its bloody recent history, stands in in India. glaring contrast to these nations. But India In the case of the Sikhs, the killings is a complicated did not stop after the 1984 carnage. For a place, and in its decade afterward, as the central govern- democratic in- ment pursued a “give no quarter” drive stitutions, me- against unrest in Punjab, militant Sikhs— dia, and research who had turned to separatism and terror- organizations ism against both Hindus and more moder- people struggle ate Sikhs—were hunted down and killed hard to end po- by the hundreds, along with countless in- litical impunity nocent people. Their bodies were often and sever the disposed of in hasty, illegal cremations or links between thrown into rivers and canals; others were politicians and hastily buried without notifying families. the local or state In 1996, the Supreme Court of India police who do upheld a find- their bidding. ing by the Cen- Police records tral Bureau of and other public Investigation documents like (India’s FBI) death certificates that 2,097 bod- are often made ies had been available to fam- burned without ilies or human proper notification or documentation, usu- rights groups such as those that have docu- ally on police orders, in three crematoria in mented the tragedy of the Sikhs. Magis- the Amritsar area alone. There are other trates are frequently accessible. Above all, crematoria in the state also under suspicion. the courts have repeatedly stepped in when It is a common allegation in India, sup- political leaders have failed to deal with ported by substantial evidence, that police abuses. in many places have felt free to shoot people with little or no provocation and then say A Conversation with Justice Verma that the victims died in an exchange of fire Jagdish Sharan Verma, a justice on India’s they call an “encounter.” Many of these are Supreme Court from 1989 to 1998 and “fake encounters” designed to mask dubi- chief justice in 1997–98, has been a leading ous, if not criminal, police action. Bodies judicial activist in human rights cases. are then often quickly disposed of. Shortly after retiring from the Supreme Illegal cremations of Sikhs in the 1980s Court, he was named chairman of the coun- and 1990s are the subject of an exhaustive try’s National Human Rights Commission, report, Reduced to Ashes: The Insurgency and from which he retired in 2003. Although Human Rights in Punjab, published in 2003 he was not in Delhi in 1984 during the by the South Asia Forum for Human Rights killings in Sikh neighborhoods, he became in Kathmandu. The report’s leading author, deeply involved later as head of the human
72 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL • SUMMER 2004 rights commission in investigating and try- he said. In 1984, Sikhs were left vulnerable ing to bring closure in the cases of illegal in Delhi in the same way. cremations in Punjab. He also personally Justice Verma, who was serving as chief investigated the murders of Muslims in justice of the Madhya Pradesh high court Gujarat in 2002. From his experience on the in 1984, is reluctant to pass judgment on bench and at the human rights commission, events in Delhi that year. But he has no Justice Verma has developed a clear sense qualms about condemning what followed, as of how and where the Indian system goes India failed for two decades to bring justice badly awry despite the nation’s democratic to the victims’ families. “It was unfortunate institutions, and what must be done to curb that it took so much time and nothing hap- excesses. pened, except for [the creation of] another Justice Verma, who now writes and commission, which by itself may not be speaks on human rights issues, sees a crucial much,” he said of repeated efforts to reopen need to buttress interaction between the the issue of the 1984 killings, most recently Supreme Court and the human rights com- under a sitting panel led by another former mission, to box in with tough reports and justice. “What is necessary is identification unambiguous judicial directives those who and prosecutions of at least a few [instiga- misuse power, including police power, for tors],” Verma said. “That hasn’t happened.” political gains at the expense of minority In both the Supreme Court and the hu- communities. Chief ministers of Indian man rights commission, Justice Verma es- states have considerable control and patron- tablished the precedent of putting the bur- age in state police forces. There are also na- den of proof on state administrations, not tional forces, including the Central Reserve complainants. “The burden is on the person Police, that can be called in for emergencies; who has a special knowledge of the facts to the army, which is exempt from the juris- prove whatever be the case,” he said. “So diction of the human rights commission, here [we have] cremations—2,097 crema- can be used too, though it does not like do- tions—being conducted