Lest We Forget

The Bollywood don often called “Big B” is finally in some Big soup.

The allegations are as old as the crimes themselves. But this suit is new:

“JALANDHAR: Bollywood mega star Amitabh Bachchan has been summoned by Los Angeles federal court for allegedly instigating violence against the Sikh  community during the November 1984 massacre. Bachchan has been accused of raising “Khooon Ka Badla Khoon” (blood for blood) slogan on October 31, 1984 after then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was shot dead by her two Sikh bodyguards.”

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/1984-riots-Amitabh-Bachchan-summoned-by-US-court-for-instigating-violence-against-Sikhs/articleshow/44957457.cms

One Malkiat Singh Bajwa went to the Indian Supreme Court to peacefully and legally bring up the issue of the orchestration of the 1984 violence by Rajiv Gandhi and the Congress party. He petitioned that the court should consider revoking the Congress Party’s status given its unresolved crimes, and revoking Rajiv’s Bharat Ratna award.

The Supreme Court’s reasoning for not hearing the petition: that Mr. Bajwa “may turn emotional”!?

Once again, the ordinary Indian gets no day in court.

http://barandbench.com/content/212/%E2%80%9Cwon%E2%80%99t-hear-you-person-because-you-might-turn-emotional%E2%80%9D#.VFH7o_TF_Gx

While the media now speaks about the attacks of June 1984 even less than November 1984, few Sikhs alive in June 84 can forget those days.

An initiative to record voices from 1984 has collected very important narratives.

For example:

“JP “Nikri” Singh Rarewala, son of the first Chief Minister of PEPSU, narrates his eyewitness account chronicling the devastation he witnessed immediately following the attacks.”

http://www.1984livinghistory.org/2014/05/29/jp-nikri-rarewal/

“His meetings and correspondence with various people, from army generals in Amritsar to Indian and US Officials in Delhi present a very personal and poignant tale detailing the systematic, calculated nature of the mayhem.”

After its Babri Masjit “revelations” Cobrapost has been in the news for a sting which reveals — as if anyone was unaware of it — the Delhi police’s active role in the killings of 1984.

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/delhi-police-didnt-act-during-1984-riots-claims-cobrapost-sting/466777-3-244.html

Indeed the revelations are only a drop in the bucket as everyone who even glanced at the news then knows …

Though, why mention that Rajiv was responsible when everyone already knows he was!

Likewise for 2002 and the PM-to-be Narendra Modi: what’s the point of raising the trifling issue of 2000 or so killings done with his active encouragement when he has “developed” Gujarat so much …

It took the Akalis some time – after that fortuitous leakage in London about the SAS connection with the 1984 attack on the Golden Temple  – but yesterday they have finally popped the obvious and important question: India should declassify its own documents re that affair:  http://www.tribuneindia.com/2014/20140207/main3.htm

However all this is drama only for them because of the coming elections.  In which the current favourite (the experts say) is someone who spilled in 2002 the blood of thousands of his countrymen.  Fighting him abuse for abuse are those who swear by another now dead who was responsible for even more murders in 1984.  However one good thing about these slanging matches is each side is spilling some truth about the other.  Once the election is done and dusted the ultra-timid Indian newspapers will again sink into 4 ½ years of docility vis-a-vis the powerful, of course all the time spewing thunder on softer targets.   Anyway after yesterday’s Akali salvo here is Captain  – somewhat not at home in his club these days because another fellow has been preferred to lead it in Punjab in the coming fray – returning fire with a rebuttal of sorts in today’s paper: http://www.tribuneindia.com/2014/20140208/punjab.htm#4
Newbie Rahul having “misspoken”  – he was dubbed a duffer for being a little honest  – Amrinder had to trot out some Congress names – out of these he chose four now deceased – all out in public since the very beginning, they were in “Who are the guilty?” released by PUCL-PUDR within days of the Nov 1984 atrocities. Also for party gossipers he let slip  that juicy bit about the out-of-state farm where Badal prudently weathered the storm of 1984.  Also he gives us some Jan Sanghi types – now Badal’s bedfellows – who were also doing some of the killings out on the streets of Delhi in 1984, possibly these too are also from the same pamphlet?  However,  curiously, Amrinder stops at those who were doing the hatchet work (literally).  He fails to mention the kingpin, Rajiv, who set all these deadly pawns in motion.  But then  – as Justice Nanavati told Kuldip Nayar – Rajiv is not worth mentioning because everyone already knew it was he who did it!  Also Captain has nothing to say of why, with all these characters known to be so engaged then on the streets, all remained in high positions – one was even a Cabinet minister for all 8 years – under this Mister Clean?   But there is a little snippet that may be new, the Captain informs us some mutineers spent up to 18 years in jail, so — since 1984 + 18 = 2002 – is he saying they are all finally out? If so that at least is good news.   For the rest it is Tweedledum and an equally horrible Tweedledee … Yes there is also AAP now to some extent whose anarchy the president of this republic criticised the other day.  They retorted it was in 1984 and 2002 that there was real anarchy, their street antics  — at least for the moment — are insignificant.  Totally right!  But we think however “guilty” we think a person is, he must be presumed innocent till a court convicts him.  But yes, if the charges are serious and his postion –  say a CM’s –is big enough he should immediately demit office till the entire investigation and court process is done (in India 30 years has not sufficed for one of the five that Captain has listed, the other four died in the interim).   Also it is vital that it is not the neta log only that should be reminded of their complicity in these murders: the blunt fact is Rajiv was popular because of the avenge killings of thousands in 1984, likewise Modi for the avenge killings of thousands – this time of another minority – in 2002: elections only decide popularity, not truth, not right, not what is just.

