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Where are the others?
Mansukh Kaur
 Jagdish
Tytler is a well known man. Too well known. So is Sajjan Kumar. So
were a bunch of other worthies, the HKL Bhagats, the Kamal Naths,
the Dharmanand Shastris. Each of these names was involved in the
anti-Sikh genocide of 1984. Politicians who led killer mobs with
voter lists in hand – chasing, hunting down innocent Sikhs, raping
women, maiming children and burning men alive. Street after street,
gully after koocha, mohalla after colony, house to house, door to
door, tinshed to tinshed, tarpaulin covered shelters to rickshaw
pullers' nightsheds. These mobs went around, setting right what they
saw as a wrong of contemporary history. A history that was only
hours old at that time.
Before they
could cremate Indira Gandhi, they ensured that hundreds of Sikh
families could not cremate their dead ones. Sikhs were burnt alive
on the roads of the capital of this country. Merely a few kilometers
from the embassies of scores of countries, and in the same city,
members of a brave community were running to save their lives. Among
them was a General of the Indian Army called Jagjit Singh Arora.
Among them were many Sikh armymen, travelling in trains on call of
duty. Among them were little children returning home.
Surely, the
operation to trace, track, hunt, beat, kill, maim, burn more than
3,000 Sikhs in a limited number of three or four days needed more
people than just the ones we have come to know over the years. It
needed mobs of hundreds, of thousands. It needed men ready to kill
perfect strangers who meant no one any harm. It needed men ready to
burn innocents using burning cycle tyres.
 Where are these
hundreds, thousands of people today?
It is possible
for men like Tytler, Sajjan Kumar, HKL Bhagat to be thick skinned,
not to have nightmares like an ordinary murderer, and get a good
night's sleep. Just as Maya Kodnani slept tight every single night.
She is a strong hearted woman, a doctor, a gynaecologist trained to
save lives and bring new ones into the world, but one who knows the
matters of the heart are meant for the weak hearted. She led mobs to
shed blood that tasted different than the one the Tytler mobs had
shed a few years earlier. Tytler was after Sikh blood; Maya was
shedding Muslim blood.
Both did not
lose any sleep. Both are strong hearted people.
But where are
the simple, ordinary, next door neighbour, petty criminal looters
and killers who were out there on the roads of
Delhi in 1984
and in the streets of Naroda Pataya in 2002? Where are these
hundreds, thousands of people today?
The police in
1984
Delhi was a mere bystander; Modi's police in 2002 Gujarat was a bit
of an active participant, when not a bystander. Those cops, those
lower and middle level officers were merely either following orders
or saving their jobs by remaining passive. But did they lose any
sleep?
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Surely, the
operation to trace, track, hunt, beat, kill, maim, burn more
than 3,000 Sikhs in a limited number of three or four days
needed hundreds, thousands. Where are these hundreds, thousands
today? Do they get to sleep? In
Delhi
as well as
Gujarat?
How? |
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Ever watched a
sparrow shot down by a slingshot of a wayward Tom Sawyer? It is
difficult to sleep after watching the feathery beauty gasp to death.
Far lesser mortals have cried over the death of a pet just as many
grown ups did. If you hit and run a school going little kid in the
morning on your mobike, you may escape the law and the consequences
but heavy questions keep nagging, keep tugging at your conscience.
Did I hurt him too much? Might he have broken a limb? Hope he was
not too poor? Should I have stopped? May be the passersby would not
have beaten me, may be I could have been of help.
So what happened
to the hundreds, thousands who were moving with voter lists in hand,
tyres in great supply, and sloganeering for a dead mother keeping up
the spirits? Did they sleep tight? Did they face questions tugging
at the edges of their conscience?
Where are all
those people?
Too bad, law is
so slow. Kodnani gets entangled in an FIR when her government is in
power and she a minister. Tytler gets into trouble when his party is
ruling in
India and he is
about to fight a Lok Sabha election.
This is too
much.
Men like Tytler
and Sajjan Kumar had ensured that rioters and killers who followed
their orders stay risk-assured. If they would not have done that,
who the hell will next time instigate, lead and participate in
riots? But even all the Tytlers put together cannot vouchsafe that
these hundreds, thousands will not have questions tugging at their
inner self.
The
stuff that Babu Bajrangis are made of comes in short supply.
Criminals often brag about their crimes, killers about their cold
bloodedness. But taking hundreds of real lives in hand to hand
combats of one versus a mob and then burning people alive without
much previous experience is not pulp fiction. On top of it, there
was not even a religious crusade attached to it that has sometimes
made it easier to take away lives, extinguish hope of humanity and
turn the barbaric into acceptable. Heretics were not being burnt on
the stakes; fellow citizens, neighbourhood shopkeepers, well
acquainted good men were being burnt alive on the roads with
garlands of burning tyres around their neck.
