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After hurling his
shoe, Jarnail Singh flings "I Accuse" into Indian establishment's
face
WSN
Bureau
 CHANDIGARH:
Journalist Jarnail Singh, who hit headlines when he hurled a shoe at
India's Home Minister P. Chidambaram and was later made to leave his
job, has now highlighted harrowing experiences of anti-Sikh pogroms
in a book, "I Accuse... the Anti-Sikh Violence of 1984".
Published by
reputed publisher, Penguin, the book was released in Delhi last
Friday and is largely a compilation of victims' accounts. It carries
a foreword by acclaimed author Khushwant Singh and contains many
tales untold thus far.
Jarnail Singh
has also included submissions made by pogrom victims in various
courts during trials in some of the several hundred cases of
killings, which claimed the lives of over 3,000 Sikhs in less than
three days in Delhi alone.
 Incidentally,
Jarnail Singh also brought forth the episode about how certain Sikhs
from the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee were "bought over"
to persuade three bereaved women, Satnami Bai, Darshan Kaur and
Anwar Kaur, to not give evidence against H.K.L. THis aspect was
earlier brought to limelight by WSN Editor Jagmohan Singh in an open
letter to Punjab CM Prakash Singh Badal (See WSN October 31-November
6, 2007 edition).
Darshan Kaur,
who declined to take the Rs 25 lakh allegedly being offered, was
even beaten by certain Sikhs and had to be hospitalised for 10 days,
writes Jarnail Singh.
Atma Singh
Lubana, then member of the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee,
had allegedly brought Rs 50,000 initially to give to the three
women, saying it was from the committee for their welfare.
Darshan
Kaur -- who had lost 12 men of her family in Trilokpuri -- later
came on record to say Lubana had made Satnami Bai turn hostile in
the court of Justice S.N. Dhingra.
Jarnail has also
narrated an incident in Justice Dhingra's court in which Darshan
Kaur pushed Bhagat to the ground.
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Mr Badal, do
you have any answers?
Here are the excerpts from WSN Editor Jagmohan Singh's Open
Letter to CM and then Akali Dal president Prakash Singh Badal:
Avtar Singh
Hit, Prahlad Singh Chandoke and Atma Singh Lubhana are three
Delhi-based leaders of your party whom you have elevated to high
political positions. This trio engineered the back tracking of
statements of witnesses against the three Congress killers. In
each case, money changed hands. How much? Perhaps you know.
Helpless widows were blackmailed against deposition. From a
pauper, Atma Singh Lubana became a rich man. As much as he
cheated the Sikhs, he grossly abused the trust reposed in him by
his tribe, the Lubanas, who bore the brunt of the attacks in
Trilokpuri, Mangolpuri and Sultanpuri. All three of them have
progressed to become Sikh religious leaders, upon elections as
Badal Dal candidates for the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management
Committee.
Read the complete open letter |
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"She recognised
him. Suddenly, something happened to her and she pushed him with
both hands. He fell to the ground...Darshan Kaur pulled off her
chappal...."
In the last
chapter, "Why I Hurled the Shoe" -- the incident that led to the
cancellation of the Lok Sabha election ticket for Sajjan Kumar and
Jagdish Tytler -- Jarnail Singh says: "My questions were different
and so close to my heart that I started getting emotional. Perhaps
all the pain from a long time had come together today."
It was "a shoe
against injustice". "He (Home Minister P. Chidambaram) used words
(at the press conference in which Jarnail hurled the shoe) which
implied that I was using the press conference for my own agenda,"
the author explained.
Jarnail in the
very first chapter has narrated how he and his family survived the
carnage in Lajpat Nagar in Delhi.
In the foreword,
Khushwant Singh says the book "opens wounds which have not yet
healed. It is a must-read for all those who wish that such
horrendous crimes do not take place again."
"I Accuse..."
also has a Hindi version, "Kab Kategi Chaurassi (when will 1984
pass)" and, of course, a Punjabi edition titled "Chaurasi De
Qatal-eaam Da Sach".
Jarnail had been
with various newspapers over 15 years, before being asked to quit as
special correspondent by his last employer, Dainik Jagran, following
the shoe-throwing incident.
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The WSN Point Of View
 What
does one say when a community keeps fighting for justice for
twenty-five years after more than 3,000 members are killed in
genocidal targetted brutal barbaric attacks on the roads of
national capital of India, most being burnt to death using cycle
tyres lit aflame? What does one say when inquiry commissions set
up by the government of India keep finding the same men guilty
over and over again but they keep dodging justice? And what does
one say when the party that sheltered them all these years makes
them once again candidates for the country’s Parliament?
That these
people are “Jutti De Yaar”? They deserve much worse than a
shoe.
Jarnail Singh
will be forgiven thousands of times over by every right thinking
person who may have a momentary qualm about a journalist
breaching protocol, not using his pen but rather hurling a shoe
to make an extra-ordinary statement about extra-ordinarily
apathetic Indian nation state.
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The problem with the Indian nation state, its media
included, is that it finds the acts of Tytler and Jarnail
Singh equally reprehensible. Jarnail Singh's "I Accuse" is
an answer to those who had massive problems of ethics in
journalism over his shoe throwing. |
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The problem
with the Indian nation state, its media included, is that it
finds the acts of Tytler and Jarnail Singh equally
reprehensible. Jarnail Singh's "I Accuse" is an answer to those
who had massive problems of ethics in journalism over his shoe
throwing.
It is sometimes
not possible for one to have such attachment to so-called ethics
when one's sister or mother has been raped, one's son or brother
has been made to run for his dear life and then burnt alive as
the family members watched. Perhaps it is possible for those to
do so who never considered the victims as their sisters or
mothers, their sons or brothers.
The inhumanity
of the Sajjan Kumars and the Jagdish Tytlers has been matched by
every one of those who could sit back and wallow in India’s
growth rates, thought countries become great by carrying out
nuclear tests or striking nuclear deals and that deep wounds of
a community can be assuaged by making a Sikh Prime Minister
apologize to the Sikhs.
God, how many
shoes we need? Poor Jarnail Singh threw one. He will be at a
loss in which direction to hurl the other. The shoe missed
Chidambaram but it hit Congress hard.
We hope that
with "I Accuse", Jarnail Singh will hit the rabidly nationalist
Indian media that forgets about the genocide of the Sikhs till
it is that time of the year again when Sikhs ran on
Delhi’s roads, sans turbans, some desperately borrowing
scissors from neighbours to cut their hair.
This shoe was
meant for many many more than just P Chidambaram who got it
within hours after expressing happiness that the CBI has
exonerated “my colleagues”.
The problem
with injustice is that it does not exist in a vacuum. Injustice
happens in a society, not in isolation. Its aftermath is a real
measure of a society. Does it pull together its act to mitigate
injustice, or does it increase its capacity to see, absorb and
be at peace with even more of it? |
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11
November 2009
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