Britain launched an investigation into MP Tom Watson’s claims that, based on recently de-classified British government documents, the Thatcher government “colluded” with India on the deadly attack on the Golden Temple in Amritsar in 1984. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-25723875

Marked Top Secret, these documents are being released to the public http://stopdeportations.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/prem-19-1273_binder.pdf

Even more important would be if such documents from Indian offices  — army, civil, cabinet minutes, RAW, etc, etc .– could be gotten out detailing in full what went on behind closed doors during those months of plotting, as well as the reality about what was actually played out when the Golden Temple was finally attacked in June 1984.  It is quite possible that efforts have been and are being made … but an additional problem now is the timid Indian mainstream press – [which is anti-Sikh anyway and by now invested heavily in the oft repeated canard that this “Operation Bluestar” was designed only to “flush out terrorists” will never own up to the fact that thousands of unarmed pilgrims, many in gurdwaras other than the Golden Temple too, were killed on this holy day, this gurpurb — it was Guru Arjan Dev’s martyrdom day – and almost all these killings  happened after all hostilities had ceased between the combatants] — won’t rush to report any such RTI [India’s oft-in-news Right to Information Act petitions] efforts that might have been made by some brave people during the previous years, too willingly either.

Margaret Thatcher was about the cruellest British PM in a long time, for example, a dozen Irish freedom fighters starved to death in British prisons, but could not melt her heart.  However the “Iron Lady” was not a patch on “Dilli ki Durga.”  It is no surprise to know that these  two “ladies” got along famously.  Qualitatively politicians tend to be scoundrels every where, but quantitatively in India – because of the absence of any real-time legal or judicial checks  — they are miles ‘ahead’ : much more murderous (esp. for India’s own citizens).

The group Sikhs for Justice (SFJ)—quickly labeled ‘radical’ by news media—has been at it despite initial legal snafus and what seems to be a steep learning curve in getting such high-profile cases right : they have now served Congress President Sonia Gandhi with summons during her trip to the US.
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/summons-served-on-sonia-amid-commotion/article5116252.ece

This time (unlike previous efforts by SFJ, who may be more accurately labeled as ‘hasty’ for justice) the summons do seem to have been served in time and properly before she rushed back. Come to think of it, since she is the big wheel now, just as well the previous efforts on others failed … Something might come out of it especially because being election time BJP for its own vested interests might pitch in.

Sikhs of course, one keeps hoping, will keep level heads on their shoulders and not start extolling murderer Modi as “Sardar Modi” as his fan, Sardar Parkash Singh Badal, did the other day in Ahmadabad!