The pieces of
human flesh, the stench of half burnt bodies, the heat from the
fires set to their shops, the shrieks of their widows were not
helping carry out this business in any orderly manner. And all of
this was not their idea of a picture postcard memory recall of
important assignments that decide the course of history. How, then,
do they recall what they did after 25 years? The 19-year-olds who
burnt men with flowing beards by pouring kerosene would have turned
44 now. The 30 year old would have become 55. And forgetting is not
an easy job, not when the fellow being burnt was making it difficult
to put the burning tyre around his neck. He was repeatedly trying to
run away, and some were even trying to create confusion by cutting
their hair quickly with borrowed scissors. Just as some in
Gujarat were
trying to say Har Har Mahadev when their lingo was clearly Urdu.
These hundreds,
thousands did their job pretty well. They certainly were promised
punitive immunity, and knew there will be no consequences.
Unfortunately, a few good men and women have created problems for
the likes of Tytler and Sajjan Kumars but largely the Indian society
has well absorbed the hundreds, thousands.
But where are
they? And as we asked earlier, are they able to sleep tight? In
Delhi
and
Gujarat,
both?
Why was it so
easy for them to burn the Sikhs alive? To kill the Muslims in
Gujarat?
And why has it been easy for them to sleep tight after all this? Not
a single case of someone wrestling with his conscience for years and
coming out in the open? Not a single case of someone buckling under
the burden of the gravity of what he did and trying to commit
suicide?
 What
do such mob killers survive on? Where do they come from? And how do
they survive it all? This soul thing, the conscience thing?
It is this that
we must engage with. It is this that gives the Tytlers the hundreds,
thousands needed to carry out genocidal killings. It is this that a
Modi needs to become a hero of the communalists.
These hordes are
being brought up in an ideology of brahaminism to which both major
parties of
India subscribe.
Congress goes for the soft variety, the BJP for the hardcore one.
For exceptionally inspired students, there are choices ranging from
Sanatan schools, Shishu Mandirs, Vishwa Hindu Parishad,
Bajrang
Del,
Shiv Sena, Sri Ram Sene, Abhinav Bharat, Sadhvi Pragya, Lt Col
Purohit.
For Sikhs, bring
on the vengeance argument. Avenging the death of a woman by her
bodyguards. And avenging the killings of many in
Punjab. For
Muslim, avenging the burning of Kar Sewaks in a train bogie, and
avenging the partition of the country and every other terrorist
incident that ever took place.
“Will you send
your daughter with this taxi driver to school?” shrieked the punch
line of full page advertisements run by Congress in
India’s
most respected national newspapers. The taxi driver was a Sikh.
There was a snake also in the picture to add some added dollop of
sinister imagery. “Barre khatarnaak naam hote hain inn ke…rahmatullah…karimullah,”
this was Varun Gandhi.
Distrust is a
key weapon. Make people distrust the Sikhs, make them distrust the
Muslims. The RSS shakhas all across the country do little else but
this. When was the last time you saw a TV reporter bringing you what
the Shakha teaches? Five year olds sing songs about raising a
Ram Temple at
Ayodhya with their fists clenched. In any Godhra situation, they
will come in handy as 19-year-olds. Such malnourishment of the soul
hardens it, makes it possible for them to not face that tugging at
the conscience after you come home putting a good many burning tyres
to use.
This ultra
national akhand India Hindutva, anti-Khalistani, anti-Pakistani,
Mera Desh Mahaan, Bhagwa Jhanda hamara hai, garv Se kaho Hum Hindu
Hain, Jo Hindu Hit Ki Baat Karega, Wohi Hum Par Raaj Karega ideology
works wonders. It creates a thick buffer against guilt. It gives the
soul an ideological cover for murder several years after the fun and
games in the shakhas are over.
It creates Babu
Bajrangis.
Social
engineering in the neighbourhood maidaan. A new concept of committed
citizen who avenges the death of his perceived mother Indira by
using burning cycle tyres. So brutality comes easy, in fact seems
desirable. How else will the Muslims remember that Hindustan Mein
Rehna Hoga to Hindu Rashtra Kehna Hoga? “Bhejo In Ko
Pakistan”.
What about the
ones who straddle the middle ground? “Na tala khulta, na masjid
girti.” Congress opened the locks, so BJP demolished the mosque.
“Hindus would never have killed Sikhs. It was all because of
Bhindranwala.” Distrust as prime weapon. And nurseries of hate
continue.
Many of the
killers of the Jews were merely following orders. But many were
doing what their inner core was driving them to do. Same here. That
inner core is being constructed for years and years. By the Congress
as well as the BJP. No wonder Maya Kodnani’s father was an RSS
pracharak.
That inner core
makes sure that the hundreds, thousands do not have something
tugging at their conscience. They are around, all the time, even as
we ask where are they?
But why ask? We
don’t even have the energy or shoes enough to throw at each and
everyone.
8 April 2009
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