by state agencies. ing police work. But the bulk of law en- These facts are within their special knowl- forcement is in the hands of state police, edge. What was the situation for cremation? and Justice Verma doubts their ability to Why were the cremations done without no- function objectively in the current political tifying the next of kin? We can understand climate. in the case of nonidentified bodies, but why “The police force is politicized,” Verma not in the case of identified bodies? What said during a two-hour-long conversation in steps were taken to identify?” March in his home in Noida, an outlying “If 2,097 persons were cremated by the suburb across the Jamuna River from Delhi. state, let them prove all the facts to indicate Giving the police professional autonomy is that either their death was natural or that crucial, he added. “State police are very of- the death was not natural,” he said. “The ten seen as, and accused of, acting at the be- initial presumption is against the user of hest of politicians in power.” His recent per- the force. The moment death is caused by sonal experience in Gujarat underlined these use of force, the burden is on you to prove popular perceptions. Muslim neighborhoods how and why the injury was caused which were left unprotected and open to the ma- proved fatal.” rauding of murderous gangs. “My report on “State liability would give rise to several Gujarat mentioned that there were two sen- consequences,” he said, explaining that com- ior politicians, ministers, sitting in the po- pensation, the identification of the violators, lice control room and deciding where ac- and prosecutions should follow, “then also tions should be taken by the police or not,” reassurance of nonrepetition.” In Punjab,
India’s Sikhs: Waiting for Justice 73 however, former officials and police directors governments on flimsy pretexts where have yet to meet the demands for informa- opposition parties were building strong tion and documentation requested by a suc- bases. cession of official inquiries and by the na- By the mid 1970s, Gandhi’s authori- tional human rights commission, just as tarian behavior had fueled a nationwide those in charge in Delhi in 1984 have also movement against her, led by Jayaprakash evaded accountability. The human rights Narayan, whom many considered a philo- commission has no power to force action. sophical successor to Mahatma Gandhi. Officials stall and maneuver. No indepen- Then, in 1975, a high court decided that dent prosecutor has ever been named, al- her 1971 election victory had been marred though more than 5,000 Sikhs were killed by corruption, and declared the result in- between 1984 and 1995. valid. Two weeks later, she imposed a na- When he was the commission’s chair- tional state of emergency to protect her po- man, Justice Verma tried to divide into cat- litical skin. Election laws were rewritten egories the huge collection of cases with re- and civil liberties curtailed. Tens of thou- spect to the deaths in Punjab, by suggesting sands of people were jailed. The “emer- that 18 families of some 585 identified vic- gency” lasted two years. When, in 1977, tims of illegal cremations accept compensa- Gandhi decided to allow an election to take tion payments offered by the state for the place, she and her party were unceremoni- first time to families of victims, which he ously dumped by India’s angry and fearless considered a step forward. But families did electorate. It took her two years—and the not want a piecemeal settlement, particu- faltering performance of the opposition larly without a clear admission of guilt by coalition when in power—to climb back. the state. They also feared that the state By 1980, when she again became prime government, having made this gesture, minister, Punjabi Sikhs were restless for would say it had paid up and the cases were numerous reasons, and the Sikh party, the closed. Refusing the compensation was a de- Akali Dal, which was very strong in Punjab cision made by an increasingly cohesive state politics, had become an expression of group of Sikh families, but Verma was dis- those grievances. Punjab wanted the cen- appointed. “It was not a wise act,” he said. tral government to fulfill old promises: to Now a larger group of families is planning settle some territorial and riverine disputes to try again through class action lawsuits. with neighboring states and to give Punjab total control of Chandigarh, a capital city A Conversation with Kuldip Nayar shared with Haryana state. Sikhs also ar- The policies of Indira Gandhi that poisoned gued that industrial policies formulated relations with the Sikhs had their roots in in Delhi prevented them from turning the political history of the 1970s. After a their rich agricultural state into a center of tussle within the Congress Party of her manufacturing as well. Among the more late father and India’s first prime minister, hotheaded, violent