The truth will come out!   One more instance of this is the absolutely great article by Jaspreet Singh that has just appeared in the New York Times blog of Thomas Bernhard

http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/india/2013/07/22/thomas-bernhard-in-new-delhi/?h=JAQGbgUOt&s=1&

The author underlines that though much greater in numbers were the atrocities committed by the Nazis on Jews, gypsies and others there is a big difference when it comes to November 1984.  The SS is no longer in power in Germany.  On the other hand the perpeterators of the murders of thousands of Sikhs on the streets of Delhi, to avenge the murder of Indira by two Sikhs angry at the massacre earlier in June in 40+ gurdwaras of thousands, have risen to high positions.  And the then prime minister and her son, without whose authority either implicit or explicit these avenge killings could not have been done is being continuously memorialized along with her …

As Jaspreet Singh puts it these memorials to Indira and Rajiv are rather “forgetorials”

There is one point however on which the author might have erred.  He excepts the Indian Express – of those days, when that pogrom was going on, nowadays this newspaper is no different than any other – from collaborating with the desi SS on the streets.  Whether Indian Express really can be excepted only a study of its reportage of those days and weeks can show.

However it is true that the Bombay-based Illustrated Weekly of India did print a number of articles, by Ivan Fera above all, but also Rajni Kothari and others which laid bare the lies of the powers-to-be.  And these articles, like the fearless “Who are the guilty” are very much on this website.

Kudos once again to Jaspreet.  We owe it to those thousands who were butchered that their memory is kept alive.  Like similar memorials that the Jews have built the names of all those who fell should be engraved on the memorials to be built in Delhi.  Yes we don’t have the full list because all sorts of obstacles are put – because here in India the “SS” is still in power, most editors of the big papers, like that of today’s Express are very much honorary if not full-time members of this SS.  Yet we have many names, and as more are found, they too should be added.  Lets get the “forgetorials” demolished, it will take time, many decades maybe, but we should continue getting the truth out.   Let us memorialize the innocents that fell.  Likewise too for the 2002 genocide of members of another community … the principal perpetrator of which is unfortunately so eulogized by these editors and the big business barons of India ——- no wonder he has been selling off gujarat land etc to these people for peanuts … Anyway even if he had developed that state of his 1000 percent a mass murderer, a murderer of those he was supposed to protect in his capacity as CM, that he is still CM might soon be PM … that is shining India!

The spin artists that edit the main newspapers have by now decided that a massacre of Sikhs did not even happen in June 1984!  The brave Indian army with tanks and all went into Golden Temple Complex to “flush out terrorists”, the said “terrorists” – the number of these militants has never been put, even by the Indian government sources, at more than 200, usually it is just 150 or so –did not come out peacefully, so there was a fire fight and the army won.  Plain and simple!

The brave Sikh (the newspapers don’t fail each year to emphasize in full the Sikh background of a major-general and a lieutenant- general who were involved in the execution and planning of this attack) generals are each year in June clapped on the back by these editors for having been so very very patriotic, and for having put up in general such a jolly good show.  If one goes back to the time shortly after the actual event Rajiv conceded about 750 army personnel had died in this army action referred always in the press as “Operation Blue Star” only.

Not mentioned in these official recaps is that these brave army men completely lost their head after this pyrrhic military “victory” and massacred about 5000 pilgrims who were sheltered in the serias only.  These locations are nowhere in the crossfire of the fighting between the combatants:  the militants and the army.  No more than a handful of deaths of unarmed non-combatants could possibly be inadvertent and due to such crossfire.  In fact there is every evidence that the massacre of the civilians in June 1984 was premeditated by the Indian state.  The army entered the complex when it was chock-full of pilgrims because it was Guru Arjun Dev’s martyrdom day.  And this scenario was repeated at 30 to 40 other gurudwaras throughout Punjab.  Not even the government has ever claimed that more than 4-5 militants, armed with antiquated .303 guns, were found in all these other 30-40 gurdwaras combined.

Even the brave fighters in the Akal Takht were ill-equipped compared to the Army’s weaponry, however they were led by a brilliant ex-Indian army Maj. Gen., Shabeg Singh, and it is mainly because of him that they withstood the might of the Indian tanks etc. for so long, however this website is not to discuss military tactics and all, our concern is about the death of unarmed people, the deliberate murders of such people, including many women and children, that happened almost entirely after the fighting between the combatants was totally over.

Yet there were huge civilian casualties—Sikhs who lost their loved ones know this despite all lies by the state—in many of these other gurdwaras also.

