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Note the difference between our two democracies. In Canada, you saw painstaking investigation and due process of law. Not so in India, either in the events before the bombing or after. Let's look back to 1984. To prop up the waning fortunes of her Congress Party in the coming general election, India's then prime minister, Indira Gandhi, decided to paint the Sikhs as a troublesome minority, personified by outspoken Sikh leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. When he moved into the precincts of the Golden Temple in mid-December of 1983, Mrs. Gandhi saw her chance. Although she could have arrested him before, she waited for the chance to demonstrate her inflexible determination to hold the country together at any cost. The fact that neither he nor the vast majority of Sikhs had ever threatened to break up the country was beside the point; the ploy of using an imaginary threat by a minority to rally the majority behind a leader is an old and familiar one. In June of 1984, the Indian army mounted a frontal assault. Tanks rumbled over the marbled walkway around the holy pool; sighting their guns on the Akal Takht (the second most important building in the complex), the army blew it apart. Although the outcome of this unequal contest was never in doubt, when resistance ended, Mr. Bhindranwale and his followers lay dead. And in the blackened ruins of the altar of the Sikh faith, hundreds of original manuscripts -- some written by the founders of the faith -- were reduced to ashes as were copies of Sikh scriptures and relics treasured over the centuries. Mrs. Gandhi was assassinated by two Sikhs in October of that year. In the aftermath, 2,733 Sikh men, women and children were murdered by rampaging mobs in New Delhi while a partisan police force looked on. Homes, shops, factories, taxis, trucks and places of worship were also destroyed. The one-man commission that was finally appointed almost nine months later to report on these events consisted of Supreme Court Justice Ranganath Misra, who was in line to become India's next chief justice. Which he did. He was unhelpful to groups representing the victims, even refusing to allow the Citizens' Justice Committee -- headed by a former chief justice -- to cross-examine some of the witnesses. The CJC withdrew from the hearings. Seven more committees and commissions followed. But 16 years later, only six persons have been sentenced to life imprisonment and one sentenced to death (later commuted to life in prison) -- for the killing of 2,733 people. The actions of the two Sikhs who assassinated Mrs. Gandhi may have reflected the anger at the willful destruction of the fountainhead of their faith. But they were not a part of a larger conspiracy, much as the government tried to prove this. I am not in a position to write about the Air-India suspects. But in the 500 years since the founding of the Sikh faith, its history is replete with instances of nobility, loyalty and valour. Of 40 Victoria Crosses awarded to Indian citizens since 1914, the Sikhs, with less than 2 per cent of India's population, received 21 of the medals. Murder is not on the Sikh agenda. Individuals who commit such acts do not reflect the tenets of their faith or the will of the Sikhs. Self-respecting Sikhs, proud of the code
of honour on which their faith is founded, will find unacceptable the
killing of innocent men, women and children who had nothing to do with the
desecration of the Golden Temple -- as they will the killing of Sikhs in New Delhi and elsewhere in India in 1984.
Our sense of sorrow and outrage against acts of unprovoked violence by
members of our faith cannot be any less than our outrage at wanton crimes
against us. Source: The Globe and Mail Nov. 02, 2000, Thursday
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