Sikhs the idea of creating Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira emerged as leader a separate nation they called Khalistan bur- of a powerful faction, which won the 1971 geoned. The Akali Dal was given to faction- parliamentary elections, giving her the alism, and Gandhi soon decided to add to prime ministership. Her rise to power left the fractiousness by supporting several ex- her with a penchant for total control. She tremists, the best known of whom was a bolstered her position by using intelligence would-be messianic figure, Jarnail Singh agencies for political ends, by sacking Bhindranwale. competitive politicians, including within Kuldip Nayar, a Punjabi Hindu born in her own party, and by dismissing state what is now Pakistan and one of contempo-
74 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL • SUMMER 2004 rary India’s most distinguished political dranwale] has now excited the masses. If I commentators and leading human rights am saying something else now, I wouldn’t defenders, was among a group of Indian in- be heard.’” Back in Delhi, as a confrontation tellectuals and politicians who had been ac- with Bhindranwale seemed to loom, Nayar tively trying in the early 1980s to steer said that he and Inder Kumar Gujral, also Gandhi off her collision course with the a Punjabi Hindu born in Pakistan (who Sikhs. I went to see him in New Delhi after would later become prime minister of India) meeting Justice Verma. and several other leading figures with a Very broadly, Nayar, a former Indian strong interest in Punjab set up an informal high commissioner in London—where he “Punjab group.” tasted the bitterness of Sikh exiles—sees the “We knew that there was talk of attack- 1984 attacks in Delhi and other acts of vio- ing the Golden Temple, and we said it lence that followed as evidence that the sec- would be hell if this were to happen,” Nayar ular tolerance and faith in institutions fos- said. “So we went and met [Home Minister] tered by Mahatma Gandhi are greatly di- Narasimha Rao, and Narasimha Rao said, minished. A few years ago, as a member of ‘All right, why don’t you go to Chandigarh the Rajya Sabha, India’s upper house of Par- and persuade them, the Akali Party.’ I said, liament, Nayar was slapped down by the ‘What do you want us to do? He said, ‘Tell chamber’s presiding officer for trying to in- them a settlement will take place.’” The troduce a formal expression of sorrow over group went to meet the moderate Akali the attack on the Golden Temple; at the leadership, carrying some political promises same time he was demanding an explanation from the Gandhi government. It was all a from the government as to why there had sham. “Later I came to know that when we still been no prosecutions for the 1984 met [Narasimha Rao] Mrs. Gandhi had al- killings of Sikhs. ready ordered the movement [of troops].” Nayar’s take on Indira Gandhi’s think- Nayar said that the Punjab group con- ing in the early 1980s is this: “She said, tinued to argue that even if Bhindranwale ‘The Akali party has been always winning, was out of bounds, there must be some bet- so why shouldn’t I put some kind of wedge ter way to deal with him. They suggested in this—divide, separate.’ So she picks up surrounding the Golden Temple, turning off every religious fundamentalist kind of man the water supply, starving out the militants. who would create some kind of rift. But he Instead, on June 4, 1984, there were heavy [Bhindranwale] turns out to be a person artillery and tanks. When it was over, 493 who has his own ideas about his own great- militants had been killed and more than ness, and he started thinking, probably we 1,500 arrested, according to an Indian gov- should have a separate country.” ernment white paper issued the following Bhindranwale’s radical following grew month. Sikh officials, as well as some of the at the expense of moderate Sikh leaders such journalists who witnessed the assault, be- as Harcharan Singh Longowal. By 1984, lieve the death toll may have actually been Bhindranwale was out of control and holed in the thousands and that many of the dead up, armed, in the Golden Temple in Amrit- were Sikh pilgrims. Two-hundred-year-old sar, where he held forth in the name of all buildings were destroyed, including the Sikhs, though his was a minority view walled site’s most sacred shrine, the Akal among Akalis. Takht. Priceless Sikh books and documents “I went to Amritsar, and here was Lon- were lost in the sacking and burning of the gowal,” Nayar said, “He was a very moder- library. ate man. I asked him: How can you share The attack on the Golden Temple in the same stage? He said, ‘Because he [Bhin- June and the massacre of Sikhs that followed