The Punjab was cut off to all journalists and was under complete curfew for many days.  But the one single journalist, a certain Brahma Chellaney, who managed to reach the Golden Temple complex after the military action was over had reported that truck after truck of the municipal committee was carting away the bodies, often with their hands still tied behind their backs, …

The current issue of  The Sikh Review, June 2013, gives you the picture in the words of some people who were actually there in the complex then, it is written on the basis of oral interviews etc of these people and entitled, “Operation Blue Star: The Untold Story” by A. Rao, A. Ghose et al.  Untold that is in the mainstream press only when another anniversary of Ghallugara Divas rolls around.  Sikhs have taken care to remember the details from the very beginning …

This blog is focussed however on the massacre of November 1984 in Delhi in full view of everyone and even the foreign diplomats of all the embassies there.  So there is tons of evidence, even photographic, showing how Congress party high-ups were very much on the scene of the bloody action, killing innocent after innocent to extract vengeance for the murder of Indira Gandhi – the person who had ordered the butchery in Amritsar in June 1984 – at the hands of two Sikhs.  Similar murders of thousands of other Sikhs were also carried out to console the bereaved Rajiv in many other states run by the Congress party.  But returning to Delhi it is quite possible that, besides all this evidence – that you can find elsewhere on this website and other similar sites – there were diplomatic cables – perhaps Wikileaks (?) will one day come out with these too, already it has laid bare via such leaks some things quite “embarassing” to the Indian government about the various murderous police officers in the the killing fields of the Punjab of the 1990 … —  from say the ambassador of the US in Delhi to Washington D.C. laying bare the nuts-and-bolts even of how these murders of thousands on the streets of Delhi were very much planned in some high meetings of ministers shortly after Indira’s murder.  There are references to such meetings, this planning, in the articles by Ivan Fera and others that appeared in the Illustrated Weekly of India in the weeks following November 1984 and that can be found on this website.  To our knowledge this magazine was the only one, amongst all the main newspapers and magazines of India, that had the guts to immediately call these killings of November 1984 what they were: state-ordered killings of thousands of innocent Sikhs to avenge the murder by two of a murderous prime minister.

When a community is under the gun sometimes its own actions can appear contradictory to its own interests.  The Akal Takht’s mysterious hukumnamas about various things – like making a big deal once about Buta Singh dyeing his beard black, when so much else thousands of times more condemnable than the artificial blackness of his beard had been done by the government and party of which he was just a mere cog being a case in point.

But the above is definitely NOT the case this time for the latest HUKUMNAMA of the Akal Takht which we completely support and congratulate SFJ and AISSF and others who are pushing for this petition.  The following is per news item written by Navjeevan Gopal from Amritsar on May 5 which appeared in the Indian Express of  May 7 :–

The Akal Takht directed SFJ and AISSF to file a genocide petition in the UN demanding a probe into planned and organized attacks on Sikhs in the first week of November 1984, and take concrete measures to get these killings declared a genocide.  The hukumnama directs all Sikhs to extend support for the 10 lakh signatures SFJ is aiming for.  “More than 30,000 Sikhs were murdered, women were raped, Gurdwaras were set afire, properties were plundered and more than 3 lakh Sikhs were dislocated from their places.  The Indian governments hid the details pertaining to the attacks by terming them as anti-Sikh riots.  These attacks were not riots nor were these limited to Delhi only.  In reality, in November 1984, Sikhs were attacked in more than 100 cities in 18 states,” said the Akal Takht jathedar Giani Gurbachan Singh in this brave hukumnama which is in the true Khalsa tradition.

Not in the tradition of that spineless jathedar who after Jallianwala had honoured the butcher, Brig Gen Dyer, of that massacre of Sikhs of long ago by presenting him with a siropa.  Kudos are due too to reporter Navjeevan Gopal for getting this item in newspaper.  But it seems the totally high editors of this newspaper decided not to put this item in on-line editions!?   How long do you people want to hide the truth about the killings of June and November 1984?

Once again, we need to make national memorials for the thousands of pilgrims who were killed in more than 30 gurdwaras of the Punjab, not memorialize the brutal PM who had ordered this massacre.  Likewise down with the memory of Mr Clean the PM whose lackeys killed these 30,000 innocents in November 1984 to avenge the murder by two Sikhs of his murderous mother.  Let’s build memorials to these innocents – just like the one in Jallianwala — likewise memorials to the thousands of innocents – not Sikhs but Muslims this time — murdered in a fit of anger by their very own CM in the state of Gujarat in 2002.

Every killing of any innocent, be he Sikh, Hindu, Muslim, atheist, whatsoever is simply one more murder. This politician’s game of cancelling off one set of murders by committing another to get bloody votes must stop.