Editorial: A Resolution for Sankalp Diwas

The nation observes Sankalp Diwas today; a day when officials at official functions make officious resolutions towards national integration. The official English translation of the name of the day is “National Re-dedication Day” and marks the death anniversary of Indira Gandhi, the Prime Minister who was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards on this day back in 1984. The ‘re-dedication’ that this day demands is not a firmer resolve to protect the nation’s VIPs better, but a commitment to integration, a united country not slivered in communal or regional factions. India is a well integrated nation in that it has only grown in size since Independence, not disintegrated; but regions still remain fractured and the people still segregated. Government officials will gather at official venues today and recite the pledge for the day, but a re-dedication is also required of the people – a commitment to themselves and everyone else that events that followed this day 28 years back are never repeated, ever again. Unfortunately, the anti-Sikh riots which scarred the nation at this time in 1984 continue to remain largely ignored and in this blindsiding, the lessons that need to learnt remain overlooked.
As a nation, we have not learnt anything since 1984 [taken as a watershed because it was with this year that State machineries really started getting compromised for communal and political settling of scores]. Governments might have changed, but attitudes did not. As a result, a Nation that was born to the wails of communal rioting, still does not display either the resolve or the wherewithal to avoid them. The media and the civil society need to ask why situations and incidents are still allowed to deny the people their instinctive desire for communal amity. Had the policy-makers realised their failings back in 1984, the BJP Government in Gujarat would never have gotten the chance to allow and assist the killings in 2002. The Godhra riots happened because justice for the killing of Sikhs in 1984 remains ignored. Only the malevolent learned from the 1984 riots and refined and deployed every tactic [including use of voter lists to target victims] used then to devastating effect in Gujarat 2002. 1984 however receives only token mentions because the media and the civil society shy away from it since it complicates their simplistic analysis of what and who are communal in our country. The post-Godhra riots were a result of the powers-that-be subverting the power to serve to become power-that-colludes in pushing political agendas. As a people, we continue to pay the price because the people who occupy the public domain do not ask the right questions, do not address the malfunction in the system. Yes, the country and its people need to rededicate themselves to the idea of India, an India that was imagined to be secular but today actively segregates its people; an India that was to have public servants but who mutated into masters; an India that was to be run by people’s representative but has been usurped by autocrats; an India which started democratic but is now foisting dynasties. The nation needs to resolve to rediscover the idea that it was imagined as. History needs to be remembered and understood so that we are not condemned to repeat past mistakes. The shames need to accepted because then we can resolve them. Then, leaders who survive by keeping past nightmares alive in public minds will have to make way for visionaries who deliver dreams for the nation to collectively achieve.
That is a wish that every Indian has always harboured. A wish which remains unachieved. For the record, more than 3,000 Sikhs were killed in the 1984 riots. The 2011 WikiLeaks revealed that the United States was convinced about the complicity of Indian Government ruled by the Congress in the pogrom [not that this was ever doubted]. Also in January 2011, the burned and abandoned village of Hondh-Chillar, where 32 Sikhs were killed on November 2, 1984, was discovered in Haryana. In March 2011, the site of another forgotten killing of 17 people in nearby Pataudi, was discovered. This, nearly three decades since the communal rioting. The resolve that the nation needs to make today should be obvious. And as we observe Sankalp Diwas, also spare a thought for the Sikhs in the UK who will be taking out a Remembrance March through London today...