India’s Sikhs: Waiting for Justice 75 Indira Gandhi’s murder at the end of Octo- in Sri Lanka. Although Verma has devoted ber were both manifestations of power poli- much of the past decade to trying to rectify tics, Congress style, according to Nayar. In at least some of the wrongs against Sikhs, Delhi, he said, “These politicians could ex- many still blast him for not doing enough. ploit the kind of atmosphere that had been At the same time, some militant Hindus ex- building against the Sikhs.” The police, coriate him for caring too much about the he added, “were part of the setup.” Moral rights of minorities, especially Muslims. authority and tolerance in India had been Since the attacks on the United States crushed by Indira Gandhi’s emergency, on September 11, he said, he has been Nayar said. “Since those things had been pained to see democracies cut legal corners erased, people didn’t matter. So when Mrs. and increase government powers to deal Gandhi was assassinated, the police were with terrorism. He fought unsuccessfully used in the same way. The institutions were against the imposition of a harsh new Indian not allowed to work. You say, ‘Look here, Prevention of Terrorism Act in the wake of the Sikhs will have to pay.’ It was a frenzy, a 9/11. More untrammeled power in the frenzy abetted by a political party.” hands of the police is not what India needs. After 1984, the extrajudicial killing “You have to fight terrorism,” he said. continued, Nayar confirmed. “In Punjab, “That is the biggest violation of human when this terrorism was being crushed, a lot rights.” But then it has to be under the con- of people were just bumped off. As a human stitution and the rule of law. When terror- rights activist, I think it’s something terri- ism is countered by state terrorism, he said, ble. But there are people who will say, law and order loses its way. “Basic norms of Punjab was safer.” democracy have to be kept in mind, and Sikhs still have grievances in Punjab. therefore certain human rights are nondero- They still believe that government economic gable,” he said. “There has to be a difference policies hinder the state’s industrial develop- between a terrorist and a law-enforcement ment. They have been promised time and agency meant to enforce and implement the again for half a century that the city of rule of law. That is what, really, democracy Chandigarh will be their state capital, but is all about.” those promises are always broken and the With a Sikh prime minister now at the city is still shared with Hindu-majority political helm of India, what now for the Haryana state. Above all is the lack of jus- Sikhs? Will justice finally be done? Will tice for the killings in 1984. “Today, even, politicians still active in the Congress Party you have not been able to win back the be brought to account on criminal charges Sikhs,” Nayar says. “The Sikh is unhappy and Sikh families compensated in some way because of 1984.” for the losses they suffered and the pain they have borne for decades? Indian human Will Justice Be Done? rights activists are not hopeful. Justice Verma, in his exurban home away After Manmohan Singh was named from the cauldron of Delhi politics, thinks a prime minister, I sought the opinion of lot about terrorism—and state terrorism. Jaskaran Kaur, an American-born Sikh with He lives under a death threat from the Lib- a Harvard law degree who is leading a cam- eration Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a Sri Lankan paign to hold state and central governments separatist guerrilla army, because he led the in India accountable for the illegal crema- judicial inquiry that first concluded the tions. A book based on her doctoral thesis Tigers had planned and carried out the as- on this subject is being published this year sassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, after by a newly formed, U.S.-based, pan–South years of covert and overt Indian interference Asian human rights organization called
76 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL • SUMMER 2004 Ensaaf—which means “justice” in several broad criminal cases and give investigators South Asian languages. What Kaur hears and judges the power to put under oath— coming from India, she said, is not shame or and in jail—officials of any party who con- contrition but the lame excuse that all this done violence and the abuse of human happened years ago and why not let bygones rights. Furthermore, such punitive powers be bygones. must be institutionalized so that the next Young, secular-minded, Western-edu- time churches burn, mosques are demol- cated Indians like Kaur—passionate about ished, or members of minority groups are rectifying abuses in Punjab or Kashmir or slaughtered in the streets, politicians will Gujarat or the unhappy Indian northeast— know that these crimes will no longer go have had enough of this political spineless- unpunished and that political careers and ness and amnesia. India does not need any the cosseting of pliant police will be at more commissions or inquiries. To stand tall an end.• among democracies, India needs to open
India’s Sikhs: Waiting for Justice 77